Category Archives: Survival

Claudio-Duart-Designer pixabay canva
Living, Mental Health, Survival

Five Years On

I’d like to blame my current malaise on COVID.

Not the having of the virus, though two times was punishment enough. (I know, it certainly could have been worse. Believe me, I know.)

And while the pandemic and attendant lockdown messed with my time-space continuum royally, it started in the months before.

When I let myself get so low, I had a near-panic attack just going to the doctor’s office to ask for meds.

When I got so low, I let my mind trick me into thinking needing meds was a moral failure on my part.

When I stumbled around in a fog so thick, I didn’t realize how bad it had gotten.

And then as I climbed out, I felt the need to tell the story.

I knew I needed to explain how I’d gotten there – for the mental health narrative and for my own mental health.

But the story was so huge. The path so steep and craggy, I knew not where to begin or how.

And the more time passes, the harder a thing is to tell. Details forgotten, edges dulled.

And then the world stopped.

We were all in survival mode. Myself acutely.

I thank God for the fortuitous timing of that first appointment.

For if I hadn’t started meds when I did –

thrown into ‘homeschooling’ and online learning and personal loss from afar. . .

But after months of bizarre, those details began to be forgotten and those edges dulled.

And this was life.

We were expected to pick up the baton and keep time

when time was wonky, hearts were broken, and psyches scarred.

Five years on

I’ve picked up bad habits, sloth and sipping alcohol.

Smack-dab in the middle of perimenopause

and the slog of midlife.

What started as peeling back the layers of over-exhaustion and exertion

flipped the other way into inert.

Achieving perfection and avoiding failure by not attempting at all

has settled into paralysis.

And now, what is life, but this fragile thing that can be taken and wrenched dry in mere months.

When the acute sorrow is gone and you’re left with nothing but the days

and another load of groceries to unpack.

Five years on

and I still can’t tell you how I got here.

But I have begun.

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River in the middle of green trees
Survival

To those of us in middle age

Who curse out our parents for ‘giving it to us’

– whatever it may be:

diabetes, depression, attention deficit disorder –

and then turn around to our teens cursing us out for giving it to them.

Who move children into college

and come home to crap they’ve left behind.

Who are exhausted in every sense of the word.

Whose friends are going through it.

Whose parents are ill or actively dying.

Who alternately sweat or shake with chills or shit after drinking wine

It all feels like too much –

but this is life for a lot of us right now.

We are not alone and we will survive.

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Canva Witsanu Patipatamak
motherhood, Survival

Exposed

I’m always late.

Not because I’m an asshole.

But my best intentions to leave and arrive in a timely fashion just never seem to progress as intended.

Sometimes a progression of stuff that you just can’t make up stacks up and against and over each other and makes for a royal shit show.

As I breathlessly explained to my daughter’s Girl Scout leader why we were late to one activity last year, “it’s been one of those days”.

She said, “I feel like that’s everyday for you.”

I felt my face stiffen. It often betrays that initial ego reaction you’d usually like to keep under wraps.

She said it with a warm smile and a laugh. She did not mean it as a dig.

My face was more my own sober realization that, while our life may not be, very often our logistics are a shit show.

I do often rush into a room, feeling (and quite possibly sweating) as if I’ve just run a marathon. More pressing than my pulse is the urge to explain. If that old woman with the disapprovingly dipped eyelids knew the gauntlet we’d just run to get here, she’d be impressed we were only x minutes late.

There was the teen who refused to get out of bed. The kid who hid the hairbrush. The one who needed help with socks.

A forgotten book.

You didn’t get my coat?

Shut up

Stop it

I don’t know what to wear

We’re leaving in five minutes?

And that’s when we’re all headed to the same place.

Forget multiple work schedules, sport schedules, driving abilities and available cars.

And compliance is always on a sliding scale with six bars.

I have always been such a good control freak. A logistics queen. Responsible. Trustworthy. With follow-through like we the people. I was never the harried hot mess mom with a shoe full of kids.

Now it seems like everyday is one of those days.

As I said, this woman had not remarked in judgement. And I should not be concerned with the opinions of others. And we do deal with a lot on a daily basis.

I guess I just didn’t want my struggle to be so public.

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Image by Csillagvirág from Pixabay
Living, Survival, Technology

Deluged

In nature
I wonder how many streams
is too many streams

Excepting flood stage
what is the maximum
confluence
of streams

Because 
we humans
are not smarter
than nature

and yet

we try to support
multiple inputs,
audio video sensual,
all at once

It is no wonder 
our consciousness 
shuts down
zones out
is washed away
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The Partnership in Education
anxiety, Living, Survival

A Day Such as This

On absolutely amazing days like this, when the air moving around you feels like the wind’s caress, the pockets of sun and shade dance across the ground as the leaves move, your very skin feeling lighter and less oppressive.  On a day such as this, which you can’t even imagine in the dark dank days of winter – how can the horrors of the world coexist? 

Thoughts of war, cancer, needless violence, anorexia and body dysmorphia, seizures and convulsions, burns and heartache, loneliness, listlessness. . . how can all these exist on a day such as this? 

When some unnameable something grips your head and heart, a firm and gradual tightening of the vice.  When everything around you says, be well, enjoy – and your brain clamps down. 

It must be for times such as these that the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique was created. 

But I’m not in acute stress.  And when I’m done counting and grounding, the things that wound me up will still be there. 

I am living my low-level constant state of anxiety that seems to be this season of life – with friends more like family and family who need support and kids who need parents no matter what age they are.  With health scares and inconsistent schedules and interrupted sleep. 

On a day such as this, I need to sit right down in the center of it and soak it in.  If only I could exist there. 

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Photo by Sonny Sixteen: https://www.pexels.com/photo/dry-broken-branch-on-the-ground-11522978/
Poetry, Survival

Inertia

Low pressure

in the atmosphere and in an indeterminate one of four tires

13 miles till empty

Critically low levels of battery life

The evidence amasses in the case against energy

A body at rest tends to stay at rest

in these days of the tail end of winter,

the cold strung out to a sparse thread of frost,

the wind a constant movement that won’t blow it away

Weak sun filters through a constant cast

Broken branches brittle and gray

join at intersecting angles

skeletal shapes the only thing of interest on the ground

And yet no where near alive

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Photo by Paul Bulai on Unsplash
Mental Illness, Survival

What no one ever tells you

about your worst bout with whatever mental illness you’ve had

is you’ll put yourself back there

every. other. time. you struggle

forever.

Every time

you get oh so tired

or life’s bitter edge rubs sharp against you

or you just can’t crawl deep enough into the corner of the couch –

You will think,

here it comes again

it’s back

I’m falling down the rabbit hole once more.

And then, a flicker at the edge of your consciousness.

It’s midafternoon; you haven’t taken your meds

The sun hasn’t shone in days

A deep mood does not mean a depressive down swing.

But the feeling is so unsettlingly familiar

it sets off alarm bells

of a flame that once fueled an inferno

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motherhood, Survival

Mother as Refugee, Part II

Stemming from the author’s note I addended to my last piece, I have some more thoughts to share on the idea of mother as refugee.  I alluded to the fact that my musings obviously came from a very ‘first world problem’ place.  Even had I not used that actual phrase, there were many details in my post that gave me away.

Assumption: access to child care

To escape, i.e. leave one’s home, someone else has to watch the kids.  While many mothers may dream of it, the point is moot if there is no one to care for the children in their absence.

Assumption: a partner in child-rearing

Raising one’s children with a support partner – both emotionally and logistically – frees one to care for oneself, offers the space to do so, validates the importance of . . . an act which is exponentially harder without one.

Assumption: financial solvency

My piece presupposes that there is extra room in one’s budget for such frivolity as a fancy coffee drink.  Buying a coffee I could’ve made at home is a luxury I need to plan for in my first world budget.  It’s also a way to secure space in the establishment.  For mothers with low incomes, buying a drink in exchange for a seat isn’t even an option.  This also assumes that one doesn’t first have to pay for child care in order to get some time to oneself, in which case even an overpriced cup of coffee is a drop in the bucket.

Assumption: local resources/community

A latte at a coffee house as self-care is the ultimate example of white mom privilege.  Coffee shops – one really – are also the only places in my mostly rural town that are open in the evenings.  If the library happens to be open when I get the chance to escape, there isn’t a quiet section for me to hide.  I’ve resorted to sitting in my car in some picturesque spot, but that only works during daylight hours in warm weather.  Winter in the Northeast is not conducive to this.  In other words, place plays a large role in the opportunities available to mothers.  If there is no building, no business with availability that suits her schedule and economic needs, there is no escape.   

Assumption: home as a safe and comforting place

Perhaps home as it exists is a very triggering place.  Some mothers may associate their surroundings with abusive episodes or people who live(d) there.  The emotions elicited may be polar opposite to the relaxation response.  Others may be overwhelmed by the sight of dishes to wash or piles of laundry to process, a very real and overwhelming reminder of her daily duties.  Or perhaps others expect her to perform such duties when at home or consider her time squandered.

I cannot assume that I’ve done any justice to the situations I’ve described above.  I cannot presume what it is like to actually live in such conditions.  I only open them in an attempt to unpack some of my own privilege and honor the experience of every mother.

 

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motherhood, Survival

Mother as Refugee

For many reasons, I needed to sit on the couch yesterday and do nothing.  After a short while, it became clear that TV time with the toddler was not going to provide my needed respite.  Even snuggled under the same blanket, I was not providing her with enough [attention/snack food/video selection].   Circle all that apply.

It was just that kind of day.

She continued to want; her sisters added to the cacophony when they got home.  The toddler was a bit extra on the toddler scale, but none of them made outrageous requests.  By the time my husband got home and I stepped into the kitchen seeking an adult conversational release valve, I was all edges.  The last of a staccato flurry of requests nearly made me run screaming from the house.

That’s when an inner alarm went off.  I need a day off.  I need time away.

But the glaring alarm bells weren’t entirely correct.

What I need is time at home, alone.

I need a day off in my house left to my own devices.  To sit on the couch for as long as I want until I want to rise and retrieve a snack.  To watch a British drama until I cry and/or decide I’ve had enough.  To read, to write, to fill some of the pages in those adult coloring books I bought for self-care following the birth of the present toddler.  To sleep.  To stare into space.

But moms are not afforded that luxury.  I am never in my house alone.

In order to get a respite, I need to leave the house.

With respites few and far between, by the time I get one or my mental health sounds the alarm, I am usually in such a state of exhaustion that the ideal break would be crawling under a blanket and ceasing to exist for a while.  Except coffee houses don’t usually have a corner in which to hole up.  Plus, they have people.  To me, people-ing does not constitute a break.  And I can’t bring my own gluten-free vegan snacks to go with the yummy latte.

I encounter this same conundrum when I slip away to write.  Even if I don’t want to crawl under a blanket, there isn’t a quiet corner to be had.  Last weekend, I thought I’d come up with the perfect plan when I dropped off my ten year-old at a two-hour birthday party.  I’d go to the big library four minutes away, spread out all my materials on a big oak table on some deserted level, and get shit done.  Except the big library is closed on Sundays.  The sweet parking spot I snagged right in front should have tipped me off before I got out of the car.

So off to a different coffee house this time for a sweet drink not good for my blood sugar or wallet.  The convivial atmosphere was not good for concentration either.  Apparently 2 PM on a Sunday is the time to get coffee in this town.

If someone could figure out a way to provide moms with a hidey-hole to escape from the circumstances that won’t let them relax at home, it would be a huge success.  And if I can figure out a way to do this, consider this my official claim to the idea.

 

But that excuses the actual problem: that mothers are not allowed to shelter-in-place. 

 

They are forced from the nests of their homes by the demands and responsibilities that weigh on them there.  Not given the chance to breathe, they must take it.  The surface tension of the home, while a thin skin, must be broken through for a gasp of air.

And while the act of taking this time is choosing oneself, showing one’s deserved value – it is undermined by the fact that mothers are ousted from their territory, their home base to get it.

promenade-solitaire--1473171360frf

Richard Revel via publicdomainpictures.net

Should not the pyramid be flipped the other way?

Mothers work hard to make the house a home.  And yet, they don’t get to enjoy the benefits of that.  The soft blanket and pillows that grace the bed.  The way the sunlight spills through the windows casting the white walls a brilliant hue.  A quiet so sound that the click of the boiler can be heard far below.

Even if a step away gives a break, a breather, it is on foreign territory.  Any comfort it gives is not of the ultimate level.  It is not complete because it isn’t home, where one can be completely and totally oneself and off-guard.  Relaxation, yes.  Complete, never.

Mothers are forced to roam, choosing the least off-putting or triggering place to settle for an attempt at realigning and regulating their overwrought senses and psyche; adding one more thing to an already overflowing list of decisions and tasks which elicit the need to escape in the first place.

I don’t know what the solution is.  I don’t know what needs to change to honor mothers and their numerous sacrifices.  All I know is I wish I could just stay home, alone.

Author’s Note: The use of refugee here is as metaphor; it is in no way attempting to compare my ‘first world’ struggles as a mother to the very real and devastating conditions that true refugees face for themselves and their children.

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