a formal feeling comes

More crazy 8s games this morning. I mooched around some more feeling weird and depressed.

I wish my mom lived here. It's just like the last couple of years she stopped being randomly mean -- no more tense sarcastic judgements & ridicule on me, so I don't have to be so defensive around her. Instead it was just like we were two reasonable people hanging out. Wow... Possibly being focused around something (i.e. helping Moomin get better).

The lingering depression is probably exhaustion still, and some level of being freaked out about the horrible torture of the hospital and seeing Moomin be so fragile & in danger. Of course those are the moments when you realize how fragile everything is and how scary it is to care about people. And the level of responsibility was scary... sustained. So, I'm just drained. Also weirdly lonely but also (uncharacteristically) misanthropic.

It would be really really nice to throw myself into work right now, to get out of this feeling, but it's still not possible. I am still uncomfortable focusing on myself if Moomin is not getting direct attention... he was so miserable... and he needs it.

Tomorrow I'll send him to camp at least for the morning. But again, I recognize what I'm feeling as mild depression b/c things that usually make me happy and excited aren't working. (Except raccoons. They still work.) Rook is even more in that state. Maybe over this week things will come back to normal.

I need a break and some fun but it's not going to happen. So, work will happen instead.

Moomin is so much better - no more pain meds, and he ate cereal with milk... well, enough for a bird... and half a bagel with cream cheese, and half an odwalla mango smoothie which I figure is nutricious. And a few m&ms and some juice. it's the most he's eaten in DAYS... he is scarily thin. He says no to popsicles and ice cream and chocolate. Bread and butter is a hit but it takes him about an hour to slowly mangle one slice of bread. Rice, pasta, all plain... in tiny portions, frequently. What I'm saying is, it's progress but it's a lot of work. I hate pressing people to eat. My theory now is that the more active he is, the more he'll want to eat.

I never want to hold anyone steady on a toilet again, ever in life... or hold them while they vomit... or make them eat... or wipe another person's butt... ever. My whole body aches from all the squatting and carrying... still. I keep bustling around the house and garden figuring it will work out the stiffness. I did a lot of weeding today while Moomin was in the hammock. Maybe some more bustling....shelving my books... fuck... it's the feeling like I just want to get in my car and drive for a long time, you know?

It was like infancy was - all the work - and exhaustion - but scarier obviously - and you can kind of mentally ignore an infant while you take care of it physically and hold it and stuff... but you can't ignore a big kid because it hurts their feelings and makes them hate you... just like it would with any other person. I want to make it up to him that he had to suffer so heinously. And that I had to be the one to do the hurting and medicine-giving and pushing him to do painful things. It's so good to hear him laughing... and him doing all the different voices as we read Fantastic Four and the Ant Men and Doctor Doom, and stuff!

I should quit whining, clean the house, play some more card games, and look forward properly to Blogher & Woolfcamp and the giant social whirl that next week will be.

Comments

[Iris]

But also you had the most terrible shock .. perhaps you are going through PTSD. At least it hasn't set off weird stomach problems. (Of course they will start now I have suggested it .. sorry).

[e]

i just saw this. what iris said! give yourself a break! i can't imagine what it must be like, but i'd be bonkers, i know. i could never be a mom (and past all danger to the species now:)

a family story was, when i got my appendix out at 14 our next door neighbor, like an aunt, came over at the crisis point, when my mom was on the phone getting the doctor (who still made housecalls then!) rena was in with me and i told her to go out and help mom, who was going nuts. everybody thought that was pretty funny, but her situation seemed to me, even then, worse than mine was! didn't know what it was yet, but i was just in pain; she was scared witless!