This week, the house has been filled with a potent mix of vitriol and vomit. Most of the family have been ill, and R and I are at loggerheads with one another. I send my friend Steve a gloomy text with quite a few expletives, which just about covers everything. "It sounds like you are on number three of the seven stages of separation," he says.

"Enlighten me. What seven stages?"

"Well it's all compartmentalisation bollocks really, but part three is anger and bargaining. Only one more negative step to go through after that, then everything looks up from there."

Steve is humouring me, of course, but here they are:

Shock and denial
Pain and guilt
Anger and bargaining
Depression and reflection
The upward turn
Reconstruction
Acceptance and hope

I feel like I could be living these backwards, or on random play. No one processes emotion in such an ordered fashion. "And everyone has their own way of dealing with it. I reckon I'll be stuck on number three for a very long time," I say to Steve, angrily.

"I warned you. It's baloney. Why did you ask me?"

"Because I wanted a bit of comic relief. Could I just skip to number five please? It sounds promising."

All I can picture are erections, hundreds of them. My brain has been inhabited by one of a frustrated, sex-starved teenager. I blame exhaustion.

The sickness bug hit me last in line at the beginning of the week, and as I lay in bed, too sick to move, R came around to help with the boys for a few hours. All I could think was, "My God, this is the best present that anyone can ever give an unwell parent. The chance to lie down." My gratitude was short-lived, however, as he left shortly before tea and bedtime.

Before he went, we had a row about how to parent. He believed he was right about disallowing something, and it was causing a lot of tension with the kids (I had previously allowed them to do what he was demanding they not do). I thought R was choosing his battles badly.

"If you don't back me up, I'm going," he said, looking down with petulant eyes at me in bed. I didn't back him up and he left.

I realised, as I drifted downstairs to look after the kids where he had left off (the sick leading the sick), how much I relied on my health. Being unwell makes me feel fearful and vulnerable: aside from the usual things that it can disturb, such as sleep, appetite and energy, it reminds me how depended on I am.

On the upside, it also makes me feel supremely grateful that my family and I are usually in good health.

It's hard to keep the good times rolling where family life stops flowing as it should. The bug was nothing major, but much like a pesky love-rat, it had its way with us then wafted out of the door leaving nothing but more dirty laundry. Something so small had the power to leave me feeling completely drained.

We are all better now, but my anger with R has not abated. He is still furious with me too, and neither of us will back down.

I think I am usually quick to apologise, but this time I don't want to. I have tried to push my anger down, quash it, mould it into something more useful. But now I'm just letting myself be angry. Not by shouting, or being bad tempered with everyone, or punishing myself. But simply by telling R that I am royally pissed off that he walked out on us when we really needed him.

Shitehawk. Pissflaps. Guffbucket. Fury can make me say some ridiculous, childish things, but only to myself, because out-loud and on repeat they sound like the incantations of a lunatic. They're certainly more inventive than the c word, though. An alternative c word I have taken up with gusto, however, is Cruise, as in Tom.

After R and I finally agree to disagree following our row, I mention the most famous scientologist in the world. He is anathema to R. "You're just like a tall Tom Cruise: controlling and passive aggressive one minute, then charming and freakily upbeat the next."

I stop there. I know I shouldn't insult him if I aim to express my anger in a healthy way, but at least R has the good humour to laugh. Now, what's next in the seven stages? Ah, yes. Depression and reflection.