My dearest Rose has had a breakdown, we are both exhausted and limping. She has been in a psych facility for over a week now. We were trying to manage the crisis at home while she crashed, until her distress became so intense she could not stop vomiting. 5 hours, 18 vomits later, some shots of anti-emetics and a lot of tranquillisers in the local ED and finally she could rest a little.

Our poor little family is shell shocked and run down. Our tribe has rallied and surrounded us with so much love and support. We have both doubted everything hard. Our case worker tells me simply – you can be the strongest, most resilient people ever, sometimes things just go wrong.

She is working so hard to understand how her world has collapsed, how to find her way back. Is she talking responsibility, a social worker asks me. I think of her desperately colouring in at 3am when the nightmares are so bad she can’t stop crying. Crawling into the shower clothed to find some kind of peace under the thundering water. They gave her a rubber band in the unit, she snapped it until her wrists bruised. Yes, I say, she is very responsible. She is overwhelmed. I am overwhelmed. Sometimes it’s more than we can bear.

I’m lying in bed so deeply sad it feels hard to breathe. I type messages to people and don’t send them. I look at blank status updates and turn away without words. There is an ice cold patch between my shoulder blades, radiating a chill through my back, into my chest, like a spike into my heart. Aching with cold.

We talk ourselves into hope. We talk ourselves into despair. Over and over. Holding tight, and on the edge of everything we have loved and built dissembling. We are on fire. We are broken and spilling into the night.

Rose has messaged me from the unit tonight. She’s vomiting again, chronically, and her blood pressure has spiked. They are taking her back to the ED. I feel broken. They plan to send her home in a week. I cannot fathom caring her, as well as my children, and myself. I don’t know how to keep us all safe. She is the mother of my child. The heart of our world. I love her so dearly. I am so tired. So scared, and so sad.