The end of the day
This morning I started methodically cleaning up the things around my house that were making me depressed. It was a good start. I planned to hand Patches off to my neighbor to go to the farm/park. Then I would have 2 hours with no kids. I planned to use those hours to re-center myself. I was going to clean some things up, maybe do some writing. But then Patches clung to my leg and didn’t want to go without me. I could have forced him to go, but that would have handed a screaming tantrum to my neighbor who was planning to shepherd 4 young kids through a farm. I could have kept him home, but that would have disappointed him and my neighbor’s son. The only option that allowed for happiness was for me to change my plans and go along. So I did. It was good. I enjoyed being at the park. I enjoyed watching Patches carefully parcel out his little bag of corn to make sure that all the animals got a taste. I enjoyed visiting with my neighbor.
Then I came home. All the stresses and messes were laying in wait for me here. They are better than they were. Howard is home now. I can see that I’m digging out from under. There is progress. But all afternoon I had to hold onto patience with my fingernails lest it get away from me. It escaped several times. Each time it did I would recapture it and resolve to hold on tighter. It is not pleasant to ride the edge that way, knowing how close I am to shouting at my children. Knowing as I shout that I am over reacting. Also knowing that even on a good day I have trouble dealing with two children crying and a third yelling simultaneously. All day I’ve had this sense of too many things happening at once. The out of control feeling drives me crazy and I feel frantic to do anything I can to minimize the chaos as quickly as possible. So I shout and I make arbitrary decisions because I don’t have time or brainspace to make considered or considerate ones.
Now I am at the end of the day. The kids are in bed. Finally I have time to review, to figure out how far out of line I was. The crises I managed would have been challenging even on a good day. But on a good day I probably would have been ahead of the curve and there would not have been so many crises.