Unfinished Business

Right now there are a lot of things that feel unsettled for me.

Here we are almost 14 months out and the estate still hasn't closed.  My lawyer has not responded to multiple emails asking what we're supposed to do to close the estate and get the accounts settled now that the guardianship hearing is over.  The hearing took place in January and the only communication I have received from his office since then has been in the form of invoices.  Awesome.

Then there is the question of what I'm going to do this summer.  Do I try to get an internship?  My grad school program requires two 300-hour internships, which can be done during any two of our three remaining semesters.  It would be good to get one done, but there is something to be said for taking advantage of this summer as my last chance to not be working, and enjoy outdoor activities with Max.  We're not going to get this chance again.  So I guess if something absolutely ideal comes my way, I won't say no.  But I also don't plan on settling.  It would be so fun to be able to go to parks with Max, to the lakefront, and be able to play outside now that he's a mobile, social little dude.  In the fall and spring semesters, I would have more time to space out the requisite hours, and working when it's not summer feels like less of a sacrifice, plus I'm planning on putting Max in a preschool program a couple days a week starting in the fall anyway.

Of course, I am stressed about the "what comes next?" question - after grad school.  Job, where we'll be, etc.  But that's just too massive to even think about right now.

And lastly, there's the business of me.  I saw this recently on someone's FB wall:

I feel like now that a year has passed, I'm out of the storm part.  There will always be cloudy days, and even hurricane season, but the big storm has, I believe, blown over.  And now I have to figure out who I am in its wake.  I've done some soul searching, especially since the holidays, trying to figure out who I am now, and who I want to be, and how to get there, and how I should be comporting myself along the way.  It is so incredibly difficult to go through this self-evaluation and self-discovery process under these circumstances.  Sometimes I feel like I have multiple personality disorder.  

At times, I revert back to parts of my younger self that really should have been left in college.  And that's not good because I say and do really stupid things, and I can't be acting like that because I'm 33 and I have a child.  I'm not the girl I was when I met JP at 23, and I'm also not the girl I lost him at 32, because much of that version of myself was shaped by him and by our relationship.  Losing your partner changes you in many more ways than those directly related to the loss and the grief.  You truly do have to become a different version of yourself.  And when I think about the fact that it took me 9 years to become the person I was when I lost JP, it's no wonder that I'm going through some growing pains with this new and unwelcome transition phase.

I've taken steps toward a better, stronger me, no doubt.  From going back to school to start a career to trying to do what's best for Max and his upbringing to going paleo and embracing Crossfit for my health and mental/emotional wellbeing.  But there are areas in which I feel profoundly inadequate, or like a complete failure.  It may be time for a list of goals...

I'll start with these:

• Spend more quality time with Max
• Focus on time management and increasing efficiency and productivity
• Start acting like a lady (who is 33 and has a toddler)
• Get more sleep