Everyday bleergh.

After Christmas I was in a really bad shape. I was holding myself together by sheer willpower, the threat of depression hanging over my head. My main strategy when everyday life gets taxing is to contain emotions and negative thoughts, deal with the everyday things that has to be dealt with, and try to focus on the positive when there is any of that. Good tactics, more or less, for a short time period. Bad though if it goes on for more than a week or so. After way to many weeks of continuous chaos and sickness and worry, it started to be a very bad strategy indeed.

Just in time though we went to my in-laws for Christmas holiday, and we stayed for a week. Yesterday we came home, and already the stress and angst and depressive thoughts and listlessness are creeping up on me again. I found myself snapping at Mistress, and she told me it seemed like I had become a totally different person when we got back home. All I wanted to say was "I could say the same to you".

For me, it's so easy to see how she is different. With the responsibility and the endless chores at home, she gets tense. Grumpy, with a kind of accusing tone in her voice. It seems to me that everything she says to me is some sort of critique or accusation.

But. I also know that when I start to feel stressed or too tired, everything sounds like accusations. I get prickly, off balance, hyper-sensitive and prone to feeling like a misunderstood victim.

The truth, I think, is that we both felt worse once we got home. At my in-laws we're spoiled. Grandma makes all the food, and takes care of the kid during the night and the morning. We only have to take care of ourselves and of course little S, but all the burdens and cares of our normal lifes are gone and not missed. I get to rest enough so I don't feel overwhelmed, and that means I have patience when I'm actually with my family. And Mistress lights up, she doesn't fret as much, she relaxes and feels more present. She's there, in the here-and-now, in a way that I often miss when we're at home.

And there, we had sex. I felt like hers again, like I belonged to her. Before we left, we hadn't connected like that in what felt like forever - sickness and stress and job and lack of sleep prevented it, and the more stressed out I become the more I detach. I try to function without her, and I hate it but I can do it. Now I was starting to relax and trust and rely on her again, and now it seems like she's gone. It's like she, or us, or whatever it is I'm talking about, drifted away the moment we got into the hallway of our apartment.

I miss her. I miss me, the way I am when I feel safe and dependant and close to her. I miss us.

And the worse thing is almost that all those feelings make me bitter and angry and grumpy and acts like a wedge between us, making the problem even worse. Bleergh.