Better again, today, overall. The shadow of How I Felt Yesterday And The Day Before and the Day Before That, etc, is humming a sly, mocking tune under its breath, and I will have to stop and listen at some point (I know by now that it will trip me up, if I go too long without acknowledging what it has to say) but for now, I am safe. For now, I can breathe a little, and just take a day or two to feel like “myself”–the myself that is, for the most part, relatively content.

One good thing, I will write One Good Thing: Naomi and Gabriel, the play-acted scene where Spin was arrested. I imagine that makes no sense to anyone who wasn’t there; but I *was* there, and it’s worth a lot of misery and heartache and even some terror, just to hear them playing together.

You see, Amanda? You see. I am willing you to see.

Things always get worse, again–you won’t feel this peaceful forever–but then, they always get better, again.

Did you think, when she was 4 and had lost all her words, and he was 2 and had never so much as babbled “da” or “ma” that they would act out a scene, using full sentences and different voices and laughing with joy at each other’s antics? You didn’t dare hope, and yet, here it is.

It is objectively good, that your children enjoy each other’s company. Even when *you* don’t feel it, even when you’re too lost in your own despairing ruminations and unrelenting terrors to feel anything but pain, their relationship is A Good Thing.

And today, you lucky girl, you *could* feel it.