Normal

Oftentimes in my job (it no longer feels like a career, just a job) I need to discuss confidential and sensitive information with clients. This usually involves one on one meetings behind closed doors.

This past week I was out at a client's office. One of my favorite clients, I have worked with them for years and the staff is full of genuinely nice people. It is for that reason that I avoided those confidential discussions. I had a list of tasks to accomplish for the week, and I left the conversations until the very end.

With only an hour left in my week, I bit the bullet and headed off behind closed doors. The first person I met with knew what I was wanting to discuss. Though they are confidential, these mystery conversations are generally fairly routine. But, this time, it was anything but normal.

No sooner had I closed the door, than the woman I was going to talk to started crying. She asked how I was doing, how my husband was doing, she expressed her sympathy and told me that she cried when she heard the news. I couldn't take it anymore and started crying myself. And not just a couple leaked tears, but outright sobbing.  We never did get to the purpose for my visit to her office.

I do appreciate her bringing up Carter. Much better than pretending I was gone on an extended vacation. 

At least my first time is over. I cried at a client and lived to tell about it.

But I learned that breaking the seal isn't necessarily a good thing. I couldn't keep my act together for the rest of the day. I had done fairly well during the week - keeping things professional and focusing on something other than Carter. But tears have a way of changing things. The rest of the day was spent trying not to lose it in front of my staff.

I feel like I don't know what normal is anymore. I go through my days at work - talking to co-workers, joking around and offering my opinion when asked (and sometimes when I'm not). But it all feels like an act. Like I don't know how to be myself. I am not at all comfortable and it is exhausting. Trying to keep it together during the work day means I come home and have a lot of ...sadness... to let out. It leaves me barely able to function, which isn't fair to Livie or Shawn. I am just not sure how to go about living my new life.

 There are things that we don't want to happen but have to accept, things we don't want to know but have to learn, and people we can't live without but have to let go.  ~Author Unknown