my room is a mess

I realized a long time ago that my bedroom is a physical representation of how things are in my life. And it's a mess right now.

My daughter was stepped down from Residential treatment last Tuesday to Partial. In Partial treatment, you go to the treatment center eight hours a day, six days a week. (For more information about how the mental health system works, see this posting.) The treatment center is about 50 miles from my home and with traffic, can take three hours one way. After the first day of driving out there to pick her up, I knew this was not going to work. So I packed up and stayed in a hotel out near the center for four days. We are hoping to step her down to IOP (Intensive Outpatient Program) tomorrow, which is three hours a day, three days a week and, hopefully, at a facility a bit closer to my home.

During the month or so that my daughter was in residential treatment, life returned to "normal" for me. Actually quieter than normal since my son is no longer here during the week. I finally cleaned up my room and closet, paid the huge stack of bills that had been sitting untouched since all this started, even finished a couple of projects that I had not been able to get to before. I did not feel the need to go to Al Anon meetings and stopped reading my daily meditations. And I stopped blogging.

Both kids were home this weekend, the first time in a month. My bedroom has become our "hub." We watch our Saturday night movie in here while eating pizza, as evidenced by dishes left behind. My daughter has been working on some craft projects at my coffee table and all the supplies are still out. Laundry is mounded on my bed, waiting to be folded. File folders that I ransacked earlier in the week are piled high on my desk.

My room is a mess, and not for negative reasons, but it is still a mess. It still needs to be cleaned up.

Today, while my daughter is gone most of the day for her last Partial treatment day, I will work on cleaning up my room both physically and metaphorically. As I clean up after my kids, I will think about how to teach them the discipline to clean up after themselves. And as I put away the laundry and the files, I will work on a plan to bring discipline back into my own life.

Time to establish a new "normal."

seeing the brother in a whole new light

I am really concerned about my son. He was home with us these last several days and I am afraid he is becoming resentful with all that is going on. There have been so many changes in these last few weeks and he is a kid who does not like change. He just learned yesterday that he will not be returning to the school that he has gone to for the last six years. He was visibly upset but didn't say much about it. While he was here this week, I split most of my time between my job and his sister. I don't recall doing much of anything with him and I am very sad about that. I am afraid his anger is building up. He is off to his dad's house for a few days and I hope that they will get some quality time together.

I am seeing the story of the Prodigal son in a whole new light, from the perspective of the brother who stayed home and felt unappreciated. My son is not complaining, but I suspect he feels a lot of the same emotions and rightly so. Usually when the story is told, the brother is portrayed as being bad or wrong for feeling resentment and telling his father how he felt. We are made to feel as if we should only feel joy that the prodigal returned and feeling anything else makes us bad people. I'll never look at this story in the same way again.

I realize our best chance for dealing with our resentments, anger and for finding balance is to go to therapy. I've been very lax about finding a family therapist outside of my daughter's treatment. I called several when this all started but none of them were able to see us at that time. I will pick up that search again on Monday.