By the light of the silvery moon
I woke this morning at 3am after a pretty rough day yesterday. Tatjana left for Boston and as has become the norm around here, Tin went into an utter meltdown. A friend suggested he might be suffering from separation anxiety having experienced it as an infant. It gave me pause. Because the way I was reading it is my partner’s gone, time to myself, and then WHAM BAM, I’ve got a child who went from loving me to wanting to destroy me.
Last night, when he asked for his story I gave him two versions. One was of a child who has a parent who travels and during the parent’s absence the child and the other parent have lots of fun and do things together. In the other version, the child creates a living hell for the parent who stays behind. We went to sleep in peels of laughter, rather than the tears I had started to shed at Zumba prior to my early departure.
I looked up separation anxiety and it is something that a child does not experience until they are eight months old. We adopted Tin when he was nine months old. He had been living with his great aunt and partner for one month. Surely this might have something to do with it. But what’s interesting is that he does not go through the same anxiety when I go away, it’s only with Tatjana.
Meanwhile, during my free time here at home, I’m living with a bully, someone who feels so bad that they want to make sure I feel doubly bad and for better or worse, he accomplishes just that. This morning, I lay in bed in the back, as we are renting the house this weekend and I transitioned back here last night. I saw two bright stars through the clerestory window – an opportunity that I would not have up front in my cave bedroom.
I decided to hell with it at 3:30 and went ahead and got out of bed. This should add to the grist of today. But maybe not, perhaps I needed this quiet, pre-dawn time to center fortify myself for today and what it will bring. I’m hoping for a good day, but I’m not going to bank on it.