The Fog of Monotony

Do you ever feel like you are just going through the motions? Like you are just on auto-pilot...waking up in the morning feeling the exact same way you felt the day before...doing the exact same things you did...one foot in front of the other...same thing...never ending...trapped in a continuous loop of mundane monotony? Do you ever feel like you have reached that point where you are losing sight of the big picture and seem to be stuck....in a rut....of just "getting by"?
Yea, me too....
Sometimes I find myself checking Emma's blood sugar at night and seeing a number that isn't so good....knowing in my head that I should be sighing and trudging downstairs to get juice to fix it....knowing I should be feeling this sense of urgency and this panic...and yet, I feel nothing. I stare at that number and it is just a number....just one more number in the millions of numbers I have seen on that little screen...one more number that needs to be different...one more number that needs to be fixed...one more number that I can add to the list. Sometimes i find myself having gone the whole day while she is at school without having said a single word. I am stuck in that land of knowing that I have to get things done....and yet I don't want to...I just want to take care of myself for once and curl up on the couch and forget that I even know what the word diabetes means.
I must sound like the world's most selfish person saying that....and now I feel bad for even thinking it....but it's true. I'm not perfect...I have flaws. Sometimes I just want to sit down and do nothing. Sometimes I can feel myself slipping over that edge....knowing that if I let go, I will be stuck in that rut forever....not wanting to be stuck...not wanting to have to find my way back out again...but still having that threatening presence there looming over me nonetheless. Sometimes I'm just tired. Tired enough that I don't want to fight anymore...I don't want to hold on to the edge...I just want to let go.
Then I see my daughter's face....and I know that she doesn't now and will never have that option of just letting go. She will have this battle forever...long after I am the captain of her pancreas team. She doesn't have a choice. It is her disease....not mine. In the grand scheme of things, I will have this fight for such a short amount of time....just a blink of an eye. So what right do I have to complain? What right do I have to feel sad or depressed or angry or even exhausted? What right do I have to get upset and wish that the rut of neverending-ness would just end already? What right do I have to hate the monotony? What right do I have to feel bad?
I don't have that right. It's not my disease. It's hers. So I see her face in my mind and I keep walking...I keep moving...one foot in front of the other...because I do it for her. I endure it for her for the little while that it is mine to endure....because I am her Mom...and I love her more than the air I breathe and the life I live. At least the path in this rut is well worn and familiar...and at least I know I am not alone....I catch glimpses of other D-parents out of the corner of my eye. I know they are there....making their way through the fog of monotony with me...and I know we will make it back out into the sunshine again.