Bedtime was rough tonight. It’s been a while, longer than I realized, since I’ve had to go in and put consequences on the table if chaos continued. I had a particularly tough conversation with K, who’s 7, about how if I say I’m going to take a stuffy for the night if the screaming continues, and then the screaming continues, I kinda have to take the stuffy. (I caved.)
Anyway, this was all pretty fraught, I wasn’t shouting but I was definitely speaking in my Firm Deep Dad Voice. And when we were done, R (9) came over and gave me a hug and said “I want you to feel better.”
It was a sweet thing to say, and I thanked him, but I have been thinking about that all fucking night.
Like—how bad does he think I’m feeling? Why? How long does he think I’ve been feeling bad?
Am I feeling bad? Why? How bad, for how long? If not, why does this question have me spiraling?
There’s been some what I’ll call exogenous stuff happening adjacent to us lately. Like, solidly in the category of “not my story to tell” and also “I’m not the main character here,” but equally “this is some heavy shit to be close to even if I’m not in it.”
Work, art, family, and the world all have their own parts to play as well, for sure; I’m not close to a differential diagnosis, I don’t think. Assuming there’s anything to diagnose! But for the moment I guess I have to sit with the uncertainty of whether this was just Brownian motion in the mind of a sweet and sensitive kid, or whether he stared through my thick skull and saw a darkness therein like a god-damned Bene Gesserit.