The second half of 2021 was REALLY HARD and a lot of awful. 2021 was harder for me than 2020, but it didn't start out that way. In fact, 2021 started out filled with promise.
At the beginning of 2021 I decided to take control of my health and started doing Noom and it was great. I developed a healthier relationship with food and was the most active I had been in many years. I even did two 5Ks in 2021, one of them I RAN half of it!! And there were things in 2021 I was looking forward to, especially my fifteenth wedding anniversary.
Aaron and I were so excited because we had the money for us to go to Disney World to celebrate our anniversary. We were going to spend our actual anniversary at EPCOT and then spend a day at Hollywood Studios and visit the new Star Wars land. It was the first time we would be going away together since bringing Ellie home in 2019 and the expectations were high. We made our dinner reservation and made the lists of all the booths we wanted to visit during the Food and Wine Festival. It was supposed to be a magical second honeymoon.
The night before we were to leave Aaron made the comment that he wasn't feeling well and thought maybe one of the burgers he had for lunch wasn't fully cooked. By the next morning, Aaron was feeling worse, spent most of the day in bed, and I wasn't sure if we were going to leave that afternoon. Aaron convinced himself that he had a bad case of food poisoning and by sheer force of will got up and we headed to the airport.
It was a pretty miserable flight for my guy, but he was rallying and determined to go to Disney World the next day. He thought he pulled a muscle vomitting because he was having a hard time standing up straight and was moving very slowly. The next morning we got up and he was still determined to go to EPCOT, but I insisted on renting a wheelchair to make getting around easier for him.
So I spent our anniversary pushing my husband around EPCOT in a wheelchair and forcing him to drink plenty of water and pushing food in him. I was fighting disappointment and trying to not let my unmet expectations turn to resentment towards Aaron - after all it wasn't his fault that he got food poisoning. I kept reminding myself that this was what marriage really looks like, sacraficing and making the most of even the worst situations. We made it through the day, but it came at a cost and poor Aaron was exhausted and ready to leave before the nighttime show.
Friday morning I woke up early and asked Aaron (for probably the 500th time) if he wanted me to try for boarding passes of Rise of the Resistance and he said yes. So, I tried and by God's grace did NOT get one. Then I started looking up Aaron's symptoms myself and I realized that maybe this wasn't food poisoning after all. I told Aaron that I thought we needed to go Urgent Care, which he didn't fight. Urgent Care took one look at Aaron and told him to go straight to the closest ER.
Within a few hours it was confirmed that Aaron had appendicitis. A few more hours later and Aaron went back to surgery. The surgeon came out and confirmed our fear, Aaron's appendix had burst (probably Wednesday evening on the plane), his abdomen was full of excrement and he was septic. Aaron spent the next few days in a hospital in Florida with a tube coming out of his abdomen. I came close to losing my husband and it was scary.
Once we finally made it home, it would be another 2 weeks before he would be able to go back to work or lift anything. Then a couple weeks after that he would develop the beginnings of an abscess and have to go back on antibiotics to treat it. It would be September before Aaron started to get back to normal.
During that time I stopped prioritizing myself and my health. I was focused on being Ellie's primary caregiver and Aaron's caregiver and keeping everyone alive. I stopped being mindful of my eating and I stopped working out. I made excuses and before long I just felt icky and crummy. I lost myself and I was miserable.
In the last few months of the year I also started doing a lot of personal reflection and processing of past hurts and trauma. I started blogging again and sharing/processing the hurts from our prior church. I also started digging into the baggage I have carried from my childhood and started sharing with Aaron things he didn't even know. I've spent the last month or so really digging deep and processing a lot of stuff and mess and baggage. It's been hard work, but I know it's worth it.
I decided a few weeks ago that I'm sick of being miserable and unhappy and that it was my own dagum fault. So I decided to make some changes. I finally made the appointment with the chiropractor that I've been putting off for years. I restarted Noom. I got a haircut, not just a trim, but an actual styled haircut. I'm working on setting boundaries and keeping them. I'm having the hard conversations. I'm leaning into my tribe of women and being vulnerable with people again. I will not feel mom guilt or believe the lie that I'm being selfish by doing things for myself. I'm taking back my life.
