Dear Robert,

Dear Robert,

If today were a normal day, and you were the Robert you sometimes are, I would be picking up the phone to say, "I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE." It's just one of those days when the pressures seem to be more than I can manage. I would ask you to help me see perspective, to make decisions about parenting that somehow seem to big to make on my own, to calm me down and let me know we'd weather this storm together (and all the others, too.)

But today is our new normal, and you are the Robert you are now, and I can't share the load of the burdens I bear. Your own burdens are too much for you already. Expressing my negative emotions leads to a few different outcomes. Here they are:

1. You get angry. Angry at whichever child is creating issues. Or angry at the troubles worrying me. Or angry at me for feeling like my life is hard when yours is clearly much harder. Or angry at God for giving us trials. This is the most likely response right now.

2. You get more depressed and withdrawn. You start making broad, sweeping decisions about our lives and how they are hopeless and will continue to be hopeless. You decide that there are no solutions except despair. This is the most likely response when you're even further down the path of depression.

3. You rally. I see old Robert come through the fog of blackness, and hear old Robert's kind and loving voice and feel his arms hold me and let me know that we can manage. This does happen. Sometimes this happens. I hold out hope that it will happen more and more often.

I would like to assume that #3 will be the most likely response, and handle the other outcomes if necessary. I would like to. I just can't.

So when you come home from work, and I feel fragile, with skin of porcelain ready to crack at any rough treatment, I will put on my smile, ask how your day was, soothe you through your troubles, sit you down to dinner, and do my best to love you.

But it is so hard. It is so very very hard. And I am very very lonely.

Will you come back soon? I know you would if you could.

Clara