I am awake

and feeling as if this blog is the only outside contact I can stand. Already the shaking has begun. I am terrified of school pickup, but I must do it for the sake of my kids. Ten hours away, and yet I feel sick at the thought of it, even though I am not setting foot on school grounds and my boys have agreed to come to the car.

We lay in bed last night, and laughed at something on the TV. Flashes of normalacy. He turned to me and said, "I like you" and I knew exactly what he meant with those three little words.
"I like you like this."
"I like you when you seem okay."
"I like having the real you back, if only for a moment."

Fleeting moments where it all seems fine, only to have some stupid thing set me off into full panic mode. Small sections of family life where I actually think, "hey, I feel okay, maybe it is getting better..." and then the fear and panic rise again.

Is this the beginning of my permanent descent? And in the early hours I wonder which relationship will they drip their poison into next, who will be the latest to look at me and shake their heads? How long until people realise how transparent the masks are if only you look hard enough?

To think a week ago I thought all was ceased, that it was icily civil and the lies had finally stopped. How can people be so naive to not see their guilt? If they are the ones harping on and on and on, and I am not, who is persecuting who?

And just as she accused her last hated obsession of faking her illness for attention, she will accuse me of the same. I guess mental health is easier to lie about than a brain tumour though. So more people will believe her on this one...