February 25: The Day After

Today was a tough day. My son is pretty severely mentally ill. He has lived in a residential treatment center (“RTC”) for most of the last year, and just moved back home about 2 months ago. He is, by any standards, a tough kid to deal with due to his illness. Nothing is ever enough or what he wanted or fair or sufficient. Its just the way things are. When he had bad days, we all have bad days. Today was one of his bad days. I did recognize a difference, however. In the past, when he would be having a bad day, I would just not be around. I couldn’t deal with it in a constructive way, so I chose to not deal with it at all. Its what seemed to work best. Today, I was able to deal constructively with what was going on, and be part of the resolution. The price I paid for that was a mood that felt very much like a slide back into “depression”, but which lifted much more quickly and didn’t have any prolonged negativity. Interesting.

Otherwise, I was still a bit wiped out from the treatment yesterday. My head seems to usually be pretty foggy the day after as a norm. I did some out of the ordinary things, like going to the grocery store with my wife for the weekly shopping.