Going Home

This weekend, Joe and I are flying to hell "home" to visit our families. Primarily, to visit my sister Tina and her kids. Collin is now about 21 months and Caley is about 3 weeks old. If nothing else, I figure the experience will be good for at least one blog post.

I haven't been "home" since Collin was a month old and that trip didn't go well. I was so anxious that I spent the entire trip being miserably sick. But that was before my friend Lexapro. And before Xanax. And beyond the medication, I think I've made great progress with my other coping mechanisms.

Still, I find myself very on edge. It usually starts to hit me when we're packing. It's an early morning flight and I'm not an early morning girl. Travel makes me more nervous than it should but between security, layovers, and possible weather, I can't seem to put away all of those antsy feelings.

Assuming we arrive in one piece, I'm hopeful the weather will cooperate. I'll have enough to keep calm about without weather worries. I've identified two major stress areas for the trip so that I can compartmentalize them and get past them.

The first is visiting my grandmother. She never misses an opportunity to rehash all of the family history and her bitterness at my parents. She's totally entitled to her feelings and I won't disagree with them. I share many of them myself. But it serves no purpose to talk about them again. It only freaks me out. Gramma is also getting quite old (she'll be 80 in April) and always tells me that it's good to see me because she thought she might die before we visited again. Stuff like that. Very pleasant.

The second big stress event will be Sunday morning. My sister is having the kids dedicated (think Protestant for baby baptism) at the family church that day. It's a pretty big deal and I'm excited that she's planning it for a time when we can be there. But the idea of going to my parents' church makes me want to vomit. They are a tiny rural church, totally judgmental and totally in everyones' business. They hate gays, they hate dancing, they miss the days of Prohibition, they hate Catholics (I'm still going to hell for marrying "one of those heathens" as my mother's friend told me on my wedding day). And since they're all my mother's friends, she has badmouthed me to them for years. That's not paranoia; that's a fact. My brother's and sister's weddings were both extremely uncomfy for me as a result.

On top of it all, I weigh 70 lbs more than I did last time I was there. But no way do I say to any of them "it's called depression and medication". Instead, family and "friends" can just think "wow, Cate's really a fatass!" Believe me, I know I'm overweight. It's hard to not let the depression get the best of me so I can do something about it.

But despite all of that, I'm really looking forward to seeing my brother, SIL, sister, and niece & nephew. I'm trying to work out the possibility of doing a bit of spoiling. I'm also trying to work out a plan to abscond with my sister alone for a bit because I think that time would serve us both well.

And the best thing you can all do for me is hope that Gwen will have coverage in Northeast Nowhere. Because Gwen is my lifeline. If the plane lands and I can't find the little Verizon guy, it's not going to be pretty.