Today I'm back in a funk, but maybe tomorrow will be better. Heck, maybe this afternoon will be better. Maybe it will be worse, but then it will get better again. Sigh...tired of ups and downs.

After all these years, finally starting to care about my own mental health and getting my own personal psychoses under control and now it feels like I'm just back at square one. I'm both looking forward to and dreading the holidays. I keep hearing from others who are in our boat, "Don't overcommit, don't get stressed, allow yourself an out." It's impossible in our family. If I walk away, I'm rude or antisocial. If we leave early one place, people make comments. If we get to the other place late, we get comments or looks. We see everybody on the big holidays. They can all just deal with the fact that we will be there when we can be; we have two families. On Christmas it's not uncommon to do Christmas 4 or more times at 4 or more locations, from Saugatuck all the way to Lansing (sometimes) and back.

If people can't understand that this year is different for us, if they can't understand that it's harder than it ever was before to juggle everything, then I don't want to deal with it. I don't need guilt trips and I don't need stress. I'm stressed enough thank you very much. I don't need guilty little comments like, "Well...you do with them what you want to do and we'll be here when you're done...." or "You should be here at (XYZ)" or dirty looks or attitudes or little sighs. I normally LOVE the holidays other than that junk, and this year the only reason I even give a damn about them is to keep Tanner in the loop and make sure that his holidays are great. So I am just not going to put up with it. And if I get any of the looks or comments or attitude, I'm not going to ignore it this year. I'm not going to be mean, but I'm not going to take it anymore! And I can't deal with it this year...there's way too much else going on in my head.


Did I ever really think I was stressed out before? Or sad? Or having bad days? This is a nightmare...except I don't get to wake up from it. Too bad time machines don't exist. Even if I couldn't prevent what happened, I could go back and just watch how happy we were.