Waking up anxious today, and the dark gloom outside is affecting me, too. I need to figure out why I'm afraid to be alone so I can deal with it. I'm stumped. My therapist is stumped. Yesterday while my husband was at work, my dad picked my son up to take him fishing and said he didn't know when they'd be back, could be dark, and I panicked. After they left I started crying. A specific time would've helped me so much. Hours ahead of me to be alone and not knowing when he would be back really scared me. (I do this when my husband gets called out for work, too, after hours. I panic, get scared he won't come back because I don't know when he will. It's nightmarish for me.) I usually take him with me and visit my parents, but since dad picked him up, I didn't know whether to go ahead and visit mom or not, so I did so I wouldn't have to be alone so long, but I don't really think she wanted me to visit. I can usually tell because she'll say, "You don't have to visit every day..." While visiting, she started griping about my husband - the two of them pretty much hate each other and don't get along. How he's not a good father and never does anything with my son, and that would probably help him a whole lot. She can't accept that with my son's Asperger's, mild mental impairments, and ADHD, that he'll be the way he is. She's always talking about how IQs can be raised and such. Yes, to an extent they can, but as far as I know it's usually in the same range. His IQ of 76 isn't going to raise to the 100s probably. In a way she blames us for his mental problems, which I think is what's behind her griping about my husband so much. What really bothered me yesterday is that she said if she and dad weren't so old they would take my son to raise. I'm feeling all sorts of anger and stress about this and it's not helping my anxiety issues at all. I love my son and don't want them to raise him. Is she thinking, even leaving my husband out of the picture, that I'm that bad of a parent?? I don't know what picture she has in her head, but I'm not liking it. I've had a lot to deal with since our fire - like my therapist said at my first session a couple days ago, my cup is pretty full. I'm easily overwhelmed right now. Just because I haven't worked with my son on his learning since the fire doesn't mean I don't care about him. I do know I need to start back again, but his mental problems aren't my fault!! I started visiting my parents daily after my mom got out of the hospital in May because I wanted us to be closer. I hadn't visited them much since our fire. But mom is quickly falling back to her negative self, and the last couple weeks I've left some visits either really down or upset. I'm quickly remembering why I had slacked off on the visiting. I wish things weren't this way.