CRyiNG iS eXHauSTiNG

I wanted today to be a good happy day. It's Friday. It's the start of a long weekend. Mr. Manic is not going to travel next week. We've just had a nice day for Tukey yesterday with his birthday. I went to bed really early last night, thought I slept well. Decided that today might be the day I cut out sweets and sugar because I've been indulging way too much lately.

I planned on a good day today. Really.

I wanted to hit Yoga at Lifetime. Wanted to get back into a routine, find some balance in my very unbalanced life of late.

Tukey woke up. He didn't seem very happy. I figured it was because his special "All About Me" birthday was over. He was on my bed, looking sad and forlorn. I asked him what was wrong.

He told me after some prying. That he was thinking about his last birthdays how he spent them with his friends having parties and how he is missing Illinois and his friends.

Oh, how I get it. He was trying to hold back tears. I told him to come by me, I held him on my lap and told him I don't care if he's nine or 19, that he can cry. That he should cry. To let it out. He can cry. God made tears for a reason and he's allowed to cry them out. So he cried. And I cried. I told him how much I missed my friends too, and how sad I am too to be away from my friends, the girls I miss and love every single day that I am here. We cried together on my bed this morning.

Cuz what else can we do. When we feel sad, we cry. That's all we can do. Sure, we can try to get out there and make friends, and we will do that. We are doing that. But when we're sad, we're gonna cry.

He went to school with my promise to him that we can go whereever he wants after school -- if he wants to use some of his birthday money to go buy something, or go get a treat, I will take him somewhere. I will do anything in my power to make that little guy a little less sad during these transitional hard times for all of us.

So then I went to yoga. Thinking I needed to breathe, get some balance, find some inner peace. It was a good class. I focused on myself for once in a long time. A very long time. Being here, I have been focusing so darn much on my kids and trying to make them as comfortable and less sad, and just working through making a new life here. I have forgotten about myself.

I don't know who I am.

I did yoga, and it was good. I might need to Eat Pray and Love. Forget that. I definitely don't need to Eat. But I did do yoga, and I liked the teacher. During the last part, the sivasana, which I always think it should be spelled shivasana, but I think it's spelled the other way, I was trying to be relaxed, but I really think the teacher played that song, CRY. In fact, I'm going to look it up right now on iTunes ... nah, maybe it was the song Smile when your heart is breaking ... whatever, it was one of those perfect songs to just bring me right to the ledge. And I lost it.

Really lost it.

I've cried a few times during yoga. And it's like the tears just come and it's an otherworldly place you can't control but not like blown out tears, just automatically rolling quietly down the cheeks, like someone wouldn't even know you are crying unless they saw the two tears slipping down your face.

That kind of crying.

But then I had to get out of there.

The thing was. I had no where to go.

It hit me that in Illinois, after yoga, I would be surrounded by lots of love. I would be in a class with about 5 or 6 really close girlfriends most of the time, and even if none of my friends were there, I loved my yoga teacher Toni, and while this was a really great class here and I can't wait to go back, it was like, "now what?"

There's no one here.

After in Illinois, a bunch of us would go get Starbucks, or I could chat with people, smile to a half-dozen friends I KNEW. Now I just had to walk out of there with a wet face while I watched everyone else have nice conversations with their FRIENDS about what they were going to do together over the long weekend.

It just really is hard to be the new kid. And it's really exhausting to have to put yourself out there to make the friends. And it's really exhausting to have to help your children do this too. I dont' feel like I have the energy to do this another time. I've already done this in Philadelphia. I've done it again in Illinois. I don't know if I want to expend all the energy to be bright and happy and outgoing, to find the people that I want to surround myself with all over again.

I'm tired.

I'm tired of crying. I'm tired of my kids crying, of being sad. Of missing their friends. I'm tired of having to work through all of this all on my own.

It's exhausting.

I need a good long nap. A massage. Some sympathy, because I understand I'm being whiny and not really that much is horrible in my life.

But this is how I'm feeling.