Still Here

Every night I go to sleep believing that Tomorrow Morning I will wake up feeling like myself again, ready to get back on track. So far, I ain't seeing what I been believing.

After ten hours or more of sleep, I barely manage to drag myself out of bed. First priority is breakfast: a shot of iron syrup with an orange juice chaser. I have enough energy to do an abridged yoga routine and wash up. But after breakfast I have to have a rest because you know, eating oatmeal is so effing exhausting.

Then I get online and go through my work e-mails which takes up to an hour. That'll be all the work I do for the day. That and calculating how many paid days off I have left. (Not many. Fortunately I've always been the type to save for a rainy day. Looks like that rainy day may finally be here.)

Preparing and eating lunch is ever more tiring than breakfast. Well, of course it is - it's a bigger meal. All those buttons to push on the microwave. So much fork lifting and chewing. Yes, I am eating healthy foods, trust me. But not so magically healthy that they can give energy. After lunch is serious siesta time.

Around 4pm in the afternoon I finally start to feel refreshed, like maybe I could accomplish something other than just eating and breathing. I go for a short walk outside, just to clear my head. I feel more like myself than I have all day. This is when I start believing that I am on the mend, that this "burst of energy" is a sign, and that Tomorrow I'll be able to gather all my resources and start living normally again. You already know how that ends.

That's been my schedule for the past two weeks. At least I'm getting a lot of reading done.

On Tuesday, for a change of pace, I went and lay around on my mom's couch. At first I wasn't so sure that going there had been a good idea. Ken gave me a lift, but the timing interrupted my afternoon siesta. Consequently, I was a cranky baby. My mom's couch is not nearly as comfortable as mine, and for some reason I was having flashbacks to every unhappy memory that had ever been created in that house. (No shortage of those, let me tell you.)

Later on my step-dad showed up to join us for dinner, and the visit took a turn for the better. With the three of us around the table in our traditional seats, it felt like the Bad Old Days again, except that things were very good. We were a happier family together on Tuesday than we ever were when the three of us all lived there together. It was pretty sweet.

I realized that I have been holding back on feeling happy about my parents' reunion because I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop. I know for a fact that this honeymoon period has to end and that inevitably my mother will feel the need to resume complaining about my step-dad. Part of my self-comforting strategy when it came to their almost-divorce was remembering that at least, when it was all over, my mom would no longer be spending any time with my step-dad and at least that would mean that she wouldn't be able to complain about him much anymore. Now there's no longer an end in sight.

I've decided that I'm going to have to set a boundary with her. No more complaining to me about her marriage. I lived through the worst of it as a kid. I continued to hear complaints throughout my adulthood. And of course things only intensified during the 2.5 years of their separation. Now I'm done. I'm going to claim the right that I should have had as a child: to be protected by my parents from having to worry about their relationship. I'm going to tell her, with love, that if she feels the urge to complain about my step-dad, she should do so to her friends, her sisters, or a therapist. But I'm done being stuck in the middle of their conflicts. Despite being 37 years old, I'm still the child in this dynamic, and being stuck in the middle of their conflicts is too painful for me.

If she had protected me throughout my childhood, and these conversations were a sign of a more mature, intimate relationship, that might be OK. But it's not like that. It's just more of the same of something I'm so over. So I'll have to talk with her. Wish me luck.