I wish I could say that my long silence was due to having nothing to say. On the contrary, I've ridden a tidal wave of emotion due to events concerning P, all the way to crashing on the beach and surging helplessly beyond like a piece of detritus. The waters subsided, and I picked myself up battered and bruised, dealt as I could with his needs, mine, and the external factors -- the repairs required after the disaster -- and have kept moving, trembling a little less with every step, trying to re-orientate myself towards the festive time that it is currently supposed to be. And so the strong tidal pulls associated with S should not be so destabilising after the sheer force of the previous wave, but I've been left weak and I'm not keeping my head above water. It seems that my holiday time with my family is somehow doomed, yet again, to be a time of uncertainty about my children's development and what to do about it. Whereas having a name for P's profile of unusual characteristics has been immensely helpful, trying to define S along the same lines is causing me huge stress -- to resist is to deny him the same level of assistance, financially as well as practically, but to accept feels hugely misguided, like I would be guiding my family with a compass that I know to be broken, but it's a compass, what else have I got?
So there is just too much. This is my last day to myself, as S finishes kinder today. I have a few hours left to my own thoughts, in between many, many errands. I feel all the sadness of the end of an era, vying with the sadness of knowing that I am about to lose my few windows to have some time to nurture me, vying with the uncertainty of knowing what the next few months hold for both boys, about to enter new phases of their lives, and this awful, heavy, stormcloud of a question mark bearing down on me and fogging up my judgement.
