Diamonds

What does an alcoholic do when he gets into a rut?
Decorates it.

- Overheard at a recovery meeting

This morning, I drove in the driveway and the sun came out. I pulled up, still dressed in my pj's after dropping Max to school. Rocco sat in the backseat in his pj's, and I noticed the still in the air and for a brief respite, I could feel a calm. A droplet of dew on a leaf was caught by the sun, and it looked like a sparkling diamond. Like a fricken 5-carat diamond, swaying there with its balls in the air, in my front garden.

I unbuckled Rocco and for a change, didn't hurry him inside, didn't rush and get preoccupied. He gathered up a golf ball, a broken tennis ball, two dummies, and his Beru. And walked around, holding his treasures tightly to his chest. Then handed them all to me, one by one, I had to say "ta" after each one. This was repeated twelve times. Slowly.

Nothing was more important in that moment, for either of us.

Earlier, I called Max into my bedroom and asked him to lay down next to me. I told him I wanted to tell him something, he looked up at me gravely. I explained to my almost eight year old, patient, sensitive, beautiful son ... that I've had a very hard time lately. That out of everything I've ever been through in my whole life, this year has been the hardest. That I'm working it out, and I promise to stop yelling so much. And I was so sorry he had such a stinkbug for a mum sometimes.

Probably all too much info. I just don't want him blaming himself.

He looked at me with his unconditional love again and melted my heart again.

Every single issue I have ever had in my life is now triggered. Game on. This week I'll see two different doctors and tell them the exact same thing and see what they both say. There's a sense of palpable relief, just knowing I have made the appointments. One of them has known me for 11 years, the other not so much. I have been a staunch non-believer of medications for years. It's tricky territory, for me. And I have valid reasons ... but now it seems I will have to eat my words. Again.

I need to do something - not for me, but because it impacts my boys so much. My real diamonds.

Pffffft. Pussy.

Swear to God, by the time this is over I will be the EXPERT on what to do when you have abandonment issues caused by your fathers killing themselves and you grow up in an abusive home and then you wipe the worlds floor with your twenties and you almost die but don't but then you really DO die, spiritually, and get re-born and try to unparent yourself and have a baby with a guy you love. And he has kids and a messy past but you make it work and then you want ANOTHER baby because it was so fucking great the first time. So you do then while you were growing the second baby in your tummy, your beloved husband is growing some nasty tumours in HIS tummy. And then a week before the baby is born, he will bend over in pain and say, "Hon - what side is your appendix on? There's something wrong." And you knew there was something wrong because that's what life is, after all. A series of really fucked up things where something goes wrong. And everything you love will all turn to shit anyway, dufus. The next year is spent waiting for the cancer to come back. It was easier to be dark and love nothing. Wasn't it? HELP. So then you cry all the time and you get stuck, in the well. And you remember that your grandmother used to call you a "deep well", and she was the only person who used to really look at you, as a child. And kind of give a shit, you know?

Yeah. I will *totally* be an expert on all that ... so if you know anybody who goes through it, send them to me and I will tell them what to do. (As soon as I find out myself. Pfffft. PUSSY)

__

Here is a funny photo I took last week. Because this is what we must do ... laugh at funny things. Especially unfunny things. Just ask my sisters and brother.

Max came home from school and said he had wet shoes, so he took them off.

Max: "My feet are wrinkly, mum."

Pre-occupied, distracted, arsehole Eden: "Yeah mate everyone's feet are wrinkly."
Max: "Ummmm, they have wrinkles all over them. Look."

I walked over and looked, about to tell him again that everybodys feet are wrinkly.

But not this wrinkly.

Oh we laughed. The sweet blessed relief of laughter. A tear fell down my cheek, like a diamond.