I lost my game face

Does anyone else need a huge hug? Well if you do you're not alone and I hope there's someone nearby to give you one. Sometimes people tell me they visit this blog because it's funny or they need a good laugh. And most of the time I think life is pretty damn amusing and it's easy to find the humor in it. But this week all the rumors and delays somehow got the best of me and I couldn't find my smile anywhere. I don't know why it hit me this week rather than last week or last month, but suddenly it seemed like we'd been putting on our game faces and slogging through this adoption for about 10 years instead of one. I didn't feel like writing anything, I had a nightmare about adoption*, I abandoned my trusty Yahoo groups, I got really behind on email, and I didn't even read my favorite blogs (you KNOW something's wrong when I don't keep up on the blogs). You know what finally made me feel a little better? Awesome messages from friends I've met on the internet. A year ago I never would have guessed that I would meet people through this huge supposedly impersonal web who could reach out and restore my smile. But I have. Karen, Stacey, Nance, Lisa, Kristin, Sparky, and Tracey - thank you for asking, caring, and just simply saying that you can't fix it but you know how I'm feeling. It helped. So much. For anyone else who is feeling depressed about the crappy adoption delays, or anything else, it's okay to admit it. I'm learning alot through this process, and this week I learned that you don't always have to be strong and you just might be surprised and touched by what happens when you say it out loud. *If you're curious, the nightmare was that TubaDad and I were flying somewhere in a small plane. He was in the front seat piloting and I was in the back seat talking on my cell phone. (That's odd on so many levels, not the least of which is that I have a pilot's license and TubaDad doesn't, but whatever...) Anyhow, I was talking away on the phone when suddenly I noticed that we were really close to the ground and the plane was pointing almost straight down. I calmly (again, so unlike me) tapped TubaDad on the shoulder and politely said "TubaDad? Are you asleep?" And he jerked awake and yelled and started trying to pull the plane up and I was so afraid we were going to get hurt. But it was too late, he couldn't get the plane straightened out, the engine made horrible noises, it eventually stalled, the ground kept coming closer, and we crashed. Lovely way to wake up, huh? Now that I've had time to think about it (and shower off the cold clamminess) I'm pretty sure it was a dream about the adoption. I know, I know, everything is NOT about the adoption, but seriously I think this one was. My faux shrinkanalysis is that the dream was about our total loss of control in this process, my fear of getting hurt, and my worry that all these delays mean the process is crashing and burning. What do you think?