Getting to the other side. Part 1.

I have been in a funk lately, quite the opposite of celebrating anything, much less lovely. There have been the normal life aggravations and some old-style Madeleine blowups and maybe a little extra dose of circumstantial stress piling on top of it all.

All of the normal stress, plus the bonus stress, piled up and up and up until Saturday night when Madeleine declared quite loudly that she hates me. She doesn't like me at all. She, with her hands clamped over her ears, firmly stated that she would no longer be listening to anything I said. Because of all the hate.

Here we are again, I thought in resignation and outrage all at once, and we battled our way through the evening until she fell into an exhausted sleep, and I fell onto the couch to drink myself into an exhausted oblivion. In the early part of the evening, I sobbed to Wayland, "The worst part of it is that when she gets like that, I just don't feel it at all -- no desire at all to help her. She says she hates me and I want to retreat and let her fend for herself."

I don't do that, of course. I'm there for her no matter what, and some dim part of me recognizes that Mad is actually at her most vulnerable when she lashes out like she does, so I stay and try to be calm. It works out eventually. It always does.

"But," I sobbed to Wayland, "Right now I feel like I have nothing left to give her. Nothing to offer. No patience or understanding. It's like I have this store of maternal energy and it's all dried up. Really it's not just that, even. It's everything. I'm just drained."

"My old boss used to call that his sanity well," Wayland said.

"Yes! My sanity well!" I said. "My sanity well is all dried up and I have no reserves to tap into. I'm a woman on the brink!" I meant for this to be kind of jokey, with all its dramatic flair, but really I kind of meant it. At that moment, staring dully down at my lap and fighting back tears, I didn't really see how to fix anything. Everything felt wrong, wrong, wrong.

"Well, we have to figure out how to refill the well," Wayland said.

"I agree, but I don't know what that is," I mused. I ran through the options. I'd been exercising regularly, eating pretty well, reading a great book....all these things were usually quite restorative for me. But not lately.

"There's nothing," I finally muttered.

Luckily I was wrong about that. The completely obvious solution would not present itself to me until two days later.