Dear Reese,
You want to walk everywhere, but you haven’t found the balance or the confidence to go on your own just yet. That means MorMor and I have sore backs from leaning down to hold your hands. But I know it’s another fleeting season.
My anxiety has been heightened these past two weeks for a myriad of reasons. Being gone from you seemed to heighten it. I tell MorMor I’m managing fine, and I am, but last night I was mostly asleep when my brain woke up and started spiraling. I had to turn the light on and read for a bit to focus on something else.
Someday I’m going to have to help you make sense of the things I haven’t made sense of myself. Those girls who got washed away at Camp Mystic. How everything can be fine, until suddenly it’s not. I let worst-case scenarios play out in my brain, a useless anxiety feeder. But sometimes it feels insane and reckless to keep stepping out into the world, to keep making choices like everything will be okay.
But then again, if I truly believed that, I never would have made the choices that led to you and me belonging to one another.
When I am not in an anxiety spiral, I believe that living like it will be okay is much closer to the truth of things. Or at least, it is a mindset that inspires me to put more love and energy into the world and into those I love. And that’s closer to the kind of person I want to be than one who worries about planes crashing or trees fatally crashing through bedrooms or other things that are rare, tragic, and out of my control.
Tonight, MorMor holds your hand as you walk down the cottage hallway. You take your other hand and grab onto her leg for an anchor. The image reminds me of that scene at the end of How to Train Your Dragon where Toothless and Hiccup are walking side by side. She is supporting you, but for a second, it looks like you are supporting each other. Fleeting moments.
Love,
Mama