Running Away




When a grown up says they want to run away, their friends usually say something like "ya ya me too what tropical island are we going to?" and you talk about what you will do on said tropical island or rather what you won't do and what you will drink. But theres no follow through, You never go, you don't actually mean it, You always stay and be the responsible grown up.  I've meet hundreds of people that say they want to run away, I've never seen any of them actually do it. I say I want to run away almost every day, I've yet to do it but I am getting closer and closer to following through with my convictions.

When a child says they want to run away, they mean it. They are determined. They pack a bag.  Well today baby girl had had enough of this dead daddy business and she decided to run away. I think really it started yesterday.

Yesterday we got the keys to our new house. Now, as a general rule, no a hard and fast no compromise rule baby girl hates change. Hates. Always has. She was born that way. When she was 4 we moved houses and she was upset for months and talked about it for years afterward how she missed our old house (which was an awful house by the way) . Once our couch broke and we were forced to get a new one, she cried over the broken couch that you could no longer sit on for three days. She has never ever gotten rid of a toy willingly and gets very upset when I get rid of clothes she's outgrown. She doesn't like change, got it. So in a year and a half her dad dies, shes forced to move out of her house (that she now loves cause it was an awesome house) and in with grandma and grandpa, and we bought a new house that we will move into shortly.  So you know it's only a little bit of major life altering change.


 I had invited family and friends over to toast the new house. There were a lot of people and it was pretty chaotic. Baby girl was overwhelmed by all the change and  kept crying about little things like she wanted to cut the cake, and she wanted a different kind of cup, just really everything made her cry. Finally she had had enough and she pulled me into the bedroom and she shut herself in the closet and cried and cried and cried. and screamed and screamed and screamed. I just sat outside the closet trying to calm her down to no avail. She cried for over an hour while the party went on without us in the next room. She did say "there's too much stuff going on" and "I don't like this" and "I'm having a really bad day mommy " And there was nothing I could say to make it better, there was nothing I can do to fix it. It felt like a giant mom fail, I should have known not to invite everyone over right away, I should have given her more time to get used to it first. To find her secret hiding places. To realize it's ours. To realize daddy wasn't going to be there. At least at grandma and grandpas we have memories of daddy being here. I should have known she would need theses things.  Finally she calmed down and we rejoined the party.

Today she ran away. She got home from school and was upset about everything.Again everything was making her cry. It was a very trying afternoon but made sense that she would still be upset about life changing again. When dinner was over she wanted help looking for something in her room. We went in there and she wanted me to help her find the key to our old house which auntie had given her to play with. she kept saying "I'm finding my key and I'm going home. " and "I wanna go home" That just about broke my heart. She found her key which was actually in a special hiding place not just thrown in with her other toys. She was crying this whole time. I told her I would take her up to our old house and we could look around the yard but she didn't want to.  Then she said she wanted to take consolation kitty for a walk. So she put consolation kitty in the stroller (yes we have a stroller for our cat, whats more the crazy thing loves it)  Old house key in hand went out the front door. she said she wanted me to come too but to walk behind her. So I did.  When we got to the end of the driveway she screamed "Me and kitty are going home" and started running down the road. I just slowly walked behind her. When she got about a block away she sat down and cried and cried. when I got up there she said "I wanna go home mommy I wanna go home" again I offered to take her back to the old house and she said through sobs "no we can't do that it's not our home anymore"  I told her that I wished things could go back to the way they used to be too. (i.e. with daddy being alive) Then we sat for a minute trying to calm down. I mentioned something about taking kitty to go see our new house and so we did. Baby girl showed kitty every room and then put her on the ground so she could explore. she was feeling much better by then. We went home to grandma and grandpas and went to bed.

This is grief with a child. Like adults everything is related to grief, a child though doesn't know that and doesn't understand that. All they know is that they are mad or upset and they don't know why. Most of the time baby girl blames it on something else i.e. I've been crying for an hour because I can't find the crayon I want. When really shes been crying for an hour because as she was coloring she remembered how much fun she used to have coloring with daddy and she wants daddy to come back. But she doesn't know how to express that and so she blames the crayon.

It's so awful to watch your child be in so much pain and be totally unable to do anything about it.


I wrote a book about my grief, you can read it here: Carry on Castle

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