Croaky

I've made myself a strong cup of decaf English breakfast tea with honey....as hot as I can stand. I'm sipping away hoping it will soothe my sore throat. I am croaky. I sound terrible. And it's the kind of scratchy throat that leads to 'tickles' all night long so I have had very non-restful sleep for three nights now. I should be dead on my feet but adrenaline is keeping me going. Worked all three days of the three day weekend - a half day Saturday, all day Sunday and a 2 hour day yesterday - I should have stayed longer but it was another very stress-filled day on the home front and I needed to just try to rest. Didn't. But I tried.

We have an appointment with H. tomorrow - he needs help. We need help. Still wavering on if/what to write about. On the one hand, this blog has always been for me. But it's hard realizing that if I write what I feel, what's in my heart, it's out there for all eternity. And even I - Ms. 'Tell It Like It Is' - has to reckon with just how all this turns out in the end. And how it reads as it's happening. So I'm editing a bit. A lot, really....

I feel like we're at a crossroads of sort....a parenting nexus that requires we continue to hold him accountable. We've been doing that all along - but truth be told, he just isn't. He's living in an alternate universe of his own making and his own choosing and while we thought we were holding our own; thought we were making steady progress forward, we recently realized we haven't been even treading water. Slowly sinking is what it now feels like - we just didn't realize how close to being fully submerged we were.

But now we know. Last Wednesday changed our lives forever. And his, too. And while everyone who's walked this path with their own kids keeps reassuring me that someday, this will all be a dim memory and we'll be coming out the other side OK and 'better' for the journey, I sure don't see that ever happening. Don't feel like it will ever happen. It's dark and cold and swirling all around us - and we're just making every effort to hold on. To our marriage. To each other. Making sure we do what we have to do to survive: eat, sleep, go to work, come home, repeat. There's a whole lot of other crap mixed in there....tons of crap. And I'll save you all the details....for now.

I hope tomorrow - another Wednesday - will be what we need. For all of us. Mostly for him - 'cuz I know that parenting is a tough job and we signed on for it and we're doing it. Come hell or high water, we ARE doing it. But if he finds what he needs, it will help us a lot....and we need help ourselves. We really do. Loving him unconditionally is easy. Liking him even slightly is pretty damn hard at the moment.