Despite that he quit his job and has no way to pay child support and I could be living in the land of $100 to last a month, I’m not freaking out.
Despite that I dropped over 11 pounds doing the raw food diet for only five days before I quit it, and there’s no better motivator for an anorexic relapse than accidental weight loss, I had a burger for dinner.
Despite staying up all night working on a new sort of job thing that, if it works out for the future is basically easy described as a facet of my most perfect career, I didn’t continue the habit.
Despite having every reason to lose my shit and start sniffing glue as a mechanism for making the world stop controlling me, to allow me to control it, I’m still sitting here, sober and glue-free.
I have energy. Not the nervous energy spawned of too many nights without enough sleep and food, and too much coffee and cigarettes, with plans to concur the world and build small fortresses.
I have non-aggressive mood swings. I’m accepting things that usually would seem like too much to handle. I’m eating when I need to. I’m sleeping closer to regular hours. My mind is level-headed and I don’t feel sucked down by anything into an abyss of cannot-deal, even with all of The Ex’s shit that’s going on.
Quite simply, I feel a little peaceful. I feel like I’m gonna be alright.
I’m not happy (because I don’t really know what that is), but I’m definitely not unhappy at the moment. I’m floating in that way one might on a lake in the middle of summer, without time in their way. And I’m okay with it.
I only have one wicked side effect, which is actually pretty awesome when you consider that potentials can include liver failure. My ADD is much worse. Scratch that. My ADD has mutated. I’m not having problems focusing on one task because I’m distracted easily by outside thoughts, media, movement, etc. – I’m unable to retain information for long periods of time.
This means that I won’t be writing anything that involves comparisons because I can’t maintain what point A is about in relation to point B, because once I finish thinking about point A and move to point B, A’s info flies right outta mah head.
Also, I can’t do sodoku anymore.
Or apparently remember to hit the cue ball when playing 8 ball.
Anyway, back to the good. (See?)
I also have a sense of humour back that I haven’t had in longer than I can remember – one not entirely based upon that’s what she said jokes and dry, sarcastic one-liners. This is humour for pure performance sake. This is how yo mama was invented, I think; the initial comedian must have been on depakote.
So, even though Zoë is the size of a 2-year old, with the emotional maturity of, well, her father, and the attitude of a 14-year old, I’ve been laughing with her a lot more. Even on the tough days when she ends up looking more like this
than
I’m finding it easier to keep my cool and even, gasp, use the funny to my own inner-time-out-needed advantage.
Case in point: today was the whiniest day in the history of whininess. And I kept asking her to stop and just, you know, speak normally. Have some patience. Not freak out when her shoe didn’t go on perfectly on the first shot, or she didn’t get a lollypop.
Then, I started having had quite enough, thank fucking you very fucking much.
Instead of losing my shit and yelling, or getting overly snappy with her, I got pedantic.
Now, I don’t blatently lie to her, but I’m not above over-exaggeration. So, when the 137th whining moment occured, I may have said that she needed to stop whining because my head might explode. It’s not the first time she’s heard that one.
I don’t know if you know this about me, but I tend to go off on tangents.
</blatant sarcasm>
After my head exploding was firmly implanted as a visual image in my three-year old’s mind (why yes, I am an awesome mom), I had to describe the detriments of such an occasion. Namely, that she would have to clean up the mess. And lo-and-behold, we were at a restaurant who had paid an interior design company to tell them to install earthen-inspired stone tiles on the external walls, right next to our booth, and they had listened to the interior designers. Which, believe you-me, though beautiful, what with the perfect colour scheme and mortar-to-stone ratio, would not lend well to a cleaning session post neural detonation. And then I explained that this would make the restaurant owners pretty upset, so then
I remember, two weeks ago, needing anger management.
