four months

Two months ago, I was shaken but slightly hopeful. Today marks four months to the day since I've been existing in pain, anxiety, and despair. Overnight it happened. I look back on cheerful e-mails or posts in the days before the revelation and desperately wish I could go back to blissful ignorance.

For three months, I held in the pain whenever Eliza was around and broke down sobbing each day once she was peacefully napping. I grew weak under the strain and eventually broke down one day about a month ago. In all my 30-odd years, I have never cried as much as I did that Friday. I sobbed for literally hours as Eliza watched TV in the other room. I truly feared losing my mind. By late morning, I had enough sense for a few minutes to page my husband, begging him to come home from work for the first time in 10+ years, knowing that I was incapable of caring for our daughter that day. Five and a half hours later, he finally came through the door.

How I prayed. I was tempted to ask G-d to end my pain, but I feared it would be answered where all others had failed.

I can't quite say what changed in the week after that, but my deep sadness was partially displaced by anger. I don't find it "empowering" - it's eating me alive. But I realized yesterday that it had been weeks since I'd last shed a tear. For two hours last night I expressed my pain and bitterness, which was met with silence. I was able to sleep no more than an hour last night, and just when I thought I was outwardly coping well with the day, I broke down as soon as Eliza was asleep and couldn't stop sobbing for an hour.

I'm trying to take care of Eliza and myself to the best of my ability each day, but some days that just isn't good enough.

Exercise has fallen by the wayside (and my weight loss has stalled) since Eliza decided she was only going to nap a couple days a week at most. I've been struggling to keep up with housework. My first priority this month has been to keep sane, to keep from drowning, and sometimes there just aren't enough hours in the day for everything.

I've been seeing a therapist for a couple months. She wants me to ask myself how I can take care of my needs (short- and long-term) every day. Right now, I only feel capable of surviving each day; I feel incapable of looking much farther ahead than next week.

Books have been a small comfort to me and are often the only way I can concentrate on anything other than my broken life. I've read over 60 books since the New Year - a clip I haven't matched since my daughter was born.

Last Friday I met with an herbalist to address my anxiety, (frequent) headaches, depression, and insomnia. The tincture she made me contains St. John's wort, Siberian ginseng, wild oats, licorice, vitex, skullcap, and California poppy. The medicinal tea has nettles, skullcap, passionflower, lemon balm, and I forget what else. I was told to continue with my couple capsules of valerian before bedtime. (It does help on the nights when I'm less plagued by emotional demons.) It may take weeks to see an effect. Once I'm on steadier ground months from now halevai, she wants me to do a 28-day cleanse again.

I'm spinning out of control, and it's frightening.

two months

[written 1/18]

So much has happened that it's hard to know where to begin or how much to reveal here.

Seven weeks ago, I got the shock of my life. My world shattered. I've been grieving and struggling. I don't know what my life will resemble six months from now or even where I'll be living, but it's likely I won't be able to homeschool Eliza in the future, which kills me more than anyone realizes. I haven't been able to be the mother she deserves for the last couple months, which is cruelly ironic considering she's all I have.

* * * * *

[written 2/6]

I wrote the above a couple weeks ago but couldn't make myself post it. I got another shocking revelation last week, from which I'm still reeling, but I'm also more hopeful and stable than I was last month. I still don't know what the future holds, but I've been doing my best to get Eliza out of the house more often.

On a more positive (albeit far less life-altering) note, my house has never been cleaner, I've done a major workout every single weekday for 2 months straight (and have lost quite a bit of weight), and my credit card debt is shrinking. All that is my feeble attempt to change what little I have control over. The other week, I came across the following in Rosemary Remembered by Susan Wittig Albert, and it hit home:

"Have you noticed how often it's the little things - cooking eggs, weeding the garden, changing the oil - that keep us going, keep us sane? It's ordinary life that steadies us when we suddenly bump into something unfathomably dark and huge, hidden like an iceberg under black water."

black widow

Armed with a flashlight, Eliza's daddy took her out for a spin around the subdivision on her tricycle post-sundown, pre-dinner. When I came outside to greet them just as they were coming home, Chris was the first to see the spider. Before the flashlight hit it, all I saw was the size, and I thought to myself, "at least it's not as big as Jen's spider."

I shrieked when I saw the shiny red hourglass on the black body (the abdomen was surprisingly large) and knew immediately what it must be even though I'd never seen one in person. Chris was in charge of keeping Eliza away, and I rushed inside to get the camcorder (with the zoom, I could stay safely away). All I recorded was an empty web as the bugger disappeared when Chris shined the flashlight.

Although I'd heard black widows exist in this part of the country, I never actually imagined one would make a web on my house. I don't suppose it will just find somewhere else to live if I destroy its web with a broom handle? I didn't think so. I read on Wiki that bites are very rarely fatal to healthy adults, but since I have a 33-pound child, I'm quite concerned.

Update: Chris told me he had killed the black widow while I was upstairs. He said it worried him knowing that Eliza and I go within a foot of the web when we check the mail daily. He said when he went outside again, he found it back on the web; again it scurried into the crack, but Chris said he was able to get in there and crush it with a piece of wood from the garage.

She's going to kill me . . .

. . . if she doesn't kill herself first. I'm not a paranoid person, but I find myself wondering on days like this if she'll make it to adulthood.

We were upstairs cleaning the bathroom when Eliza wandered away from me as she often does. Three minutes passed, and I went to make sure she wasn't making a mess. I went through the house calmly, room by room, calling her name, and she didn't answer. My heart started to beat faster. Something was wrong - I knew it - she always answers no matter what she's doing. I ran through the house yelling her name. I nearly vomited.

The locks on the patio and garage hadn't been undone, so I could only guess that she had gone out the front doors although they were closed. I ran out the door to the right and saw a mother and her preteen sons playing in the driveway. They hadn't seen her but promised to split up looking. I ran back to the house thinking maybe she was lying unconscious somewhere, but she was nowhere.

Back outside again, by that time I was on the phone with Chris, crying and nearly hyperventilating. He was trying to keep me from completely losing it, but I was imagining the worst - being the mother of a dead child. I went all the way down the road to the left, looking behind every bush and car.

As I was rounding the bend, I saw the neighbor with Eliza and fell to my knees crying harder from relief. The neighbor found her at the side gate in the process of turning the handle to go out onto the main road. Eliza didn't look worried in the slightest, and in fact, seemed baffled why her crazy mother was crying in the middle of the road. In her arms were a stuffed cat and snowman, and around her neck were the fabric balloon wall decorations that had once hung in her room (before she ripped them off the wall last week).

Once Eliza was at home safely tucked in bed, I e-mailed a friend: "I hate what she does to me. Why?? This is the dark side of having a too-smart and too-adventurous child. I hate wondering whether she’s going to make it to adulthood."

OK, I know she doesn't do these things to give me a heart attack. She just thought it sounded fun to go exploring outside the house.

In order to get out the front door, she had to unlock the deadbolt on the main door and unlock two locks on the metal mesh security door that turn in opposite directions. I found the doors unlocked but closed. What a thoughtful child she is to carefully close doors behind her, something the cat resents, having been locked inside rooms so often (damn those paws without opposable thumbs!).

I thought about installing a fourth lock on the front doors, one at the very top - six feet off the ground. But then I tried to look at it through Eliza's eyes and saw the distance from the top of the love seat to the top of the door is right around her height. That might buy me twenty seconds, I thought. I spoke with a friend on the phone who suggested an alarm on the front door, something her mother had done many years ago. I feel a little better hearing stories about her older sister, who was just as adventurous as Eliza; they make me think maybe I'm not as horrible of a mother as I feel on days like today.

Three minutes. That's all it took. The time I spent searching through the house for her calling her name was time she used to get farther away. I hate to think what could have happened to her if she had gotten out to the main street.

locked in the car

платок

Ah, a babushka in training! Eliza has decided that is her new look and frequently asks us to tie on her play scarf. The photo has nothing to do with my post - it just cheers me up to see her happy.

I was told to look on the bright side: today couldn't be worse than yesterday. As far as Eliza's behavior goes, it hasn't been. Her only mischief was turning on the gas outside twice, which I smelled immediately.

After spending the late morning with my friends and Eliza's friends, Micah and Laurel (the three amigos go way back, their parents having met one hot summer in birth class 3 years ago), Eliza started getting cranky around noon, so we headed back to the car. Eliza was buckled in, and just as I was reaching to open the driver's door, I heard bleep-bleep. The car had locked itself with my keys and sweet girl inside!

I was terrified as I called AAA (my cell phone was in my pocket), but I no longer panicked once I was told it had been marked top priority and someone would be there in under 10 minutes. It took five. The temperature was in the 70s, but the car had been parked outside for a couple hours and was considerably warmer. I'd had the foresight to open the moon roof so that the car wouldn't be blazing hot when we got back to it, and thank goodness for that.

I did my best poker face to keep Eliza from freaking out, and at first she was grinning and laughing at me through the window, but eventually, she figured out something was wrong and began to cry. I can't even say how sad and helpless I felt to watch my daughter's face beaded with sweat and tears. It was just another minute until help arrived, but it felt like much longer.

I would never deliberately leave my child in a car for a single minute, so those eight minutes were a nightmare to me. I'm going to have a spare key made and stick it to the underside of the car - having it stolen is a far better fate than being locked out.

Ironically, I was asked today if there were any safety devices she hadn't managed to beat. There is but one, but it's not the car seat (the upstairs gate, being bolted into a stud in the wall, has so far proved impervious). About a year ago, Eliza figured out how to undo the chest buckle of her top-of-the-line car seat, and from there could wiggle out. One evening, as we made the hour-long drive down the freeway back home from a friend's house, Eliza escaped her car seat at least a half dozen times. Each time, C pulled over ASAP, and we buckled her in again, making sure she was as snug as possible. Minutes later, she escaped again . . . and again . . . and again. We struggled with her car seat escapes for a week or two until we decided we had no choice but to turn her around and hope it would eliminate her desire to escape. I had done my homework, knew the statistics, and was planning to keep her rear-facing until she reached our car seat's rear-facing limit (32 pounds), which in her case, wouldn't have been until after her 2nd birthday. I never would have turned her around for convenience's sake (hers or mine), but her constant escapes were much more dangerous.

She hasn't tried to get out since, and no doubt can no longer remember that she was able to do so. Today, I encouraged her to pull the lock up, but it was a few inches out of her reach.

At the moment, Eliza is soundly napping with her animals, and I'm relatively calm, but it's hard to overstate how scared I was for a few minutes this afternoon. Eliza and Chris are my whole world.