I’d thought that I’d had my fill of beating myself up yesterday, what with blaming myself for Jasper’s pneumonia and all, but really, there’s no such thing as too much self-flagellation when you’re a mother, is there? After a brief flirtation with self-forgiveness that lasted, roughly, the duration of the season premiere of Lost, I’ve regressed fully back into guilt and self-loathing, and it has more than a little to do with the fact that tomorrow, I’m leaving my sick little boy and flying to Nashville.

Which, I wouldn’t do if he weren’t improving and if my husband weren’t going to be around to take over the role of primary caregiver, but still. I’m leaving him. I don’t want to leave him, but I also kinda do. I haven’t had a break since my dad died, and that, well, that wasn’t so much a break as it was a giant, gaping tear in my heart-mind continuum. And the idea of a day or two of not being the Captain (and First Mate, and deckhand, and cook, and scullery maid) of the Good Ship Our House is just so, so, so compelling. That, and this is my work – work that I take much pleasure in, such that it will feel like a holiday, but still. I want to go. I’m going to go.

But I feel guilty as hell.

(Closing comments. I don’t want to crowd-source the question of whether or not I should go. I am going to go. I need to find my own way to feeling okay – as okay as I can feel – about that.) (And yes, I know that I crowd-sourced reassurance over my guilt and anxiety yesterday, and comments are still open over there if you want to weigh in on the question of whether mothers are always hard on themselves, even though I’ve just answered that very question here, in spades, and so it’s really just moot. BEHOLD, I RAMBLE NONSENSICALLY.)