This is what fear is

Note: Thanks everyone who emailed me about the site. I did forget to renew the account (which was going to an old email address) and then after that I screwed up the nameservers, but apparently all is good at last. I am emailing people back but slowly.

This week I have come up against the fear wall again. Last weekend Noah and I were merrily making sugar cookies and I moved a can of tomato paste to get the vanilla and it popped open and paste came spewing out. Noah and I watched in fascination! And then I wiped it up and threw it out and we washed our hands and went on our merry way.

Tuesday I had a really nice interview with some of the people at Bereaved Families of Ontario, for a work piece.

Then Wednesday night Noah woke up at about midnight vomiting. He threw up about four times total and then went back to sleep, but of course, I did not. I cleaned up, not just the bathroom but then disinfected/bleached the kitchen and the doorknobs and everything else, because if someone is vomiting it must be, you know, my fault. I fully recognized that this was an OCD moment out of the legacy of living with my mother, who always treated anyone sick like they had bubonic plague, and would then serve rice & plain noodles for a week because her fear of meat and vegetable born illness would be triggered. But anyways, so I cleaned up and then I thought hmmmmmmmmmm that can exploded.

So, I Googled. And I learned that botulism is like NUCLEAR WASTE. If a can explodes you should basically don a gas mask. And you have to bleach everything. And throw the rags out. I’m not kidding! Eeek!

Then I read that 30 per cent of people who get botulism, you know… die.

If this were a movie you’d have some amazing tunnel-like cut effect here, because all of a sudden there I am at 3 in the morning in The Bad Place. (In my head.) The place where Noah dies. Honestly, I am wondering when this ends, if ever. It is just safer to feel the horrendous, crushing fear along with the images of how that would be (body, funeral, empty house) now that he is generally heathly and 4 years old? Is it because this is the season of Emily? Is this getting worse? Is it just a bump on the grief train? PTSD? I don’t know but too many nights like that and I will end up having a heart attack. I think the problem is that it’s not just the fear; it’s the fear that comes and then with it all the images and feelings of when the fear was accurate; that day we walked in on the tech crying at Emily’s scan.

And the thing is, I knew I was freaking out. I just couldn’t actually stop it. On the outside it was very calm ’cause I couldn’t move. Anyways, I got back to sleep somewhere around 5, in time to get up for six. Carl stayed home with Noah (more on this in a later post) Thursday and I worked but it was not connected work; it was pretty dissociative. Friday I worked half a day as I’m interviewing people (interns) and then headed home.

Only perhaps Saturday did I actually start to stop planning for the end of the world as a sort of background to the rest of my daily life. Then of course, this morning (Sunday) Noah had horrendous abdominal cramps for about 15 minutes so I rushed him into the clinic. By the time we were seen (about an hour and half after the pain stopped) Noah was dancing around in excitement. (Sigh.) The diagnosis is either continued virus or virus-induced constipation. The doctor was not overly impressed with the possibility of botulism contamination given that the can was a commercial can and no one ate anything, but did humour me by having Noah wriggle his eyebrows.

Anyways, the thing is… parenting in the age of anxiety is well, anxious enough, but I think we strike a good balance. But when we slip off that balance, my god. It is really tough.