Welcome to Saint Louis

It’s been long enough. I shall wait no longer for the great insightful message that you all will marvel at. Instead I shall simply post my undiluted emotion. My blather begins:

I’m here. Sometimes I can hardly believe it. Other times I believe it all too well. The drive was tortuous, the unloading was rapid, the unpacking continues. The landscape is bland, the weather is horrible (hot and humid), the skies are bereft of my beloved redtails. Even as I wrote that last comment, I could feel the tingling in my chest, the lump in my throat, the fuzzy vision.
Worst of all, my friends are far away.
Real tears now.
Panic.
Pause.
Breathe breath.
Again.
Calming down.

I have my wife and child. The main joys of my life. Pulcheria is bedridden with morning sickness (surprise and congratulations are, indeed, in order) 23.2 hours a day. Bree is solely my responsibility. The unpacking is a monumental task that I try to avoid thinking about. Pulcheria is bedridden. The love of my life, and my respite from constant childcare is inaccessible. A mess of emotion fills me, now. Freedom-deprivation depresses me more than anything. Loneliness. What a feeling. I haven’t felt lonely in quite some time. I usually relish my alone time. But now, it’s more than mere loneliness; it’s the loneliness of the single mother in a strange new city with no local friends. Of one who wants to pick up job applications, but knows that it will hurt her chances to go in with a child at her hip. Of one who knows that her babysitter lives right next door, and is home, but is unable to help watch for more than a half hour. And there are thousands of these people. Probably hundreds within 50 miles of me. And, now, I am one of them.

Now comes the guilt. What a horrible person am I to be thinking of myself and my poor lot in life at a time when Pulcheria is sick because she is making a child for me. Self-absorbed bastard. It is her body being tortured, not mine. She wants to feel better and participate a thousand times more than I want her to. Bree wants to play more. To see her friends, too. Bree suffers from a father who feels depressed because he has to perform his fatherly duties with more intensity than usual. Poor me. What a schmuck I am.

Oh! Great. What is this new feeling? Survivor’s guilt, now? COME ON! Please get a hold of yourself, dude.
Breathe.
Fine.

And now, I go back to my life. Thanks for your attentiveness. Know that within five minutes, I won’t feel this bad, anymore. It’ll come back, but it’ll also go away again.

For now, though, I must feel.
And breathe.