Not the Weekend We Had Planned

Jerry wasn't feeling as well as I'd hoped this weekend. Although he did well with the kids on Friday evening, he wasn't feeling particularly happy or positive, and so his engagement with them required a lot of effort on his part. He also mentioned feeling upset about Dylan's expression of anxiety in reference to his visit, and anxious about the fact that I've told Dylan that his Dad is okay now, and that his medicine is working. I think he felt pressure to perform, as a result - or fear of living up to the standard of "well" at this point.

On Saturday morning, Jerry seemed very reactive - visibly frustrated and angry when Dylan was having a hard time over something small, criticizing my parenting and approach to dealing with the situation, and having difficulty being empathic to the fact that Dylan is having such a hard time, and is not able to express it outside of overreacting to small situations. He expressed some anxiety about our planned overnight to my parents' house. I encouraged him to go back to sleep until swimming, and woke him up after noon. He was still feeling agitated, but came along to swimming, and planned to still join us going up to Gran's afterwards. However, halfway through swimming, after coming back from going to get a bite to eat, he declared that he did not feel up to the trip, and did not feel that he would be able to handle being around the kids this weekend. He was scared that he would not be able to "be okay" in front of the kids, even with the plan to have him out doing random things (like mowing the fields, etc. which is actually pretty damn relaxing), and only popping in when he felt up to spending 10-15 minutes of "quality time" with them. I panicked, but eventually relented. All I could think is "I don't know how to make this okay for Dylan. I don't know how to hold Dylan together if you can't hold it together!!!"

Dylan took the news that his Dad had been "called into work for an emergency" and couldn't join us after all. His Dad told him, and put a lot of energy into faking "okeyness" for the last few minutes he was with them. This seemed to pay off, and the kids LOVED their sleepover at their Gran's. They spent a lot of time with their Grandad, who despite his Alzheimer's has been doing really well with them lately (thank you, antidepressants). Dylan, especially, seems glued to his Grandad the last few visits - I guess he's looking for a stable man in his life? Hopefully Grandad can keep this up - I know Christmas season is really hard for him, and he often goes downhill for a few months afterwards.

One odd thing happened during our visit, however. While on the tractor, Dylan suddenly started saying he was scared. This is very out of character for him, and I tried to take some time to reassure him. A few minutes later he said "Mom, I wish I had your life. There are too many scary things in mine" or something to that effect. When I tried to get him to elaborate, he would not. He said both that "it's hard to explain" and that "there are no little things, only big ones" in response to my suggestion that he experiment talking to me about what is scaring him by starting with something little. That was very disconcerting, and I always carry anxiety around the idea of something bad happening to my kids, and me not knowing about about! I hope there is nothing bad that has happened, that he's just not telling me, but in the meantime I can only guess that he's got a lot of fear around his Dad's well being. I wish he could tell me more - I don't know if he even knows, though.

Now Dylan is home for the second day in a row, as he has an ear infection. Yesterday he also came down with a fever. I'm worried about sending him back to school, as his hearing has been quite affected by the fluid in his ears. If it's hard for him to keep settled in his french classroom when he can hear, I can only imagine how hard it would be if he can't hear well! In the meantime, this may help explain his sudden difficulties last week - he always acted nuts when his ears got like this when he was younger, so maybe it's largely from his feeling discombobulated from his ear infection...I'm hopeful! Hopefully his teacher will take this into account when writing up his report card.

Okay, the kids are descending on the ground floor. Guess nap time is over...

One Up, One Down

So Jerry is continuing to do better. His thinking seems to be back to normal, and his mood is improving. The weekend was fairly good - he was feeling a bit down, but was able to recognize it as a "physiological down" as opposed to a "because of _________ I feel bad." He also noted that he realized it had been a long time since he'd been able to identify that he moods were coming from a place within, as opposed to being caused by someone in the moment. That was very nice to see.

On the other hand, Dylan is suddenly coming home with "medium" and "sad" faces marked in his agenda. He doesn't seem to be able to tell me why, though, which is unusual, and I'm worried that his teacher is marking him more strictly or that he's having a hard time with being mean to other kids again (which, in my opinion, is the only good reason to give him a "sad face" for the day, since to me, being kind is more important than sitting still, etc.). So, now I have to meet with his teacher again after school to discuss the situation...again. I am so tired. Tired of worrying, tired of seeing my loved ones struggle, tired of feeling guilty for not being able to give my kids the "intact" family I know they so desperately want. I'm tired of trying to figure out if Dylan is testing his "meanness," or if he has so many angry feelings he doesn't know what to do with them or if he just doesn't realize it's okay to feel mean and that everyone does at time, but that doesn't mean that he's a mean person or that he needs to act them out.

Yes, I am tired. Tired, drained, sad, and feeling somewhat defeated at the moment. I just want everything to be the way it was last year - with my kid going off to school and doing well most of the time, and well within "normal," the kids being used to and happy with (for the most part, anyway), the schedule we had for "family" and "daddy time," not having to worry about Jerry, etc. I even told Dylan "hey, I know you can go to school, be kind to your friends, and keep your body to yourself throughout most of carpet time, because you did all of that last year. So, if you can go back to doing those things, sure I'll get you a Wii with the Wipeout game, okay?" He didn't like that he'd still have to wait until March Break to show me that he was going to do it consistently, but I pointed out that is still a lot less time to wait than 2 years (until he's 8 years old). Bribery...parenting faux pas? I don't really give a &%$# right now.

So, for now all I can do is go in and talk to his teacher and try to convince her to let him chose to sit at his desk if that is the only way he feels like he can keep his body to himself. We'll see - she said no that last time, but maybe now that her friend, who filled in for her for a week, let him do it and found that he made it work, she'll be more receptive to the idea.

On(wards) and Upwards

So Jerry called on Thursday to tell me his doctor had given him the go-ahead to stop his Valproex that day, and to start with a small dose of Lithium on Friday, with the dose being increased over the weekend, until he is back on a full dose on Monday. We kept to our plan to have him just come on Friday evening for a few hours. Much to my surprise, since I was expecting and prepared for some kind of withdrawal symptoms, I could see a difference in him immediately. His eyes were brighter and more alert, his face was not pulled tight with frustration and irritation - in fact, there was almost a relaxed, content look about it. He was much more engaged with the kids, despite still having his nasty cough (which I suspect is bronchitis), and did not seem as exhausted and run down. It's funny, because it was hard to put words to what I noticed from the moment he came in, but there was a definite, palpable difference - reminds me of what some people say about people having an energy field, and how it can be sensed if you're attuned to it. I don't notice it often with other people, but I seem quite attuned to Jerry's, perhaps out of years of learning to predict what kind of space he was in, so that I could be prepared? Who knows.

The one thing I was frustrated to hear was that his doctor was reluctant and concerned about putting him back on Lithium. Drives me a bit mad (excuse the pun) that he doesn't get what bad shape Jerry has been in, and how crappy things have been since the medication switch. I suppose I shouldn't jump to conclusions, since I have no idea what Jerry has told him about anything, but it makes me feel like I really want to meet with him, so that I can tell him what I experienced/saw since the change, ask him some questions (like what's up with all this nervousness about toxicity when Lithium is still considered the first-line choice for bipolar meds and has a reputation for being safe for many years, etc.), and address my concern about his take on my concerns (as reported by Jerry); according to Jerry, his doctor has been assuming that my concerns have been more a product of an "over-sensitive spouse" and not so much about the degree to which a spouse has become attuned to their bipolar spouse's moods. If someone had taken my observations regarding his shorter fuse and higher level of agitation seriously in the first place, perhaps even requesting to speak to me in person to get a better sense of the situation, this whole situation (including the damage done to the kids from the arguing, lost tempers, and ultimately, being scratched in the face by someone who really did lose control of their behaviour).

Oh well, for now, things are looking much more hopeful. In fact, yesterday was so good that Jerry and I decided it would be appropriate for him to come by this afternoon, and possibly tomorrow at some point. Hopefully it will be as nice as yesterday, and the kids will "get their fill" of their dad this weekend, which I don't think they have since school started.

More From the Past

Alright, so that's where I was as of April 8, 2009. There's a lot to catch up on, but not a lot of time to catch it up. But before I get to that, I will share the rest of my old blogs. So, let's see - okay, chronologically, maybe? So, here's what I had to say in the one and only post on my "Shocked n Confused" blog. Given the intro (assuming anyone reading this has read that), you won't likely be shocked or confused that I didn't blog again for another year and a half.

November, 2007 (post-first separation/pre-pregnancy with second child)

One month ago my husband announced he was going to move out. To say that I was shocked and confused would actually be a mild understatement. Not that it was completely out of the blue in the sense that things had seemed perfectly great throughout our marriage, but it was certainly out of the blue in the sense that we had just started therapy with a bang (an intensive weekend workshop), and that the three weeks following this had been three of the best weeks of our relationship. As much as he may deny it, he was happy...and that left me wondering whether that was the problem at this point - maybe he didn't want things to go well because he wanted an out, or maybe things had been going so well that he was feeling way too vulnerable (I don't think he's ever been in a safe, caring, respectful relationship with someone very close to him in his entire life). All I know is that I saw a look of peace and contentment on my husband's face (and in his entire body, for that matter - the way he held himself, the way he walked, etc.) for a few weeks, and then suddenly it was gone, replaced by this cold, distant, angry glare that scared me.

I've started this blog as a way of sorting through the last month, and the last few years of my life. Hopefully life as a single mom of a very active two-year-old will still somehow permit me the time I need to complete this processing. And whether my husband ever decides to be true to his vows or not, I certainly hope that I will gain enough insight to not make the same mistakes I've made this time around, again.

Okay, so then there was the first post of the second blog, which I already posted. After that the posts are more random in terms of what topic I blogged about on any given day.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

"Random Thoughts From a McDonald's Playland"

It's amazing to me that with the first child it seems like such a big job to have an infant. So far, with baby number two, having an infant is like having time off from a full time job - the three year old. As I sat there at a McDonald's playground on a rainy afternoon I was struck by how easy a job it is to care for an infant...the only thing she asked for the entire hour or so we were there was a nurse. First time around it was somewhat awkward and uncomfortable, but now I barely notice the little cameras hanging on the ceiling keeping an eye on the chaos and the breasts that whip in and out of shirts over the course of the time we're there.

As I sit there I also remembered the terror I experienced when I first unleashed my teeny tiny 21/2 year old in one of these things. All of the big kids were tearing in and out of tunnels, knocking over the occasional, unsuspecting toddlers, while new moms like myself wondered why their parents weren't doing more to control them. Now my 31/2 year old is running around knocking over the occasional kid, and honestly, if I'm breastfeeding I'm not about to do more than yell 'hey, slow down, please', which has little if any impact on him.

As I watch my oldest trying to negotiate the world of unsupervised socialization I have to admit I still worry. The two primary questions are always: 1) will he play nice, and 2) will the other kids play nice. It used to be that my son was the one that other kids followed around, but now he has actually experienced some rejection, and it pains me when it happens, even when he barely notices (if at all). Unfortunately, once he smells a whiff of rejection he is prone to being less cooperative, increasing the odds of “more of the same.” His other pitfall - he often chooses slightly older girls to play with, and they aren't always interested in the busy kind of active play he likes.

And here's a question - is it wrong to teach him how to manipulate situations? For instance, I found myself telling him to try ignoring one girl at the playground when she's not wanting to play with him, because I noticed that for so long as he was pursuing her, she wanted nothing to do with him. As soon as he found another playmate, however, she wanted to hang out again. So I pointed that out to him, and suggested that when this particular girl is acting like she doesn't want to play with him, he might want to try finding something else to do, because then she's likely to come seek him out. Is that a bad idea? I honestly don't know - all I know is that I hated to see him having his feelings hurt by this girl, especially since they hung out together a lot last year.

Of course this is a 'single parent pitfall' for me, too. I hate seeing him rejected even more now that he has had such a major loss in his life. Since his Dad is unreliable at best, I fear that he will experience his Dad's instability as rejection, and this makes me feel very protective of his feelings when it comes to other people. Of course I also know that if I'm hypersensitive to rejection he's going to be all the more likely to end up that way himself, so I know I need to watch this, but I don't know exactly how to be helpful to him. So how do I help him to navigate this new social terrain? This question is even trickier since this is an area of awkwardness for me. Maybe I'm the last person who should be giving him advice, or maybe I listen to the suggestions I give him? Hm.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

“Life and Death”

It's funny, but I've always been on the self-destructive/impulsive end of the spectrum, having a wild adolescence, living with somewhat of a reckless abandon. As soon as I got pregnant with my first, however, I suddenly turned pretty conservative - even my husband was restricted under my new 'better safe than sorry' policy. Now that I'm a single Mom, though, I have a huge fear of my own death. I've always been death-phobic for those I love, but never worried about my own mortality. Now that the kids have only me as a stable (mostly, anyway) parent, I'm petrified that I might get sick and die. I can't even say the 'c' word, it scares me so much, although statistically it's my heart I should worry about.

When I had one of my ultrasounds with my daughter, about 9 months or so ago, the technician asked me a weird question that bothered me then, and is still haunting me...'did you have an ultrasound before you got pregnant? [yes] And everything was fine? [yes]'. And I keep wondering why he asked me that...did something look wrong with me? or was there something that made him wonder if everything had looked good to go for me to carry a baby to term? or what??? And now it's really, really bothering me - as in 'move my doctor's appointment up a few week because I'm too scared to wait any longer' bothering me; as in 'crying my eyes out and begging the universe to, if nothing else, just let me live a long, healthy life so I can be here to raise my kids and see them grow up and have their own families'...I'll go without another husband, I'll go without money, I'll willingly go through Alzheimer's like my grandmother if I have to, just PLEASE LET ME LIVE TO SEE MY KIDS INTO ADULTHOOD (preferably well into it, I might add).

Unfortunately, being a bit of a hypochondriac runs in my blood, so I am terrified that it's not just fear and paranoia, but some kind of intuition that is making me feel this way. Is that nuts? Is this one of my "complicated" dimensions? I hate this feeling, this fear. I wish there was some kind of full body scan that we could do annually to make sure we don't have anything growing anywhere that shouldn't be, you know?

In the meantime, I'm eating more fruits and veggies, less saturated and trans fats, and more organic, and hoping for the best, because the thought of my son, especially, having to lose me when I'm the only one who has been there consistently, day in, day out, makes me want to gouge my eyes out, I really can't take it. Thank goodness I have therapy tomorrow! Maybe she can help me put this in perspective. And I am also grateful that at least that one disease, the 'c' word, doesn't run in my family so far...just heart disease, which I'd like to think I can do something about! God willing this will be one more phobia that I will be able to look back on as a waste of energy 30 years from now, and beyond.

Friday, August 28, 2009

“Grateful”

This is a quick one. I have always said that, if I had a choice, I would always take having been in my shoes - losing my husband the way I did, under the circumstances I did, over losing a child or having to endure the loss of a great spouse, with a fantastically happy marriage. I just saw an Oprah where there was a single dad whose wife died after giving birth, and as he described his experience, two things crossed my mind - 1. yes, I really would rather two healthy children and the loss (however difficult and painful it was) of a spouse after a rocky marriage, and 2. the experience of having a child really is profound, and right or wrong, it really can be the kick in the ass you need to get your shit together, grow up, and LIVE...and live WELL.

To every newly singled parent out there, I am sending you good vibes, positivethoughts and love. I hope each parent who finds themselves in this situation will connect to the power of the universe and get their needs met, so that they can give their children a great family and a great life.

Saturday, August 29, 2009

“Let Down” (sorry, this was not one of my finer moments - I was clearly stuck in a moment and not seeing the big picture, but still, here it is...)

Okay, so I'm going through my son's baby book, and among other things I realize how bad it would look to Emily if I had managed to find her the same one. For my son, lots of people showed up within the first few days to see him - all of his family, on both sides, and several friends, in fact. For Emily...no one outside of those who were there for the birth (my Mom, my sister and her whole family were here for her birth, which I am very grateful for!). Yup, that's right – since her birth, no one has come by. It took days before we saw even a single person at our house. No one called. Several people said congratulations on Facebook, but in my opinion that doesn’t quite cut it, especially given that I was doing it alone. Having no close family members or friends show up or call when a baby is born is disheartening enough, but given how terrified and alone I felt trying to figure out life with two kids without my husband around, while simultaneously trying to recover from the birth, etc., was too much; having so little support made it just that much harder.

Case in point, most terrifying memory from the “early days” was when I got strep when Emily was just a few weeks old. I came down with a high fever (almost 103 F at one point), and quickly became so out of it, that I couldn’t stay awake long enough to move. I feel asleep a few times, and kept meaning to get up to get Dylan some dinner and nurse Emily, but then I’d fall asleep again. I remember “coming to” at one point, with Emily lying on my chest crying because she needed a nurse. I had no idea how long she had been crying, and my son had curled up at the other end of the couch and was watching Treehouse on TV – thank goodness the shear panic was enough to jolt my feverish mind to a semi-conscious state, just long enough for me to grab Dylan whatever was handy in the fridge (luckily I didn’t have just junk on hand), and get Emily nursing. I passed out again, but luckily I wasn’t as needed anymore.

I never really got over how terrifying it was to me that I could get so sick, so fast, that I was completely unable to summon help. Nor did anyone check on me daily, so no one knew anything was wrong. To this day I have a bit of a phobia of the idea that something could happen to me when I am home alone with the kids, and no one would know, for goodness knows how long, and the kids would be alone, with no one to help them. I asked my Mom if she could check in on me daily, after that, but it lasted all of a couple of days. I’m so busy that most days I forget until it’s too late to call, so again, nothing would seem amiss if she didn’t hear from me for a few days.

Back to the issue at hand – my sense of being abandoned around the birth of my daughter...I don't seem to be doing a good job letting go of this, and indeed it's my aunt & uncle and one of my husband's cousins who I'm most upset about, because I love them and I really thought they would be there for me. Don't get me wrong - people were upset when I got pregnant just a few months after my husband came home the first time, but if things had turned out differently I doubt they would have been as...absent, I guess?...as they were. So, ironically it seems to me, I was essentially punished for the fact that my husband left. And for the record, the family members who saw my husband for the first two trimesters of the pregnancy have admitted that he had been doing so well that they would not have been angry had I gotten pregnant a few months later, and yet now that I know that the problem that sent him packing was Bipolar Disorder, I feel pretty confident in saying that had we waited, the end result would have been the same - he still would have left, only it would have been at the beginning of an “acceptable” pregnancy, instead of 2/3 the way through a “disapproved of” pregnancy.

Am I rambling? I don't know. All I know is that every time I think about those first few months, and the sense that her arrival onto this planet was not celebrated, I cry...hard. I don't seem to be getting over it at all, which is all the more strange because I've actually really come to terms with the fact that my husband up and left when I was 6 months pregnant, which objectively seems to me like it should be harder to get over. But no - it's things like the fact that some of my most loved family members and friends never came to see her, and never even met her until she was months old that niggles at me. When she sees her brother's baby book, she will see where it says the names of all of the people who came to see him. So, if she asks, what do I say about who came to see her? Seems to me it was bad enough to have been in the situation where I may one day have to explain to her why we separated (if you can call it that) while I was pregnant with her, but for her to know that the only people who came to see her were her grandparents and her cousins’ family???

It's rare moments like this where I wish someone actually read this blog, because maybe someone could offer me some useful advice. I know that holding on to these feelings is not helpful, and I have some tools for generic letting go, but it's not working here. And I'd like to be able to think about her birth without these feelings obscuring the most important thing - that Dylan and I got to welcome Emily into our little family, making it a much more happy, complete, and exciting family for us; that Emily was healthy; that the birth itself was quite beautiful.

An Intro From the Past

Okay, so the quickest way to get the background established seems to be to post my past blogs. There was my "Shocked n Confused" blog, which had all of one post (for reasons that should become clear rather quickly), then the "Am I Complicated, Really?" blog, which had 7 entries - better, but again, the time is not always there. So, why try again? Well, as the *%&# seems to be hitting the fan again, I need to keep track of what's going on anyway, so I figured I may as well do it here. At the least, it will be a window, however brief or not, into life being married to, well actually separated from, someone with Bipolar Disorder. What else it might be beyond that, I don't know - I do know that there are many things I have many thoughts on, and that I do have a desire to share those thoughts, the only question is - will I have/find/make the time to do it, beyond what stems from necessity? Again, I don't know.

So, here is my intro from my second blog, which will give some background...

April 8, 2009

...so I am 33 years old, mother to two kids, my son, age 3, and my daughter, 6 months (tomorrow, actually). I am separated from my, um, never-boring ex-husband, who is probably 85% of the reason I feel like blogging in the first place. Despite belonging to a group for separated parents, I still feel starved for the comradery of other single parents. There's just something about single parenthood which, so far, is lonely, what with all of the happy "intact" families (I really hate that term, which let's face it, is full of connotations that are not in my favor) in my neighborhood.

Of course, if I'm honest, I don't really fall nicely into the 'typical' arena of separationhood, either, largely because of the way it unfolded and continues to unfold. Let me give the reader's digest version of the event(s). Okay, I guess I have to start with the pre-separation separation, in which my husband, following the best three weeks of our entire marriage, abruptly decided to throw our considerable financial investment in intensive couples therapy, which had been working wonders, out the window and flee. Basically he picked a fight, refused to let it be resolved (even rejecting my offer to give him exactly what he claimed he wanted), and then left. Within two weeks he was residing a half hour away from my son and I, claiming that all was well with the world, except that he had me in his life. I was, he said, pretty much evil and quite certainly wrecking his life.

Shortly thereafter he crashed and came to his senses. He checked into a hospital, having become somewhat hopeless about his situation and what he had done, and started asking about coming home. He was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder while he was in the hospital, which put a lot of the difficulties he'd been having in at least some perspective (e.g. his outburst and his difficulties dealing with his son were related to the severe physical and psychological abuse he'd experienced as a child). Still, I was somewhat ambivalent, until I got a severe case of the flu that left me unable to even get up the stairs. Well, he took this opportunity to swoop in and 'save the day' (aka check out of the hospital 'against medical advice' and take up residence with us once again, without actually checking with me first).

As uncomfortable as I was with the situation, I did feel a loyal sense of obligation to my vows. Since he was diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress stemming from physical abuse during childhood, I felt that this would fall into the category of 'in sickness' and 'for worse', and I decided that I would try to work things out. My husband, previously very labile and prone to outbursts, seemed to really get it together over the next several months. Although he still went into the occasional tantrum, he was much more calm and helpful that before. The biggest issue - he still could not tolerate parenthood for more than a few hours at a time, at least solo. Okay, there were other pretty significant issues, like the tantrums and various addictions, but he was in therapy, and was being much more civil. Besides, my son was so relieved his Dad wasn't “working a lot” anymore...Yes, that's right - for three weeks I lied to my son and said 'Daddy is just working' or 'Daddy is working so much that he has to sleep near work right now;' I just couldn't figure out how to tell him about separation - he was barely two, after all - how on earth could I explain it to him in a way that made sense. And besides that - my son offered the excuse in the first place, so at first I was just choosing not to contradict his assumptions...that's reasonable, isn't it?

Long story short, things went much better and we decided to try for another baby (if you're thinking 'what was she thinking?' rest assured I had thought the same thing when I heard that my friend's friend was separated before their second child was born - I feel the sting to this day, because honestly, there was some definite judgement going on). It was a calculated risk on my part, but honestly after trying unsuccessfully for several months a while back I didn't really think we'd get pregnant for a while, anyway. Of course, this time we nailed it on the first try. Regardless, all seemed well - my husband seemed happier and more grounded than me or my family had ever seen him...until June. Then, suddenly, he was 'off'. I knew the situation was going to end badly, and there was no getting through to him. To this day I don't know what happened, but he wasn't his normal self: he was misinterpreting everything, he was having mood swings all over the place - even my son was acting up, because his Dad was so unpredictable. And then it happened...I came home from the park with my son and saw that his stuff was gone. My son simultaneously came down with a fever and had been shivering for the last hour, and a quick phone call to Telehealth sent us directly to the ER. My son cried for his Dad, but his Dad, despite numerous phone messages and texts, never came. In fact, once he found out where we were he took the opportunity to pack up more stuff while we were there...who does that? Honestly, I felt that the world had moved to a new galaxy where nothing made sense.

So, that was that - I was six months pregnant and a single mom to a 3 year old, literally overnight. I still can't quite believe that this is actually MY life...not some crazy lady down the street. Don't get me wrong, I was never exactly a poster child for how to live a typical life, but this? This was a little dramatic even for me, especially given that I'd pretty much become a nice, normal mommy-type when my son was born. The moment I became a Mom, I had let go of my need for drama. It seemed that my husband had not.

Sadly, even at the time I had a strange sense that this situation was going to be worst for my husband, second worst for our son, and probably best for me. Even at his “best” my husband spent so much time escaping his life and responsibilities that, honestly, I felt very much alone a good deal of the time. Now that my husband was gone (again), the worst thing of all was the emotional hell my son had to experience. It was unlike any I'd witnessed before. He would lie in my arms screaming and crying for his Dad until he would finally fall asleep exhausted, sweaty and sad. And all I could do was hold him and rock him and tell him I was sorry he hurt and that I loved him. He slept with me for the next two and a half months. There were weeks when he'd wake up in the middle of naps or at night, screaming and crying hysterically. After a while, as long as he felt my body when he reached out his arm he would drift back into slumber with maybe a whimper about his Dad. Eventually, a couple of weeks before the baby was due, I moved him back to his room with little commotion. I think he had had just enough time to adjust before the baby came.  In fact, interestingly, while he seemed happier by that time, he almost seemed “back to normal” once she actually arrived. So, we became a family of three, and we found our new normal pretty nicely overall.

My husband is still pretty much AWOL, dealing with addictions, suicidality and the like. That's the biggest stress in my life - never knowing what will happen next with him, and having to buffer my son from his ups and downs. He doesn't see his Dad often, because he is so unwell, but he knows that this is why - I've told him that his Dad isn't well, that it's not his Dad's fault, and so forth. For the most part, though, he doesn't really ask questions anyway. When he's disappointed, I help him through it as best I can, and overall he actually seems like a pretty happy kid at this point. His sister is awesome, too - she pretty much sleeps most of the time (which, let's face it, is pretty convenient, given the situation we're in), and she's a lot of fun when she's awake. She and her brother LOVE each other, and their joy is certainly my joy.