Tornadoes in Carmenville

Carmen nearly made me cry yesterday. When I got home she was with Rosemary, and while she seemed to be upbeat and in a good mood, she was in the process of packing all her belongings into a trash bag so she could catch the train home. I managed to distract her for long enough to give her the dinnertime meds. We started to make dinner, but she was getting increasingly pissed off and eventually went up stairs to keep packing. She flipped. She yelled at me, told me that I was lying to her about where her clothes were. I let her rip everything out of her closet. Just when I had decided that the only thing to do was to take her for a long walk to the "train station", she got tired and agreed to come have dinner. After eating she calmed a bit - I think that maybe she didn't have enough food in her stomach when she took her brain cocktail. All was pretty calm from then, except she was planning her bus trip the next day.

This morning at about 2:00 I heard her get up, and from the intercom in her room, it sounded like she was opening and closing doors. Thank god my aunt was in the next room to deal with it. Carmen sounded mad, but I couldn't decipher why.

This is hard. It's hard to see her like this, and it's hard to be patient and accept that it's not really her insulting you. Two weeks ago she was so relaxed and not mentioning anything about wanting to go home. I don't know what's happened this week.

The funny thing is that it feels like it's been a pretty long two days, and my parents aren't even in Beijing yet. At least I'm not sleeping in an airport.