I Wouldn't Call It A *Test*

The vacation begins Thursday.  I'll be in not-so-sunny Seattle for eleven days, and I plan to have a fantastic time.  There are lots of things we'll be doing, the boy and me, that actually involve leaving the house!  (Not like that, people.  We're really pretty homebodies is all.)

But there's a niggling in my head, a little noise that makes me wonder how we're doing in our little relationship.  For example, I had a really bad Sunday last Sunday, the kind that makes me reconsider my decision to stop taking antidepressants.  Those days, unless someone is Superperson, I can be pretty darn intolerable.  So I yelled at the boy and hung up on him.  A few hours later, feeling a bit more stable, I tried to call.  No answer.  Yup, that's how I know I'm in trouble.  When we finally did talk the next night, he told me that he doesn't know how to handle me when I'm that emotional.  It may make me shallow, he said, but if you act like that while you're here, I'm going to kick you out.

Last night he mentioned again about my emotions and how he's shallow and can't handle them.  I asked him, "What's going to happen when someone important to me dies?  You're going to ruin this because of that."  He said that that would be different because it's real.

Guess what, kid.  My moods are real.  My occasional bout of soul-crushing depression is real.  Your lack of support during those times is real.

So another thing I'll be doing on this trip is watching him closely; watching us both closely.  Because as abjectly terrifying it would be to lose him, I can't (and won't) be on my best behavior forever.