I rang home tonight from work and I heard the flat tone on the other end of the line (my partner's voice, not a busy signal, though that's not an unhelpful metaphor).
He said that he wasn't feeling well. He says it's physical.
I was a bit worried that today might be stressful. Usually he drives our son home from his office on Tuesday and I go to work. But he didn't have the car so he had to take him home on the bus at peak hour. Peak hour transport isn't fun at the best of times so I can really understand why it would induce some anxiety when you include a three-year-old in the mix.
We made it easier by meeting him at his office at 4:30 and then I accompanied them to the bus station and waited with them and saw them onto the bus before peak hour truly hit. It wasn't a crowded bus either and my son had slept a bit so he was a in a good mood. So the stressful nature of the experience was I hope mitigated by all these factors.
You see, I find it almost impossible not to micro-manage experiences like this. It's just that I know how things with too many steps can tip him over into an episode. He can be overwhelmed. I try very, very hard to reduce the number of steps to a manageable level.
I guess that's where a lot of my weariness comes from sometimes. What might otherwise be a simple handover becomes something which requires planning on the scale of a space shuttle launch.
And on top of that I worry that things might go wrong. The kid might not sleep beforehand and fall asleep on the bus which means that it's hell carrying him off the bus and all the way home. Or he might not sleep and therefore be cranky and hard to manage on the bus and maybe hard to get off the bus too because he doesn't like getting off the bus. Or a last minute thing will come up at work so he can't leave at 4:30 exactly and then we miss that early bus and then we hit peak hour and then the bus will be crowded and they won't get a seat and it'll be really hard to control the child while standing up and trying to hang on to something and blah blah blah...
Every scenario plays itself out in my head and revolves around like one of those 3D computer models of a building so I can see it from every angle and try to anticipate it in my plans. Is there anything I can do to avoid this or that happening?
Am I the only one who does this? I know I've turned into a control freak. I know I need to learn to let things go a little and trust that it will be okay. What's the worst that could happen? Actually I can't allow myself to contemplate that.
I'm glad I spent the weekend being happy.
Flo
Good lord, no, you're not the only one who does this. I micro-manage our family all the time, and it exhausts me, but if I don't then otherwise-avoidable incidents trigger my husband's depression -- and then it's even more exhausting.
ReplyDeleteOn a good day, I feel like my husband and family are worth it, and I have loads of compassion for him and the situation.
On a bad day, I admit I sometimes miss my so-much-easier single life...or, worse yet, find myself fantasizing what it would be like to live with someone who could be a more equal partner...or at least smile once in a while. *big sign (because it's one of the bad days today, Christmas being one of his major stress triggers...)
Umm, that was meant to be *big sigh* (in the message above), not *big sign*!
ReplyDeleteJust shows how darn tired I am......
Thank you for this blog. Good to know I'm not alone in dealing with this. All the attention, of course, goes to the depressed person -- while the caregiver slowly crumbles, unnoticed.
I've spent a considerable amount of time analyzing the events that have led to where I am in life. Out of all the things that have really influenced me, and my depressed partner, the one thing that really seems to be the largest culprit in stress is the headlong rush we made away from simplicity. I'm thinking we're our own worst enemies, and emotional disorders are the results of our errors.
ReplyDelete