Going Off the Rails

So I’ve cracked open the Halloween candy (managing to hold off for five whole hours after buying it) because I’m self-medicating with chocolate.  I’ve never really thought of myself as an “emotional eater” (and, seriously, I hate all of that psycho-mumbo-jumbo, not because it’s untrue but because it’s been so done to death by talk shows) but, wow, apparently I am.  Because I don’t think the normal response to having a difficult tuck-in conversation with your children is to come downstairs and eat brownies over the kitchen sink.  But, then, maybe I’m not the only one who doesn’t want to wash another plate.

Today has been hard.  First of all, I’ve been freakishly fatigued lately (I actually asked my husband, Tenzin, who’s a doctor, if you can get mono twice — apparently not).  I know it could just be my normal chronic pain stuff rearing it’s usual ugly head, but I’ve been crazy sleepy.  As in practically fall asleep while doing the dishes sleepy.  Crappy thing number two — and I say this completely with pun intended — our 12-year-old dog, Uno, has been having middle-of-the-night accidents in the house.  He’s losing muscle control in his hind quarters, and we knew this was coming.  Tonight he was upstairs, and I couldn’t even get him to come down for pot roast.  So let’s just say I’ve safely pushed all the bad feelings I’m having into that room in my brain where I neatly store things until they can be dealt with properly.  Just call me Sydney Bristow, the super-spy compartmentalizer.

But the most taxing part about today has been dealing with the kids.  First, let me give you the back story.  So yesterday, I’m watching Oprah — which, honestly, I rarely do anymore because it’s so frickin’ depressing — and she’s doing this really frickin’ depressing story about a couple whose three little kids were killed in a car crash.  Then today, I find out that a friend of mine’s 6-year-old son has been diagnosed with leukemia.  Now, I’m not the kind of person who needs a life-changing event to realize that everything can be flipped on its head in a New York minute.  I get that.  In fact, I get it too much.  I need to think about it less.  Especially when I’m trying to fall asleep.

The difficult part for me has always been executing the next step in this process.  In other words, living my life in a way that demonstrates that I do indeed understand the “change in an instant” reality.  For instance, I did not, in fact, find my children charming and enthusiastic in Costco this afternoon.  Instead, I found them irritating and kinda spazzy.  I kept trying to think about the couple with the three dead kids and my friend’s son, but the fact is, I was still just really, really tired and sore.  So in that minute, I just couldn’t get it to matter.

What makes this day even better is that both kids managed to superbly demonstrate how my psycho behavior has seeped into their little personalities and made them just as nuts as I am.  This afternoon, my daughter, Elfie, discovered she’d lost a list of classmates she’d been making to keep track of homemade cards she’d been giving out.  I think she bawled her head off for at least 20 minutes.  When I tried to help her figure out different solutions, she couldn’t get off the fact that she’d lost the list and the initial project was now flawed.

And then at bedtime (and this is what triggered the chocolate), my son, Newt, and I had a half-hour discussion — complete with tears, stressed shaking, and numerous bouts of burrowing under the covers — about the better than average chance that all of the Halloween decorations wouldn’t get put up.  Back story:  he’s had a plan about this for the last month, and he and his dad have been trying to build some stuff from scratch.  Unfortunately, with Tenzin’s new work schedule and the fact that he got the stomach flu a couple of days ago, things haven’t exactly gone as planned.  But when I broached this topic with Newt, thinking it would be good to talk about something I figured he already had a handle on, I had no idea he’d freak out the way he did.  You would’ve thought Halloween was going to be canceled all over the world due to our lack of decor.

The thing is, I appreciate the kids’ dedication to their projects.  They have passion.  It’s what makes people great.  It’s also what makes people nuts.  I know.  I’m the one who cried in the laundry room for 20 minutes last month when I couldn’t find Elfie’s new ballet skirt.  And I’m the one who freaks out every Christmas if I don’t have time to make my Grandmother’s cookies.

So I know exactly which crazy train they’ve boarded.  I packed their bags.  I bought their tickets.  I drove them to the station.

The question now is, how the hell do I get them off?