Barnmaven

The snow fell and I right along with it

Finally, it came.  Boy, howdy, did it come.  We got a good six inches between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.  School was delayed, meetings were cancelled, we pretty much didn't leave the house except for putting the kids on the bus and getting them back off. 

The kids had a blast playing in the snow.  All Wednesday it was the perfect snowball snow - fluffy, just wet enough to stick together to form a ball.  Race Car man quickly got over his aversion to socks when he discovered how cold his feet got in his snow boots without them. 

We found out Wednesday night that school was cancelled for Thursday and the kids were beside themselves with the excitement of playing outside all day long.

We woke yesterday to a light freezing rain that continued all day long.  It left a two-inch layer of ice crystals on top of our snow and coated every tree, fence, mailbox and vehicle in a sheet of ice. 

I did leave the house, though.  Had to.  We we were out of dog food and milk, two things that in this household are required to keep the earth revolving around the sun.  And then, I had the followup appointment for Race Car Man's evaluation.  He had to retake one test series, and then we met with the psychologist.

I answered a lot of questions.  My son answered some questions.  The doctor was kind, measured, and very patient.  As he interviewed me, he completed an evaluation.  We clarified some questions.    He will compile his report and send it to us, probably in a week.  But of course, as a parent, you want to know the answers to your questions, even if you think you know what they are. And so I asked him.  And he very kindly and gently shared the results of the evalution form he had just completed with me.

I've had to learn some new phrases about myself over the last couple of months - some easier, some harder.  I've had to learn how to say "I am a wife" after a few years of wanting to be anything but. 

I had to learn how to say "My brother is dead" and saying it still causes a surge of anxiety and pain that feels like its going to break my sternum in half.

And as of yesterday, I have one more to add.

"My son has autism."

 

 

 

 

On the calendar

I am going to the dentist on Friday.

I have not been to the dentist in over two years.

I hate the dentist. I hate needles.  I hate drills.  I hate the way my gums feel after the hygenist has brutalized them with her instruments of torture.  Okay, maybe that's not really fair-- not all hygenists do that to me.  But I have had a couple in my lifetime who really made it hurt, and one in particular who appeared to take so much joy in making my mouth hurt that I had to go home and take a painkiller to ease the throbbing in my gums.

Even worse than this, though, is my well-documented phobia about needles.  SG has to have a few tests done because, well, lets just say laughing so hard during the scene in The Big Lebowski where Walter tosses Donny's ashes from the coffee can and the wind picks them up and blows them all over The Dude's beard and sunglasses that you actually pass out momentarily from the laughing is a sign that something's not working quite right.  And so he has to have this test where they take blood from a vein and also blood from an artery, and I'm literally trying not to pass out as I TYPE THESE WORDS.  He was describing it to me in great length until he noticed the faint sheen of sweat on my upper lip and mercifully stopped talking.

So.

I. Hate. The. Dentist.

When I was young it was obvious from an early point that my mouth was overcrowded and I would need to have braces eventually.  The first time I had to have a tooth pulled to make room for other teeth I must have been 7 or 8, I don't remember precisely.  I DO remember the more pertinent details, such as the valium or whatever the dentist's office made my mother wake me up at half-after-dark-thirty to give me so that I would be knocked out and compliant.  And the fact that when you're me, sometimes you live in opposite-land so that things do the backwards to you of what they're supposed to, and so no, I was not knocked out.  I was ramped up like a rabid squirrel on meth.  I remember the dental assistant yelling at me, "You're supposed to be ASLEEP!"  Like, hello, that's MY fault somehow.  Get better drugs, bitch. 

Then there was the time that I had to have a cavity filled, and I was so anxious that the adrenaline in my bloodstream appears to have been chewing its way through the Novacaine like a honey badger.  They upped the saturation level on the gas to compensate, and suddenly not only did my damn mouth hurt, but the tiles in the ceiling turned sideways and then started to swirl around like they had melted and were being stirred by an invisible spoon.  Yeah, that was delightful.

Then there was the suffering through of the braces for two plus years, not the kind that go on the front of your teeth, no, but the BANDS and the tightening of the wires and the headgear that made my mouth hurt so bad I couldn't sleep and the retainer that I eventually just "forgot" to wear so that my teeth moved back a little bit.  And to think that when I was in the third grade I thought having braces would be SO COOL because you know, all the bigger kids were doing it.

Then there was the gentle dentist in the U-District who had a soft touch, but who also wasn't thorough and who gave me a filling when the tooth was actually cracked and needed a crown and a root canal, and so as soon as I was back at work and the numbness wore off I was in such extreme agony I wanted to cut my own head off.

Finally, though, I found this red-headed Lithuanian dentist downtown, and he turned out to be the most kind, gentle, thorough dentist I had ever found.  I saw him exclusively for the next 9 or 10 years.  I went to my appointments every six months.  I flossed.  I was a dental hygenists DREAM patient. 

And then I moved.  To New Jersey.  YOU try finding a dentist in New Jersey.   In 10 years I went to approximately five different dentists and I hated every single one of them. 

And then I moved again.

And I found another dentist who was OK, but not...just not THE dentist.  You know?  And because I hate the dentist anyway, my motivation to go see one has sagged below the waterline.

I brush, with a very expensive toothbrush that is supposed to destroy plaque, clean between teeth and make your gums as tight and strong as the buttocks of a professional soccer player.  I floss, most of the time, anyway.  But I still have the same bad enamel I was born with and I still grit my teeth when brushing my hair or clipping my nails or having a generally stressful day.  I grit my teeth so bad I don't have a single molar that isn't crowned because of me cracking it with my stress.

And now I have a tooth that's sensitive.  It already has a filling in it, and I've been looking and looking to see where there is evidence of a cavity and I cannot find it, so I can only guess that maybe the existing filling is getting old and needs replacing.  And I cannot, with the cold weather, stand having a tooth this sensitive, and I KNOW I need to get my teeth cleaned and x-rayed, and so I am going to the dentist on Friday.  I'm just scared (irrationally) that somehow I'll come home without any teeth.

My nightmare is that the dentist will look at my mouth and solemnly inform me "I'm so sorry, but they all need work.  This is going to take a while," as he holds up the biggest, longest needle I've ever seen in one hand and a pair of pliers in the other.

Ugh.

 

Today's post brought to you by the wonders of cold medicine

I shudder to think of what I'd feel like right now without the bubbly goodness of Alka Seltzer Plus cold medicing roiling through my tired veins.  Even on the sauce, my nose is running, I"m sneezing like someone's sick idea of a cartoon joke and every time I blow my nose, the goop in my left nostril tries to exit via my eyelid.

I managed to make it to work, though.  I'm sure my coworkers appreciate the plague I'm spreading via every doorknob.

Image courtesy of  US National Library of Medicine

Once when I was in high school I had a sinus infection that spread into my eyes.  It wasn't pinkeye, it was a sinus infection, and every time I would blink my right eye, a think film of yellowish-green goo would spread itself over my eyelid, almost completely obscuring my vision.  So attractive.

In a way, I'm grateful for the fuzzy wooziness of my brain right now.  It provides an insulating blanket between me and life. 

I just managed to get a new evaluation appointment set up for my little guy with a psychiatrist in a couple of weeks.   That's unheard of around here, this doctor and most of the others have a 3 month wait for new patients, but we managed to call right after somebody cancelled so we got lucky.  Lucky is a rather dubious term, but lucky it is, to get in before the end of year while our deductibles are all met, lucky to see the doctor who already knows him because he treats my daughter too, lucky to have a teacher who communicates so well on what she sees in the classroom so that there's no disconnect between what we think is going on and what is actually happening during the school day.  He's still struggling.  He's in the right place, no doubt, but still struggling.  And the teacher is kind of surprised that he doesn't have a certain diagnosis, because behaviorally he is so similar to the other kids in her class that have that particular issue.   I had ruled it out before because there were a couple of symptoms that didn't seem to be a match, but looking at it more than a year later with kindergarten behind us and current behaviors in our face, I'm shocked it didn't stand out for me before now. 

I don't want to put it out here yet, because with kids a lot of issues that might seem like one thing can actually be something else.  So I'm going to try to just be patient and open-minded and see what the eval results tell us, then we go forward from there. 

All I really care about, ultimately, is that we know enough to provide him the right kind of  support.  It doesn't matter whether he has diagnosis A, B or C -- it is what it is, all that changes is how we help him cope.

I spent the obligatory hour on the phone with three different people at the insurance company yesterday, only to end up with a referral to a psychiatrist who, as it turns out, doesn't actually do pediatrics.  But that landed us with the resident psych at the center who does, and we already know him, so that should be good, right?    Still, its frustrating.  We're also being assigned to a dedicated team by the insurance company who are supposed to provide me with as many local resources as they can find for me within a week. 

Fortunately, my wine rack is well stocked right now, its a Friday night,  and the kids are at their dad's for a few days.  I have some time for a pity-party before I need to lift my chin up and buckle my seat belt.  Of course, with the cold medicine I'm not really sure I'll need the wine, and with a clogged schnozz I probably wouldn't enjoy it anway. 

 

 

Earplugs. Or something.

Honestly, I don't know why we don't see more stories in the newspaper about parents with oppositional children driving their cars straight into brick walls or off of the sides of overpasses.   And I confess to having a burning curiosity as to how so many oppositional children manage to survive to adulthood.  And even as I write this I have to kind of laugh, because after this long, my coping skills have developed to levels I never imagined were possible.

My son, God bless him, is simultaneously one of the most charming and one of the most maddening people I know.  He has been at his new school for just over a month now.  He knows the name of everyone in the school.  I pick him up and no matter which crossing guard is waving us across the pavement to safety, he knows her name.  He smiles at her, waves at her, enthusiastically shouting, "Hi Mrs. So-and-So!"  And they all smile right back at him.  "Hi Mr. Race Car Man!"  They love him.  And he IS lovable.  So charming.  About two days after his birthday party he came up to me in the kitchen and wrapped his arms around me. 

 "Mommy, when is your birthday?" 

"Just after Christmas.  Why?"

"Because you made such a special birthday for me. I want to make you the bestest car in the world for your birthday."

Melting.  I'm melting.  He is so adorable when he does this.

He remembers people's names, he remembers the smallest details about everything.  His brain is fascinating to me, and I know I've only scratched the surface of what he's capable of understanding and doing.  As a kindergartner, he rarely participated in learning activities in his classroom.  He was mostly curled up in a ball on the floor, not coping.  Yet he passed the end of year testing with perfect scores.  Of course, they only test them to their grade level, so that's not so amazing.  What was amazing was that his aftercare provider, on days when he'd been naughty, made him sit in her office and do math and reading books during recess.  "Just for fun" (or so she says), she gave him the first and second grade math tests.  He scored perfectly on first grade math and about 80% on second grade math.  As a kindergartner with little to no math instruction whatsoever.   I tell people that this is the child who will eventually be building nuclear bombs in the basement if his abilities are not channeled very carefully.   SG wanted to get him a chemistry set for his birthday.  My response was "Please, no, I like my house without the burn marks on the walls and carpet."

 And then there are the days (or the segments of a day) when things just get borked. 

Now that my daughter is doing "real" homework, I've become weary of being her walking thesaurus.  We went to the bookstore yesterday afternoon and she is now the proud owner of a thesaurus, a dictionary, and a children's encyclopedia.  I showed her how to look up words in the index of the thesaurus to find what pages to look on, and she was off and running.  But bookstores - places I used to love, places I used to be able to hang out in for hours - are my nemesis anymore.  If only they would just carry BOOKS.  But no, they've got toys now, almost as many toys as they have books, it seems.  Brilliant marketing tool, people.  Oh, and BITE ME.   While I searched for materials for his sister, the little man played at the train table in the kids section and then with the muppet puppets in the puppet theatre (it sells for just $89.99, folks, and if you buy it they throw in a free puppet.  Neato Frito. )  But when it was time to check out, he was standing there holding a box of train pieces. 

"Mommy, can I have this?"

"Not today buddy.  We're not here to pick out toys."

And let the screaming begin.

Would it hurt to buy my kids a toy sometimes?  Maybe not.  But unfortunately we did that a few years ago and somehow it took hold in their minds that they should get a new toy everytime they go to the store.

"But I was GOOD!"  he shouts at me.

"Yes, you were good.  That doesn't mean I'm buying you a toy."

I finish paying, I ask the kids to get in the car.

"NO!!!! I want this train!!!"

I'm not going to let him stand there disrupting anyone else's day one second longer than I have to.

"OK, here's the deal.  You have to three to put the box down and walk to the car.  If you don't, if I have to take the box from you and carry you to the car, you will lose the chance to watch television after homework.  No Mighty Machines."

"NO!!!!!"  he screams.

I count.  He does not comply. 

I very calmly take the box from him, calmly pick up his taut, struggling body, and carry him to the car, put him in his booster, buckle him in.  He is screaming at the top of his lungs.

I get in the car, put on my seatbelt, turn on the CD player.  "Daydreamer" by Adele.  Though I can barely hear the song through his shrieking, I focus very intently on the words so that I will think about something other than his piercing yells.

He kicks my seat and screams almost all the way home.  I manage not to drive off the overpass, slam into a concrete divider or drive us off a cliff.  I manage not to scream back at him.  But finally I cannot take anymore of the screaming.  I don't want to engage and I don't want to be upset, I am working so very hard at maintaining my composure.

"Buddy, you need to stop the screaming.  If you can't stop screaming you're going to have to stay in your room when we get home."

He yells at me for a few minutes more, but then finally his shrieks turn to quiet sobs.  Eventually he stops.  He picks up the encyclopedia I bought for his sister and starts to read it.

Some might classify this as a colossal failure.  I think it was a screaming success. 

Sorry for the pun.  I couldn't help myself.

My son lost his cool, but I didn't lose mine.  Where in the past he might have screamed for an hour or longer, he screamed for about twenty minutes.  See, in special-needs-land, we measure success incrementally. 

Even so, there are still times when driving off the overpass seems like a reasonable alternative.

 

Resistance

My daughter will be entering the fourth grade tomorrow.  My almost double-digits daughter, who it seems only yesterday was a red-faced, dark-haired, dark eyed covered-in-goo squishy newborn fresh out of my uterus and laying on my chest and staring into my eyes in that way that says "Hey.  I know you from somewhere."

I've loved her in my bones before she was even conceived.  I've always felt deepy connected, even in the height of her challenges as a preschooler and toddler.  She would be raging, I would be sitting with my back to the wall, holding her from behind, head cocked so she couldn't knock my teeth out with the back of her skull, worn out and ragged, and even then I felt connected.  I knew she wouldn't let it go like this if she didn't trust me to keep her safe. 

We struggle frequently right now with oppositional behavior.  Whether its a free-standing issue or an adjunct of the bipolar/ADD issues doesn't really matter.  Its there, and I see it twist her up when I know she wishes it wouldn't, and I still don't get sometimes how I can help her unravel it so that our life could be easier.  So that her life could be easier. 

Every other Sunday when the kids transition to being at my house, the oppositional defiance manifests itself in almost every aspect of the day.  Every request, no matter how I phrase it, is met with a NO hurtled back to me at earsplitting volume.  Every question about meal preference, clothing preference, snack preference seems to be a signal for anger and yelling.  I recognize part of this is the irribilaty inherent with the ADD.  I know exactly how it feels to be walking around feeling so on edge that it feels like an attack just to have someone talk to me. The blowup has nothing to do with the person who is talking to you; it has everything to do with feeling completely unbalanced.

I don't take the behavior personally, but it makes it damn near impossible to get anything done.  Tasks that should take a few minutes - taking medication, selecting a snack, getting a haircut or a bath - take forever.  I run out of time because I spend ten times as much as I ought to just negotiating an outcome.  

It seems like every muscle in her body is tensed, seeking something to push back against. 

We talk about it with the doctor who manages her medications.  We measure progress made and he and I both agree that expecting perfect behavior out of my daughter isn't an appropriate goal.  We are looking to find a balance of medication and therapy that helps her to function and be happy.  And so I'm torn because I sense to some extent this resistant behavior is largely in part just the way she is and I won't - can't - don't want to - medicate it out of her.   But sometimes when I'm tired and frustrated and late to work once again because she won't take the one pill that gets crushed up and put into something sweet, even though she took it that way the last three weeks without a problem, sometimes I have this small desire to do just that.  Make it go away. 

I have a hard time letting go of my frustration, because five minutes later she's just fine, she's getting in the car and playing with her toys and giving me a hug.  But I'm still seething and raw over having to deal with yet another morning where we've had an epic struggle before my second cup of coffee.

My beautiful, funny, maddening, heartbreaking, amazing daughter.  I love her so much.  I hug her  and we talk a little bit about what we can try to do better tomorrow so that we can both have a morning where we get to enjoy each other and not have to struggle.  She says she doesn't resist taking her pills at her Dad's, even though he gives them to her exactly the same way I do.  And so I think back to her toddler years, and I wonder if its that bond between us that gives her the freedom to be more challenging.  She knows I will forgive her, protect her, even when she gives me her worst.  And I know that she will forgive me even though I lost my temper and yelled at her because I couldn't think of any other way to negotiate her cooperation.

I need to find a way to do this better, to help us not fall into this cycle again this year.  Its too hard on both of us.

 

 

On to first grade...or not

I shot an email off week before last to the school counselor to find out when we would meet to discuss progress on his IEP and start making plans for next year. 

One of the things we talked about the last meeting came up in her reply email, and so now push has come to shove and we need to make some decisions. 

Kinder started horribly for my son.  I had worked hard to identify what his day would look like and help him to have reasonable expectations that the school then blew out of the water when they changed him from one teacher and one classroom to another teacher and another classroom, and then screwed up on his bus not just once but twice, and none of that really helped me get off on the right foot with the school, either.  Its not always fun to be the "that parent," but sometimes its useful. 

The year has flown by, and while he's made tremendous progress, there's a long way to go.  Our IEP goals were extremely basic: 

Follow directions two out of three times

Limit disruptions in the classroom

Join activity without continuous teacher prompting

Use kind words toward others

By the marking period mid year, his official progress toward goal was a "P" meaning he was making good progress, the objectives were not yet met but there was a reasonable expectation that they would be.

BUT.  That doesn't mean he's ready to move on to first grade.

Even if he meets the goals for the year, there are still concerns as to whether he has the stamina to do full-day school.  He has more good days than bad days, but his ability to rebound from setbacks is very limited.  In kinder, a bad morning means he only has to hold it together or have an adult observer to stay with him for a short time until he can get on the bus and go to aftercare.  Full day school would be a much different animal.

I'm not sure where we're going to end up next year.  I have no idea what the team is going to recommend and honestly, right now, I'm not sure what it is that I think needs to happen.  My next steps are to understand what the options truly are -- and then look at him objectively and determine where his needs will best be met.  Would he repeat kindergarten?  Enter a special program where he was in the regular classroom part of the day and in resource room the rest of the day?  Do half day of regular school and go to his aftercare group for the rest of the day? 

I want to be able to send him into the next school year with a much better start than we had this year.  I think things wouldn't have been so bad for him if the school year hadn't been so screwed up from the get-go.  I think next year will go better if we, as a team, do a better job of helping him to know what will happen and then make sure things go reasonably within expectations.

Its a lot to think about, and I really need to get this one right.

Survivor

 

 

A few years back, my sister Vicki sent me a draft copy of what was meant to be the beginnings of a book.  She's spent a good number of years exorcising her demons, and she knew that the act of telling her story would be a valuable tool in the healing process.

In all honesty, the first time I read through her account of what happened to her as a child, I threw up.  I cried.  I raged.  I HATED.  Vicki and I have talked so much over the years, usually into the wee hours of the morning and well into several bottles of wine (mine) and whiskey (hers) about what she and my other birth siblings endured, the impact it has had on her life, her relationships, how to deal with it in ways that were useful.  I've expressed to her the survivor's guilt that gnaws at the core of me, the guilt of having escaped what happened to the rest of my siblings.  We've talked about these stories, about how to tell them.  i know that one day she and I are going to sit down together and the entire story will be told.  We'll write the book and we'll get it to a publisher.  For now, its mostly in her head and partially on paper.  Several months ago I reread some of what I had edited for her and decided to at least get the beginnings of it out there.

My sister has survived things the weight of which would crumple most people.  Much of what she has endured is practically unspeakable.  It is the kind of abuse you never want to imagine happens to children, the stuff of nightmare and denial.  It is the kind of abuse that once exposed to the light causes you to never look at another human being in the same way again, because you realize that people who walk around looking like normal men and women very well could be, in the privacy of their own homes, horrible monsters.

The first step to publicising Vicki's story was published today at Violence Unsilenced. 

It is graphic.  It is true.  It is one reason among many that I choose to have no relationship with my birthmother.

Please honor my sister.  Read her story, leave a comment over at VU.  Thank her for being a voice for other survivors, for being courageous enough to let her personal truth be public in hopes that it will encourage other victims of violence to speak up.  To know that they do not suffer alone, that there are people out there who understand, who have been there or are there right now, people who want to help.

If you or anyone you know is a victim of domestic violence or abuse, I encourage you to call your local domestic violence hotline or call the national hotline at 1−800−799−SAFE(7233) or TTY 1−800−787−3224.

 

Puppies, headaches and mania, oh my!

Thanks to S, whose next contract job doesn't start until April(ish) I was able to volunteer to foster puppies for the rescue.  Wait, maybe I'm phrasing that wrong.

Because I'm a forgetful person and a total pushover for babies, I managed to get suckered into fostering puppies for the rescue, aided and abetted by my darling S, who apparently is a sucker of gre at magnitude.

Meet Bella:

and her litter mate Lexie:

As I write this, they are under my chair, chewing on my Uggs.

They are 7 1/2 week-old bundles of cuteness, charm, needle-sharp teeth and an endless reserve of piddle.  The boys have their noses seriously out of joint and the cats are hatching murder plots.  If they don't quit chewing on the power cord to my laptop, though, the cat's won't need to murder them.  I will.

Puppy antics aside, I'm enjoying a few days of relative calm.  I'm pretty sure C was cycling this weekend, the end result of that being a complete inability to cope with anything.  He spent much of Saturday night an Sunday either crying over things that weren't going right or screaming at the top of his lungs because things weren't going right.   He was on sensory overload and just couldn't cope.  Monday I had to get him from school because he was so upset about going to his class Valentine's Day party that he laid on the floor in the hallway sobbing for an hour.

We all survived it, mostly.  Last night after everyone else was sleeping C and I cuddled together on the couch and watched The Tooth Fairy.  He was tired and so was I, but neither of us was ready to give up each others company.  Those are the moments that get me through the trying times. 

A had a terrible headache last night.  Its the second one she's had in as many weeks.  Friday before last I ended up taking her to the ER.  She'd had a headache since the night before, and when we went to see our pediatrician, she also said her neck was hurting.  He was concerned about meningitis and sent us straight to Emergency.  Apparently when they suspect bacterial meningitis in children, they don't mess around.  AT ALL.  We were ushered straight into a room.  The pediatric doctor on rotation examined her, then had blood drawn to check white-cell counts.  It was A's first blood draw and she likes needles about as much as I do, so it ended being quite the rodeo, with four nurses and me holding her down so the nurse could get her samples taken.  Fortunately her white cell count was in normal range, so they sent us home with some Naproxen and instructions to rest.  The Naproxen worked its magic and she was much better within a few hours.  Last night the headache started again and she was unable to sleep, so I gave her another one.  She got sleep, but I tossed and turned.  Of course.

 

Anyone in the market for a puppy?

 

I shouldn't post today

But I'm gonna anyway. 

Never fight when you're mad.

Never drink when you're mad.

Never, EVER blog when you're mad.

Instead?  Wait a few hours until the hot fire of mad dulls down to icy rage, reconsider doing all of the above, sleep on it and mull it over a bit longer until the icy rage melts down to a sad understanding that you've been played, the same way you've been played for years  by someone with control issues, and resolve that the last vestiges of the codependent crap you've continued to foster must - simply must - go.

If the last year or so has taught me nothing else, it has taught me that I can be my own person.  I don't need permission to make decisions for myself.  I don't need someone's approval or agreement to know when I'm doing the right thing.  Yes, I'm going to make mistakes.  I'm going to make decisions I'll look back on someday and wonder which cues I missed, how I failed to see the outcome.  That's my right as a human being, a right we all share.  But I have children.  Smalls who depend on me, and, the ripples I make when that decision hits the water overlap lives other than mine, so I'd better be careful and I'd better be right.  And I'd better not make decisions in anger.

I know, this is cryptic.  I'm sorry.  One of the purposes of this blog is to provide a way for me to understand my own thoughts and feelings. Its serving that purpose right now, as the words flow from my brain to my fingers to the screen.  I compose, I consider, I erase, rewrite, reword, rethink.  I begin to understand.  And after that's all said and done, people toss their comments in the mix, and those often give me yet more perspective. 

Still, I have to be careful what I say here, in this public space.  My words affect others, but most importantly my words have the ability to affect the two most important people in my life.  Being angry with their father isn't a good enough reason to hurt my kids by writing unkind things about him here.  But know that were I not restrained by those self-imposed rules, this post?  Particularly if I'd written it yesterday?  Searing epistle of rage. 

I guess its human nature to think that we are different from everyone else.  We are special.  We often don't recognize when we excuse ourselves from the expectations we carefully thread around others.  We all do it.  I do it.  And maybe we don't like it when people point it out to us.  Who knows? 

Another thing that is natural for people is the need to be heard, to be listened to.  To have our feelings acknowledged.  One of the biggest challenges of my life as a young girl was living with a father who was equally as emotional - maybe even more so - than I am.  And my dad, when he would get upset at something, he'd go silent.  I suspect now that he was burning, icy hot, and couldn't bring himself to talk about what was making him mad or didn't want to talk about it for fear of saying something he'd regret, but quiet he would go.  And when he was mad at me, that quiet was unnerving.  Nothing I did or said could make him talk to me about it until he was ready.  That was his way of handling it - and his right to do so - but the residue of that within me is a sense of utter desperation when I need someone to hear and acknowledge me and they refuse.  Its usually followed by blinding rage at being ignored. 

Some people know that about me.  And I think when they don't like something I've done, they use it against me.  Or maybe I'm giving too much credit - maybe not acknowledging me is simply the way they handle conflict and its a simple accident of fate that I somehow managed to marry the one person who could evoke that helpless rage of my childhood.  However, whatever.  Somehow in my recovery the one lesson I still need to improve on is the ability to sense when I'm too emotional about something, when I need to let go of having expectations of others, when I need to release myself from the expectations others put on me,  when I need to remember that nobody is responsible for how I feel and what I do but ME. 

I'm deep in that right now, and its uncomfortable as hell. 

I have some decisions to make.  I can't make them lightly.  They affect my kids too, and therefore every move I make must center around how to make a bad situation as good as it can possibly be FOR THEM. 

And while I strive to protect them as much as I can, I still have to honor myself.  I have to stand up for myself.

And so I type and read and erase and reword and backspace, go back and reread, and I ponder.

Its hard to understand how we go from the harmony and ease of the holidays to the current state, but here we are.  One thing changed, I met someone, and I suspect that's the biggest factor affecting the events of the last few days.  Never underestimate how hard it is for your ex to see you move on, even if they already started dating months ago. 

Annnd....breathing

Qualifies.

Mood disorder.  Conduct disorder. Sensory Processing disorder in auditory, visual and touch processing areas.  ADHD.  ODD.  Can't focus, refuses to do activities. Qualifies. For. Services. 

Deep breath.

Now we move foward.