In which I whine quite a bit

Last night I dreamed I had a beard. That was a very unpleasant dream.

My life is filled with anxieties large and small. I’m so used to it that I think I’ve always told psychologists that I don’t feel particularly anxious, except at times of crisis. But really I am anxious about everything, from getting to work on time to calling the dentist to choosing the new daycare, to worrying about the next health issue the family could face. I’ve also admitted to myself that all the meds I’m taking aren’t making a big enough dent in the depression that drags at me. There are so many things that seem to have eaten up a little bit of me, starting with Firecracker’s premature birth six years ago all the way to my last biopsy last month (benign, thankfully). Instead of feeling that I’ve been through a lot and so I can handle a lot, I feel that one more thing will sap the last of my reserves. Perhaps I’ve never properly processed any of these horrible events. Maybe I just want to wallow in self-pity a while. I found myself crying one night because of losing a breast, something that didn’t particularly bother me at the time (which is probably abnormal, but I was so relieve not to have a raging cancer that a mastectomy sounded positively positive). Now I have this new breast that impresses the doctors but feels utterly alien to me.

Sometimes I tear up thinking of Firecracker’s surgery, feeling guilty that she went through all that and then there was nothing to be done, and it even seemed as if there was no reason to be there in the first place. No seizures and none since. A blessing, yes, but I would rather have felt the blessing firmly in place before they cut into her skull.

We have bought a house. Our apartment is filling up with boxes, and we’ve been dropping off lots of stuff at Goodwill. I don’t do change all that gracefully, more from sluggishness than anything else. So much effort required. Looking for a house was full of disappointments, and I haven’t become particularly excited about this one. It’s smaller than I had hoped for, but it’s in a good school district (or so say the statistics) and it was what we could afford. It has a yard for the girls to play in and it’s still close to my job. And really, you can make something out of almost any house, although that has never been one of my talents.

DramaQueen is flying by herself to Los Angeles to spend three weeks with her grandparents. I’m fretting over this to a ridiculous amount. I will probably have dreams of traffic jams and getting lost on the way to the airport. Firecracker had issues when DramaQueen went to a slumber party, so I’m preparing myself for a steady stream of “When is she coming back?” DramaQueen will miss the move, so she has made me promise that I won’t unpack anything that goes in her room, because she thinks it will be great fun to unpack it herself. I’ve been assigned to purchase a disco ball to hang from her ceiling.