Today was hard. Really hard. There wasn’t a reason.

I slept 8.5 hours and only woke up uncomfortable twice. Both times I was able to go right back to sleep.

I had a good session with my therapist. I had a couple of work meetings. I got a lot done.

I felt fine. Maybe a little off or distant from myself. I left work to drive up to the IU North Cancer Center for a bra fitting that my surgeon recommended I take advantage of because I’ve had such discomfort with my expanders.

I drove there, and I gave my name at the desk. I waited briefly in the waiting room. The bra-fitter-woman came and got me and took me to a room full of wall to wall bras and prosthetics. I calmly took off my shirt and bra—at this point, I’m so used to it that I don’t bat an eye anymore.

And the woman began taking measurements and gently adjusting and readjusting my left expander, and without warning, I felt the tears flooding in. I held most of them back, but the woman noticed. “It’s okay, honey,” she said. “This happens all the time.”

I’m sure she’s used to it. I’m sure it does happen all the time. But here’s the thing—I’m still not used to it. I don’t want it happening all the time. I don’t want to be navigating a normal day, and then having the sudden experience of the weight of the entirety of the last year just erupt inside of me out of nowhere. I don’t want to be minding my business one moment and drowning in the next.

And I’m tired of it hurting. And I’m tired of talking about it. And I’m tired of my friends having to hear about it. And I’m tired of divorce and attorneys and financial statements and cancer and surgeries and soreness and weakness and crying. I’m so sick of crying. And I’m tired. I’m so so so tired. My body is tired. My mind is tired. My heart is tired. My soul is tired. And I am tired of still feeling like an imposter in my own life. And I’m tired of scars, and I’m sad I’ll never have any feeling in my chest again. Every time I pull a shirt on, I’m reminded, and every time I’m reminded, there is grief. And I’m tired of should-ing all over myself.

I should just be grateful. I should count my blessings. I should stop whining. I should remember it could be so much worse. I should stop talking about it. I should stop sharing about it. I should feel better by now. I should be pain free. I should. I should. I should.

It feels like things should be back to normal, at least until my next major surgery in September. But I don’t have a normal anymore. And I don’t have sight of one on the horizon. It’s a limbo of living in a life and a body I don’t recognize as my own, as the life and the body I spent four decades getting to know. It feels like everything and everyone around me has returned to business as usual while I got left behind, lost somehow. And I am lonely and don’t know how to get back to join everyone else.

And today was a day where all of it got the best of me. The weight of the last year was much too heavy, and I buckled under it. I went down. And by the time I got to my car in the parking lot of the cancer center, those tears I had tried to outrun in the appointment caught up to me and took me to task. And I cried and cried and cried.

And then?

I reached out. I texted some of my closest people. My God friends. My angels. And one of them called and said, “I don’t know what to say to make this better for you. I’m sorry.” And I thanked her for being there. And she let me sob on the phone. Real sobs. Hard sobs. The kind of tears that break open and baptize your banged up heart with unspeakable grace and holiness no words can do justice.

And I felt a little bit lighter. Not a lot, but enough to put one foot in front of the other, enough to believe my friend when she told me she loved me, enough to dry my eyes and drive back to work, to finish my projects for the day, to smile and be kind to the people I saw.

And I was saved again in exactly the way I needed to be. Just enough. Just for today.

A friend of mine posted this earlier, and it gave me pause. I do not feel fine. In the last year, I have felt the most incredible love I have ever experienced and the worst pain I have ever experienced. Life has been a constant roller coaster between these two highs and lows and the kinds of both that have brought me to my knees—in gratitude and in desperation. “I feel fine.” It’s so much easier to tell than the truth. It’s what I told the woman in the bra-fitting today…right before I went to the car and lost my mind sobbing with grief…right before God/Love found me in the heart of a friend.

Hang in there. We’re all just here to walk each other home.

Big hugs and big love, friends.