So Many Feelings

Since before last June, when my mother broke her leg and began her swift downward spiral toward death, I have experienced so many feelings in so little time. At first I plodded numbly along, doing what had to be done, through the tasks of tending to my mother, though not very well, when she was in the rehab hospital, bringing her home to the board and care to die, seeing my father suddenly die, and my mother follow shortly thereafter.
Somehow, I did the things I was expected to do, buying cemetery plots, hosting a reception after my father's funeral, going back to work. It isn't that I didn't feel the pain of loss, the shock of all my responsibilities to my parents suddenly halting, but with the change of routine, my shock shifted direction, going inward. The pain tunneled deep into places I never expected, until I found myself seeming to suffer for no reason at all.
As last semester went on, it seemed all much too much to go on doing the same old thing, following the routine in my life I followed before my parents died. So I tried to change my life radically, hoping it would help.
I wrote much more, assembling a manuscript I have still not sent out, though it is in better shape than it was. I accepted my cousin Nina's offer to illustrate the yoga poems, since she offered to do it. I have not heard from her in a while, but I hope she plans to finish the job. If not, I will go back to the first artist who expressed interest in doing it.
I asked a friend from synagogue, Stuart Friedman, a financial analyst, to help organize and invest my sudden financial windfall, relatively small though it was, and began the process of buying a house, a process that is coming to fruition right now.
I even accepted an offer from another institution to teach a class, something I didn't have time for when my parents were alive.
Much of this has brought joy and excitement. I needed the changes, needed the chance to develop myself in new ways and to look after my own and R's future for a change, after years of caring for and tending to others.
But all of it coming at once has put untold pressure on me, pressure that is partly due to my own desire to shift direction and thus avoid the insistent unease and pain that has followed me since my parents' death.
I knew, at some level, that this effort would lead to rifts in my life, tearing of the fabric I had woven for so long to create comfort for myself. That is what I am experiencing now. Comfort can become a trap.
I am sorry that in the process of changing my perspective and trying to grow I have hurt others who never meant me harm. I am sorry that I seemed to lash out at those who had done nothing but help me.
All I can ask is that they try to understand that the motive was never to hurt them.