Showing up not giving up

For the last year my household has been fighting a war: the war on mental and behavioral health. 

My middle son has been struggling to a long time.  Without recounting our entire story (I already did that about a month ago on Facebook so if you’re curious you can go read more there) I wanted to say that we are still living in this valley.

And it’s exhausting living here.

I’ve rescheduled things, been late to work, late to meetings, missed work, missed coffee dates and lunches and I missed the entire freaking Johnny Depp/Amber Herd trial. 

I’m tired. 

Yesterday I told a friend: I feel defeated, I want to give up. 

She said to me, but you won’t. 

She said, because showing up is what we do.  

This morning, (which is technically now yesterday) I spent two hours and ten minutes having the same conversations with my son about why he has to take his medicine. We talked through his fears, we made a plan for them, we made plans for those plans if they failed. He cried, he yelled things he didn’t mean, he threw a chair and a water bottle. He hid under his blanket, he held me and I held him while I held my breath and counted to ten and tried my best not to yell.

And two hours and ten minutes later he took his pills.

Today was a win after a really long losing streak.

I’m under no delusion that tomorrow won’t be the same as today, that we won’t have the same conversation all over again with the same fears and the same plans. 

But I’m hopeful that maybe tomorrow it only takes two hours.