I didn't think I would ever stop crying...or at least I couldn't imagine ever feeling better enough to stop crying.

We were in the middle of a move from Indiana to Georgia. My husband had left a few weeks early to start his new job and find an apartment for us. I stayed behind with our four young kids to finish out the school year and pack up the house.

In the middle of the packing chaos, the electric company mixed up our move out date, and mistakenly cut off the electricity... four days before we were due to move. And when I called them to tell their mistake, they told me they would require another deposit $100 to turn it back on. I was frustrated, but I handled it. And I did not pay the extra $100. But I spent an hour on the phone to correct someone else's mistake. Grumpy but vindicated, I went to pack some more boxes and saw my 3-year-old had taken the black Sharpie I used to label boxes and wrote on all four walls of her nursery.  After I took the pen away from her and gave her something else to do (distraction works!), I lifted a box and started to walk it down the stairs. I was about halfway down when I felt kicking and giggling inside. My youngest daughter burst out of the top of the container. Boo, Mommy! she yelled. Boom...I slipped down the stairs. I managed to hold onto her, but I wasn't able to steady myself. And as she scampered off to play and tell her siblings how she scared mommy, I cried.

I cried because I was by myself. I cried because I didn't know what to do next. I cried because I was tired. I cried because I was scared of leaving a city I knew like the back of my hand to an unknown city in a state had never spent more than 48 hours before. I cried because it was too much.

I cried and cried and cried and the thing that made me the saddest was that I knew that I had to eventually stop crying and keep going on with my day. Because there was no one there to help me. If I didn't do what needed to be done, there was no one else to do it.

I knew at some point, I needed to stop crying. And it made me cry even harder.

Dead leaves/ sadness

This post is part of a Blogging A To Z series where during the month of April, I write a new, personal story almost every day (except Sundays).

images: Convenient Lifestyle Moving & Graphis