I'd like to take this opportunity to be the 93,347th person to say "I'm so glad the holidays are over." Because I am. For a multitude of reasons.

It's Sunday night. One child is in bed; the other is doing his nightly reading. Tomorrow, everyone goes back to work and school. The long Thanksgiving family-fest weekend is over. We survived.

I was almost looking forward to Thanksgiving this year. We had a pretty uneventful holiday planned--Bob would be at his father's house until Saturday evening, and my large, loud extended family had opted for a smaller gathering on Saturday (just my parents, siblings, and assorted nieces). Until Bob caught wind of this plan, and asked to come home early so he could go to his grandparents' house with us. And then I discovered it was not to be an intimate gathering (or as "intimate" as it gets with four siblings, their spouses, and 7 grandchildren); it would be the whole family--aunts, uncles, ad nauseum--totalling 28 people.

Making time for yourself, although not easy, makes all the difference when parenting a child with a psychiatric illness.

This weekend, Bob turns 10 years old. A momentous occasion, for sure--why haven't I been in the mood to celebrate? Aside from it being tough to get into party-planning a for someone who has acted anything but party-worthy...parties and Bob don't mix.

So...where do I begin? I've had a lot on my plate lately--strangely enough, not directly Bob-related (although he always has a major role in our family dramas). Oddly enough, I believe my experiences with Bob over the past 9+ years have helped me in weathering the storms.

It would seem like I've fallen into a hole recently. I haven't disappeared entirely, but nothing I've tried to write lately has made much sense, if any. I think I need a vacation. Bob is doing well; however, when your house feels like a demilitarized zone 90% of the time, there are bound to be some casualties. Unfortunately, in our case, it appears the first casualty is our marriage. So please bear with me as I try to hold it together, figure it out, and try to make sense of the chaos. I'll be back next week. Thanks.

My child has a mental illness. He is not going through a phase! As a parent of a child with a mental illness, nothing irritates me more than the well-meaning (or not-so-well-meaning) person who insists on telling me, "oh, I'm sure Bob is just fine." Or any variant thereon, such as "it's just a phase", "he'll grow out of it", "they all do stuff like that", etc. Believe me, I wish you were right. But your comments don't make me feel any better about the situation. If anything, they make me feel worse.

I went to see my own psychiatrist this week for my biannual "how's it going" visit. I said what I had to say. He pretended to listen and asked me questions I'd already answered. Then he said, "I don't think we need to change anything right now. I think you're just demoralized with everything you've got going on." Then he handed me the same prescription he's handed me for the past year. I was relieved, in a way--even though I'm reasonably certain other things have come into play in my head, I've been concerned about changing up my medication, afraid he may introduce something new that would render me even more of a trainwreck than I've been lately. And at this stage of the game, I can't afford to be any less functional.

When I picked up Bob from a week-long visit with his father last weekend, I knew it was going to be a tough day. It always is when he comes back from these visits. I never know what exactly to expect, just that conflict will arise. This time, the conflict was within me.