I never realized how dysfunctional my everyday life had become. I never realized all of the things - habits, words, actions - that I had in place to cope with everyday life with a difficult child. And now that difficult child has moved out...I am having trouble remembering how to re-adjust back to "normal".
Today, for example, I was washing a load of towels. And it suddenly hit me: I can actually use the linen closet for.....drum roll please....TOWELS! I can keep clean towels in the linen closet by the bathroom. Wow! How exciting!
And how stupid - and outrageous! - that all of these years I have had to keep close tabs on bathroom towels as though I were guarding gold bars! All these years spent making sure that difficult child was not ruining towels, or storing wet, mildewy towels in her bedroom, or stealing DS's towels, or using the good towels for crafts, or hair-dying, or any of the thousand other ways that bathroom towels were constantly being destroyed to the point that having to "guard the towels" became an actual "thing" that I had to do in order to survive in this house.
PTSD, anyone?
Oh yeah....in spades!
Today, for example, I was washing a load of towels. And it suddenly hit me: I can actually use the linen closet for.....drum roll please....TOWELS! I can keep clean towels in the linen closet by the bathroom. Wow! How exciting!
And how stupid - and outrageous! - that all of these years I have had to keep close tabs on bathroom towels as though I were guarding gold bars! All these years spent making sure that difficult child was not ruining towels, or storing wet, mildewy towels in her bedroom, or stealing DS's towels, or using the good towels for crafts, or hair-dying, or any of the thousand other ways that bathroom towels were constantly being destroyed to the point that having to "guard the towels" became an actual "thing" that I had to do in order to survive in this house.
PTSD, anyone?
Oh yeah....in spades!