A Moment Alone

We have another guest post in my ' People who have helped through hard time' series! The talented @prettyalltrue! I really love her writing, and I really wanted to post this when she wrote it, but life happened and it had to wait. This post has given me chills everytime I have read it, and I am honored that she shared this story on my blog. Much Love to you, hunny. Now show her some love!!

A Moment Alone – By Kris

Alright, so this post is supposed to be about someone in my life who has helped me through hard times. I don’t usually have trouble writing on an assigned topic, and so I was surprised when the words didn’t come. Obviously, I could write about my husband, who is always there for me. We’ve been together for 24 years, and he is amazing.

However, I write about Mark all the time. I wanted to say something new. Tell a story of someone else with whom I trust my heart. Someone else who has helped me through difficult times.

But guess what?

I don’t give my heart easily. I don’t trust easily. During difficult times, I tend to withdraw from people, not reach out for their comfort.

And the times I have reached out to others and found comfort? A hand extended?

Those moments are too personal for me to share here. Not because I don’t adore Lizzy, but because I require control. And the thought of leaving a big raw piece of myself over here in Lizzy’s house? That thought fills me with fear.

So now I am thinking that this is perhaps not my ideal guest-post topic.

So I spent some time thinking instead of writing.

After collecting my thoughts, I hope that this will do . . .

A small moment instead of a large one.

Or a large one from my small perspective.

Me, at home with Maj and Kallan. The three of us. Maj is 2 ½ and Kallan is just a few months old. Life is good, but it’s just the three of us most days. I have been completely unable to connect in our new community, which isn’t that new anymore, as we have lived here for well over a year.

I love my daughters. I love the time I spend with them. But I see that I am standing in my own way, and that my inability to connect with other women is costing me and my girls enormously. I am so lonely.

It’s a problem. A problem from which I turn my head most days.

I play with the girls and tend to their needs. We are a small universe unto ourselves.

It is enough. But it is not enough.

Yeah.

I turn my head from this knowledge.

So on this morning, I am reading to Maj and nursing Kallan. And the phone rings. Maj brings me the phone.

It’s Mark, and he sounds not like himself at all.

He tells me to turn on the television, and I do.

And I watch the first tower crumble and fall. Over and over again as it is played in an endless loop of horror on the large screen before my eyes.

And then the second tower falls.

All that death. All those people. All that terror.

I am filled with terror.

Terror at the overwhelming knowledge that the end can come in an instant. Or in a few last heartbreaking instants in which you come face to face with your aloneness in this world. How in the end?

It is just you.

Just me.

Alone that day to face what’s next.

And so on this day of which I speak? September 11^th, 2001?

I decide that while I am going to have to do that last moment alone?

I will be damned if I am going to do all of the moments that lead up to that moment alone.

And so I stepped out of my own way. Faced my fears. And reached out.

To a group called The MOMS Club of Vallejo.

Where I found comfort and love and laughter and support.

And friends.

Women.

Women who I still love.

Women who keep me company on this path to that final moment.

Because it turns out I don’t want to be alone.

At all.

And now?

I realize that I am leaving a big raw chunk of myself over here on Lizzy’s blog.

Damn it.