Twenty minutes after last night’s freakout, she was back downstairs. A smile on her face, asking for a drink.
She amazes me. One minute she is screaming, the next she is laughing. I don’t think she knows how to hold a grudge. It takes me a bit longer. I had stopped crying, but I was pissed. I know I shouldn’t have been angry at her, but I was.
I would do absolutely anything for her, and I do. I hate being her punching bag. I know I have to be, and I know it means she is trying to tell me something. And I know she looks to me the most to understand and help her. But I really, really wish she could do it without hurting me. Without hurting herself.
As I reclined on the couch post-meltdown, she came up to me for her usual pre-bedtime snuggle fest. “I don’t want to snuggle with her,” I told my husband. “Yes you do,” he replied. And I did. So I did.
A day later, I have found my marbles and I am calmer. When she came home from school, she started crying again. This time it was just because she was venting. She does it just about every day at the same time, releasing all the frustrations, all the feelings, all the words stuck inside her head.
I lay next to her on her bedroom floor and instantly she scooched close, curved into the crook of my arm, put one leg over my two and one arm across my stomach. We lay there, and let go the stress of the day — of last night. For the moment.
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