Spinning

I have been spinning things in my head. Possibly because I am not writing often enough here at blog central.  Possibly because I stopped seeing (read that as stopped being able to afford) my counselor.  Possibly because I have not been taking enough Vitamin D.  Possibly because there are people in my children's lives who have no freaking clue who they are or what they need, and it has me just a touch freaked out.  Yep, that's it.  Sleep has skipped out on me.

Last night, while listening to the clock strike the 1:30am chime, I also heard a really loud thump against my bedroom wall.  Turns out it was my daughter's knee, and she was just as awake as I was.  Awake, and wanting to talk.  I got us some milk, used the bathroom, and cuddled us both up in her duvet on the twin bed. 

Turns out that she is kinda feeling a lot of the same things I am feeling.  

Yesterday, earlier in the evening we had her counseling appointment. The usual rules applied for the session in that the adult(s) (usually it is just me, last night her father joined us) get about 5 minutes of time at the very beginning to state some thing that has been happening that we think might need to be discussed.  Something about how things are going from a relationship status, friends, feelings blah blah blah.  It really is just a starter, and then the child who has the appointment goes in without anyone else and gets to direct the session. Last night my ex wanted to talk about the letter I gave his wife about no-contact, and why I had let my daughter (and son) know the contents of the letter.  He wanted the counselor to say how wrong wrong wrong that was of me to involve them.  He did not want to talk about his wife's crying jags, or that she called me a bitch in front of my kids, or that my kids don't like her. 

I stayed very quiet for the most part, gauging my daughter's reactions, and seeing her eyes roll a couple times, I knew that nothing I could say right then would make one damn bit of difference.

The counselor gave me a little reprimand for having shared "adult" topics with my children, and that those should be off limits.  A slight warning about courts and stuff.  Whatever.  I have been doing this long enough now to know the courts don't actually give a shit. Next.  My ex was told he need to get some parenting classes and was advised that his wife should learn to respect boundaries.  Again, next.

What I didn't realize until 1:31am, cuddled around my daughter, was that she heard the counselor say all that too, and instead of talking to her counselor about her feelings, she talked about nothing.  Her thought was that the whole session was a waste of time.  I got it quickly, in that early morning flash of insight that sometimes happens; my daughter believed that her counselor had told her that the entire TOPIC labeled as "adult" were now off limits for her to talk about, too.  She was feeling isolated and alone because she had lost her outlet of the counselor and was afraid that my "reprimand" meant I was going to stop talking about the stuff with her for fear of some court reprisal. 

That was what the eye rolling had meant. It had meant, in her head, to convey to me that she knew better.  That she knew that was not the mom she got.  She got the mom that was going to say stuff to her honestly and openly, and counselor reprimands or not, nothing had changed.

Then came the spinning in her head, the self doubt, the over-thinking.  Oh how like her mother she actually is.  What if mom stops talking to me?  What if mom really does think I don't need to hear adult topics?  What if I can't trust my mom to tell me the truth in a way that I will understand?  What if she takes Dad's side, and I am stuck without any choices?  Wow, my girl can spin it.  This all came out in a rather heavy sobbing-and-grasping meltdown fueled by exhaustion.  She was afraid.

She got my reassurance, and commitment, to never treat her in a way that makes her less intelligent than I know she is.  I helped her see that I was not going anywhere and that my silence at the counseling session was not me abandoning her, but siding with her in knowing that nothing we said right then would change US.  I cried with her, letting her know that I was scared, too. Not of the courts, but that maybe I had forced upon her a growing-up-fast mantra she did not need to have.  She sighed a lot as I held her.  She was drained, but relieved, I knew, because her body softened, her yawns started, and she hugged me when I told her I loved her.

She fell asleep after I told her I would not leave until my butt started hurting too much from being squished in a twin bed, and that her feet stank.  She giggles, cuddled up, sighed and asked if we could talk more later because she was tired.  She made me pinky-swear-cross-my-heart-promise.  I did.  I fell asleep not too long after.

I am hoping for less spinning and more sleep tonight.  You might be seeing more blogs on the topic just so both my daughter and I can rest.  I think I will go buy her another journal, one with pretty spinning colors on the front.  One we can share.  Like mother like daughter.  Her next counseling appointment, should she decide she wants to go, will involve exploring adult topics. She gets this, and I am more than willing to understand that about her, even if no one else does.