Waiting

My aunt phoned me at 3:33 to tell me that Dad had just gone in for surgery. And now I wait (even though I know it was only a half-hour operation, and that he would be out by now). She said that the nurse said that it wasn't too scary of an operation, and yet it's still nerve-wracking. I've put myself on hold.

I stayed home from a departmental social today. I was planning on going (free pizza! free cake! precious undergraduates!), but teaching made me tired, not to mention the realisation that I would have to tell people at the social what's going on right now. I didn't want to have to open up to my friends at the social. That would just make me shakier. This week has been a different type of stressful than before. Sunday shook me up and took a lot out of me, and now I've been dealing with (and not dealing with) a lot of fears that I haven't had to face before. Everything seems so much less certain still.

At the same time, I frequently find myself impatient to get back to "normal." Since I got back from Christmas, I've kept having to push everything off and make allowances for myself, and I'm getting tired of doing that. I'm tired of having people feel sorry for me. I'm tired of apologising to my students for how distracted or scattered I am.

And yet I know that I can't just get back to work and to normal yet. I went to school this morning. I tried to have a normal class without telling my students about what was happening today. I tried to be organised and cheerful, so that these students wouldn't think their TA is perpetually falling apart. (I had this group when I was really sick at the beginning of the semester, and right in the middle of the flood chaos.) But I know that today's class wore me out, and that I wasn't as patient or as creative as I usually am. As well, I don't have the attention span to do any of my comps reading right now. My mind wanders and then I start worrying.

I'm going to go find something to distract me. Internet's not distracting enough, and I'm too peevish to clean.