Poor Bean is sick. He has been since last Wednesday, with a low-grade fever that just won't quit. The paediatrician was completely booked today, so his mother will be taking him tomorrow. We figure it's probably yet another ear infection, as those are the one thing he can't seem to shake for the life of him. It always takes antibiotics, even though ear infections are often said to clear up on their own. He hasn't complained of ear pain, but that's not necessarily significant with him--he's not much of a complainer when he's actually sick. We can always tell when he's truly under the weather, because he goes quiet. He spent most of last Wednesday cuddled up with his mother or me (whenever she wasn't available to cuddle), and has by all reports been extra clingy all week. I've been back at my job since Thursday evening, so I only have second-hand reports about all of this.
With any luck he'll have antibiotics tomorrow, and things will go back to normal. Selfishly I'm hoping he'll be ready to go back to daycare by the time I get back from work. I adore him, but having him at home 24/7 is mentally exhausting for me. When he's sick but not feeling too bad, his behavioural problems come out in force. There's even more shrieking and tantrums than usual, more outright refusal to do anything, and he gets extremely crabby and whiny and demanding, which, quite frankly, dances on my very last nerve. Also, a week of no school for him means he's not getting any social contact with other children, and it means his mother will also be fresh out of any remnant of patience. It's not good for anyone.
On a different note, I have scraped the bottom of my financial barrel, and have found a therapist here in the city where I'm working. I don't recall if I mentioned that here before, but if I didn't then I am now. While blogging is all very well and good as a way for me to vomit all my feelings in text form, I felt that it was high time that I sought professional advice on how to sort through said feelings and to help me manage them.
That makes my feelings sound like disgruntled workers threatening to go on strike. Oh well. :P
One thing I noticed very recently (on Friday, actually) was that there is a definite correlation between my mood and the place I'm in at the time. If I'm in the city where I work, my mood takes a sharp downward swing. I tend to feel more depressed, more anxious, more pessimistic about the future and about how my life is going. My thoughts veer toward the more paranoid, especially when it comes to my relationship. It's when I'm absent from home that it becomes easy to believe that my girlfriend views me as a nuisance, that she doesn't really want me around, that my presence at home is more of an inconvenience than anything else. That I get in the way of the household routines, that I barely pull my weight with chores or childcare, that I am essentially a giant waste of space. These feelings and thoughts tend to grow exponentially, and I perseverate on them, especially toward the end of my work week, when I'm working night shifts and am physically and mentally exhausted.
And then, like magic, when I get home these feelings evaporate like so much mist. I am usually greeted at the door by ecstatic pets, and a very happy Bean if I've arrived home before bedtime. My girlfriend usually stays back from the fray (it all happens teetering on the edge of the stairs at the front entrance, so I can't blame her for not wanting anyone to break their necks), but she's always happy to see me too. Bean gets put to bed, and then she and I have a cup of tea and catch up on everything that I've missed that week while I was at work.
When I'm home, I never want to leave again. I'm surrounded by my family, by my pets, by my belongings. All the comforts of home, quite literally.
This is when my therapist and I had the same epiphany. That when I'm at work, I'm merely existing. I have a tiny space I'm renting in someone's house. I am completely isolated from everyone except what little contact I have with friends through the internet, and with my coworkers (I work alone 80% of the time anyway, because my shift partner is off on sick leave after undergoing major surgery). I don't really feel like I'm living until I get home again. I work 12-hour days, and spend 1.5 hours commuting. Take away 8 hours for sleep, and that leaves 2.5 hours to eat, shower, brush my teeth, and maybe see about opening up my computer. I'm lucky that on quiet shifts I can check the internet at work, but that's the extent of it. On the day I switch from days to nights, I have about 8 "extra" hours in which to run errands, do my laundry, and nap before work.
So my therapist has suggested that, as a project, I need to find ways of bringing comfort into my existence here. She stressed the importance of self-care, which is going to be super, super hard for me. I am not big into self-care. I mostly never feel like I deserve it, that I haven't worked hard enough or long enough or been a good enough person to deserve self-care. I read a post the other day that self-care is in and of itself a revolutionary act for women, because we are taught from a young age all the attitudes that I have described above. Women are meant to be self-sacrificing, we are meant to work hard and care for others and give all we have to others and never to ourselves because we exist only to benefit others (this goes for all caregivers, too). Intellectually, that makes a lot of sense. Emotionally? I am having trouble applying this to myself. I am the first to champion self-care for others, but I can't do it for myself.
I guess that'll be something to work on.
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