jon has been in mexico for five days. is decompressing from a stressful year in school, writing and researching his dissertation. it will still be here when he gets back, but it will be summer and there will be no classes to teach and no other busywork to occupy him. i, in the meantime, am home with the children, alone. i was extraordinarily busy before he left and all those things i was doing can still occupy plenty of headspace. in fact, there was no decompression from my stress. i simply hit the solid wall of being alone with two children. there will not be time to decompress. there will be no time for me. i don't know how i am supposed to deal with my life. i feel pathetic to whine about how difficult it is to take care of my children with no partner and no respite. i feel pathetic that i cannot make it through a day without feeling rage from the frustration of children - their messes and their intense whining, their needs, their unreasonable desires. i cannot keep it all together enough to feed everyone and enrich them and fulfill tasks and clean and keep myself sane. i think of how history has shown that none of this was intended to be this way, that isolation is damaging. and yet - i watch so many people do this and do it far better than i am able and i cannot for the life of me figure why i seem so resistant to bucking up and dealing with my shit. we are not starving and things are together, but i scream and swear and we stay indoors and i do no cooking. it is far from my ideal.