Banishment, Now This Will Only Hurt A Little

I sit in my office, the converted garage. The Boy is soon home from work, and I cannot be present. The Boy my husband are working on having a civil relationship. Mainly this means that The Boy pretends to be human and I disappear from the house during waking hours so that my husband can try to communicate the nuances of social niceties to him (so instead of grunting, try saying "Hi").

This results in banishment. My banishment. I am only slightly resentful.

But, the summer is beautiful, the hallucinations are few, the voices are gone. and life is OK if not good. And it really seems to be working. The Boy has become more human over the last week or so. Only 49 more weeks to go.....

Sorry that the posting has been few and far between. The more "normal" I feel, the less compulsion I have to whine to the world at large about my life. And god, does it ever feel good to feel good. I wish it would last more than a few weeks or months. Right now my only complaint is allergies and severe insomnia (still). I haven't slept the night through since October. Up between 2:00am and 3:30am for 1 to 3 hours. I feel too tired to do anything, but too awake to sleep. I hate taking narcotics or soporifics. See, there I go whining again....

Still Alive

To any of those out there who are still checking my blog despite my long absence, I apologize for said long absence.

But it has been a relatively good thing. I have been feeling... normal. Lots of energy, clarity of thought, normal swing of emotions, objectivity (or a sort) about things going on around me as well as a marked decline in any interest in self-medicating with copious quantities of alcohol or Other. Consequently I have been trying to catch up on all the duties I have neglected for the past 8 months or so. Paperwork, here I come.

I have refinanced the house, prepared (mostly) the business tax return for last year (you know, the one due on March 15) and sorted and filed 15 months worth of personal receipts. Finishing paperwork always feels like a Herculean accomplishment after it has been neglected for so long.

The Boy has been visiting with his mother for the last week, and will be gone for another week. This has given me a much needed respite. I hope this time apart allows all the parties involved to gain a little perspective. I think we need to fundamentally change our methods of communication. I believe we have gotten into bad habits of talking. We are so on guard against what the other may say that even the friendly volleys we exchange are tense, and every phrase is over-examined for any meaning that may be derogatory. Thus it is easy for "Hi, how ya doing?" to be construed as an attack. Well, maybe not easy, but it certainly does not stop The Boy from seeing it as an attack.

I hope to change that when he returns home next week. I hope we can get things back to the way they were. He can be a charming teenager when he chooses, and the rest of the time he is a less than charming teen.

I have arranged with a girlfriend for lodging if things get bad. I told my husband that I would spend a few days with her if it looked like things weren't getting any better. I hope this allows the boys some time to interact one on one without the evil step-mom being in the way. I hope that this wide-angle, shotgun buckshot approach can work. More later.