Ben's gone on a school trip to Auschwitz and I'm home alone

There's something strange and bizarre about someone with (or recovered from) anorexia going to visit a Nazi concentration camp, isn't there? Someone whose starvation was self-imposed in a place where millions of people's starvation was regime-imposed... Yet both sets of people were immediately surrounded by a world where there was more than enough to eat, yet - for very different reasons - they were prevented from having it. Meanwhile I'm enjoying the welcome sense of freedom that comes from having three days to myself.



Over the past (almost) three years I've been looking after Ben most of the time, especially during the long periods of social isolation. So whenever I've been working or doing other things, I've felt guilty - or had to split myself between work, etc and Ben's needs. Being on my own, with no-one to answer to, has been extremely rare.

Ben is also quite bossy. He'll tell us to turn down the TV or our music (weird, I know, considering it's supposed to be parents that tell their kids to turn down the volume), or he'll tell me off for snacking on occasional rubbish like chocolate biscuits or cake. Or for having a glass of wine mid week instead of keeping it for weekends. Sometimes it's as if he is the parent, not me.

He also likes company when he's eating all his meals, so I can't eat when I feel like it.

So I'm just enjoying having a few days to myself, to be repeated this weekend when hubby and Ben go away for a medieval weekend somewhere in Leicestershire.