When you live in chaos all you ever get to do is crisis manage, put out fires constantly.

Occasionally there will be a quiet time, a time when all is peaceful and you hold your breath and hope it will last but it doesn’t because you don’t know how it became calm and so you don’t know how to keep it that way.

A word, an action, a thing moved, something, anything, nothing and

You are off again.

A life preventing fires or putting them out, or a combination of both, is exhausting.  I was exhausted.

I bent over backwards, I made the *right* dinners, we stopped going to the *wrong* places, I did everything I could think of and while it might work for a while, nothing was a lasting solution, because, let’s be honest.  I had no idea what I was doing.

I was groping around in the dark hoping to find a magic solution that would just make him stop feeling bad all the time.

It took a long time to see that by doing what I was going, I was adding to the chaos, I was adding to the unpredictability, I was adding to the explosions.

There was nothing structured.  There was nothing routine.  There were no stated expectations.  I just lurched from passive (do the *right* things, avoid the *wrong* things) to authoritarian (go to your room, I am taking the iPad) and we all rode around in the emotional roller coaster.

I got really good at fighting, and avoiding fires.

So many skills that I no longer need.  I am more than happy to leave off my breathing apparatus and fireman suit.  They are really heavy to carry around and significantly impede normal movement and function.  Now that I am not holding the hose, I am free to make plans for the future.