Mish-Mosh :-(

by Charity

This hasn't been a good week.  It hasn't been as bad as a few months ago, when I was constantly having dark thoughts.  But it's been bad enough. 

We stayed in bed most of Sunday because I was triggered.  I don't know what triggered me.  Mary tried to talk me through it, but the only thing that got me out of bed, around sundown, was the fact that we needed to do laundry.

The trigger that set me off wasn't a nightmare this time.  Maybe it was having another birthday recently.  On Monday, we took some photos of the new vanity that our landlord's son-in-law had installed, and one of the photos showed our reflection in the mirror.  Our body age is early fifties, but we can easily pass for 10 years younger.  But the camera always makes people look older.  As I was looking at our reflection in the photo, I thought, "Who is this old person?"  :-(

Last night and this morning things got bad again.  It was some mish-mosh of the child me plus arianna (who's two and a half), with a bit of Rachel's anger and defensiveness mixed in.  Again, Mary tried to talk me throug it, but Whoever It Was would have no part of cooperating. 

By morning arianna had removed herself from the situation, but I still felt (and feel) bad that she was dragged into it in the first place.  During the past few years, since I've begun to reclaim my pain, the children remain safe and separated from the struggles that I, the other adults, and Laura and Allegra go through.  The Babysitters and the protectors do a wonderful job of ensuring this.  So I don't know how arianna got through.  She does have a history of trying to escape supervision, but it's never resulted in something like this.  Ever.