Bandwidth

My absence may have been telling - it has been a rough, emotional week.

Unfortunately, it's not something I can share on this blog (or fortunately, depending on your perspective to the issues at hand) or, I might add, even if you email me and beg for juicy details. Sometimes life presents you with situations that can't be translated into tittilating gossip - this is one of those situations.

One observation I've had during my less-than-stellar week is how much (or, more appropriately, little) bandwidth I have left in my life for "new stuff" these days. Between my hip/leg issues, being a mommy, trying to lose weight, and working full-time, there just isn't much "me" left at the end of the day for anything else. My emotional bandwidth is taken up and, as far as I can tell, I'm not eligible for an upgrade any time soon.

In turn, this lack of breathing room has brought my meltdown button closer to the surface.

Those of you who are FB friends with me know that I had one of those on Tuesday night after a bunch of superfluous issues that would not normally even prick at the surface of my emotional resilience, literally lampooned me and sent me over the edge.

Every now and then, but extremely rarely, I get to a level of frustration and anger that can no longer be contained and one of two things happens: I walk away stat or (if I miss the trigger and don't get out fast enough) I verbally or physically abuse someone or something. (The physical abuse usually happens to things, I might add - remember the battered motherboard that cost me $700 a year or so back?) Fortunately, this was one of those times where I reached the door in time. (Having a 7-month old napping in her room next door to you also has a tendency to change your judgment on when and where to freak out.)

This is one of those times in life when you can't just turn your back on the problem, you can't distance yourself, you can't opt-out, you must engaage because it's not only the right thing to do but also because you care too much about the people involved not to. So, I find myself only at a beginning, not an end.

And, what I realize is that I do have more bandwidth. From where, you might ask? Gimme some, right?

On Tuesday the tech person at work was talking about load balancers. For the technically inept of us, it's a machine that manages traffic to or from a number of servers. It's smart enough to know which of the servers have the most bandwidth left to handle the incoming traffic at any moment in time, and it sends the traffic to the least busy server to handle, thus ensuring that no one server ever becomes completely maxed-out.

It occurred to me today that, in life, our load balancers are our friends and family. For me, the person that showed up this week and who continues to show up for me in every way humanly possible during good times and bad, is my husband. Therefore, our marriage is like a load-balancer, taking the incoming traffic and distributing it wherever there is the most bandwidth. Last week I took some of his load, this week he took some of mine. We take whatever comes at us as a team, no matter which side it's coming from, and we field it together.

Last month marked 9 years that we have been together and next week is our 3 year wedding anniversary. We're going to be staying overnight in a hotel downown this weekend and, hopefully, clearing our collective bandwidth for another week and whatever it might bring.