stressful relaxation

We're in the mountains and even though it is beautiful out and there is no pressing agenda, my stomach is knotted and my jaw is clenched shut. We are at a street fair that is incredibly chill but for a child with anxiety, this purposeless wandering is eating away at her and she does not know how to contain or control her emotions. Her coping is to shove out all the negative feelings she is having, vomiting them up in acrid chunks and launching at anyone within a close enough distance. Usually this is me and regardless of what I say to try to help/soothe/redirect/manage her, it is an emotional tug of war that leaves me exhausted and bitter. Why? Why does it have to be THIS hard? Why doesn't logic work? When I say anything to her it is like I've spat on a hot skillet, the hissing response is instant.

Mental illness is so murky in our world. I feel like we're still living in the land between -- Yes! it's real, its not clear cut, and it can be incredibly exhausting and -- just get a grip on your situation -- you don't have it any harder than anyone else, we all struggle, keep trudging on -- you'll be fine. That's the landscape I see or imagine when I'm in the middle of some sort of struggle with something that cannot be looked at and simply, very factually interpreted as a rash, low sugar, a broken bone, something that a clinical eye could diagnose and the world accepts it. Mental illness is ethereal, it floats around us like ghosts that we are constantly try to prove are real. It's actually so spectacularly exhausting -- I have no other words for that. An afternoon with my child that I would do anything for, that I love more than myself, leaves me completely, utterly deflated. Traveling with other people compounds the anxiety that I, myself, feel. The fear of judgement is huge. It's impossible not to feel this. And since the subject is so subjective in the eyes of others, it seems like you're pleading your case, which shouldn't ever be the way it is.

In a time when suicides seem much too common and as a mom with teenager girls who have the terrible misfortune of growing up with such a warped social media crazed world, bizarre realities like the Kardashians who dole out their worth in snippets, it feels like so much is stacked against you as a parent. How do we keep on? It's frustrating. At least I will put this out there -- I'm willing to share that it is a struggle and not pretend that it is all fine and everything is good. Even when there is no tragedy in our life, when you are working to keep your family's health in tact, there never needs to be a crisis for things just to be hard.