adventures and anxiety

The all school campout was an amazing adventure in fun, sleep deprivation and anxiety.

The first day was filled with so much fun. I loved every single minute of it. Laughter and games, obstacle courses and spaghetti, endless games of jess verses all the kids under eight tag, and campfire songs.

Eliza, toby and i slept together in a hut and tristan was further up in the woods in a tent with her two friends and their mom. All the kids were asleep by ten. As i heard the kids gently drift into exhausted snores you could hear the clink, clink of all the parents getting out bottles of wine and beer, chips and salsa and homemade goodies.

The parents seperated into two parties. One up top where the big kids were in tents and one down by the hut at the picnic table. We sat and we drank beer and yellow tail and we laughed at our children stories and the little moments of parenthood. Celebrating the fact that all our kids were asleep and we were without them, but together.

I forgot the fact that i haven't really eaten for a month and my body is full of medication. I got a little drunk. It filled me with anxiety and sadness. I wandered back and forth endlessly between the two campsites, saying hello to both parties. Trying to find tristan's tent in the dark woods. Sitting alone marvelling at the stars and watching all the little critters that bring the forest alive at night.

This is why people think i'm odd. I can't socialize for hours on end. I can socialize for minutes at a time before i need a break. I can talk for hours to one person that i am comfortable with. Shane is often half-way up the stairs to bed while i am still chatting away to him.

I went back to our picnic table and there was only a few parents left. The drunken mom of tristan's best friend laying down on my lap telling me how amazing i am and how much she loves me. Two a.m. became three a.m. Soon everybody went to bed. I wandered up to check on tristan one last time. My manic energy at night. It makes it impossible to go to bed.

When i was all alone and all the kids were asleep and the parents had drifted off into alcohol induced sleep i wandered around some more. I was overcome with the desire to call my brother in sweden. One last mom asked me who the hell i was calling, i told her shane. I would have, but i can't call home at four in the morning when my mother-in-law is sleeping there.

It's been almost two years since i drove my brother to the detox centre in vancouver. He had three seizures from alcohol withdrawal on the way there. He weighed less than one hundred pounds. He was going to die. I haven't called him on the phone since that day.

I saw him briefly when he visited from sweden this summer. But, we didn't really talk. Just the casual conversation that you can have while watching four children run and play.

I wanted to call him and tell him i was sorry. That i still love him and i carry him in my heart. That i see myself in him. That i can't talk to him anymore because i don't trust him and i don't want him to die. And if he does. I don't want to see it.

Of course, i couldn't call him. So i called my voicemail at home and listened to some messages. I sat alone in the field. I went to bed wondering how i could have had a day filled with so much fun and end up here sad and lonely in a field. I went to bed and snuggled in with eliza amidst the snores and complaints from twenty other children.

I slept for an hour.

Another day full of breakfast and fun. And a boy with an anaphylactic reaction to a wasp sting. An injection of adrenaline given by me, followed by a crazy drive to emergency. But that's a story for another day.