I sometimes wish I was an actress – I mean they have their act down to have a public meltdown… They run around shave their hair off, loose teeth due to excessive drug usage, turn lesbian and then straight all at the drop of a hat. Not to mention the trips in and out of rehab, sexologist offices, public spats and fodder to keep tabloids running a profitable business from their burnt-out. Yet here am I and I can’t even convince my husband that I am falling apart…
It is like a rerun every day. OK maybe every second day; depending on a number of variables, sleep, food, fluid intake and human interaction; excluding my sitter and toddler (had to include human as even my rabbit turned on me last night and bit me… food for another article – Rejected by house pets how to survive or Rabbit turns rabid?)
I am sure being a women there are other variables but I am not sure what they are yet, and I am also not sure that I will ever really be able to place my finger on the pulse of all of these. I also believe in the power of some surprise, even if these are only for my own benefit. How was your day – he finds me in bed at 5 under the covers with a sleeping toddler; or on bed with a two-year-old watching “little red riding hood”; thank God we moved on from Teletubbies and I am so not ready for Barney. My brain feels fried, my back sore and my mind numb, or NOT which is worse…? So how was my day?
My day as far as days go was not bad, I got up, I managed to get both myself and my daughter ready for the day. We both brushed teeth, we combed hair, she looked pretty I looked OK. The black rings under my eyes are not sooo bad today. I need to leave the house I have a friend who is coming to visit.
After breakfast with the nanny waiting in the wings to take over; my two-year-old refuses to go play and would rather work… with Mommy, “will watch quietly”. Now anyone with a two year old can tell you that this is not a possibility – it might start off looking like it is but trust me – sooner or later the wheels will come off and both of you will be screaming…
You smile; you need to stay calm, “no honey look Susan has something for you; you are going to have such fun…” Your new sitter has planned lots of fun – she is going to read “How Israel got the ten commandments”. You keep on smiling; it is now all the more mechanical as you lower yourself on a comfy chair. Your idea of fun and your daughter’s idea of fun; is NOT your sitter’s idea of fun… You have no exit strategy… You try and nudge a puzzle closer, your daughter sees this, and snuggles herself closer to you, you are not going to make a quick getaway. You wait… As God finally hands the commandments to Moses the second time… all ends well. You hope that something more fun will be rearing its head soon; so, you can try and get something done before you need to leave the house. It does not, you end up making a break your daughter screaming at the front door; you are sure they will have fun when you are gone; and that there are only so many bible stories anyone can read in one day; you however make a run for it, and the last thing you see is your daughters tears running down her face.
You get to your car you feel terrible. BAD. You call your friend and arrange to meet at the centre and not at home. You go to the health shop to pick up, natural pick me uppers to support the chemical pick me uppers 😀 – yes, your proverbial Prozac is on organic Prozac… Your friend meets you, you feel weird, you feel distracted, you feel tired. Your friend looks glamorous and groomed; you look terrible even if you have to say so yourself. You have black rings under the eyes, your hair needs a cut, or something!!! At least it is coloured, so you no longer look like you have your mother’s hair in some weird science hair swop that went wrong… Your clothes fit, but they are not making a statement they are merely covering your naked body, which is what clothes should do according to your husband. Nothing more nothing less; but in all honesty no one should be taking any fashion advise from him. You are here to talk about how you feel (“crap”), what’s been happening (“more crap”), and all you see is someone that looks on top of her world…
Being one of her friends you know that what you see is not all that is there, but you wonder how you can find the money and time to at least look as glorious while you are having a breakdown; (I do think however that she has moved on, and is now post-breakdown). So, there is some hope for you. Well back to how I feel… Well, that is the story, you ramble on between a cup-o-chino (my mother’s word) fix. I have gone off coffee for a number of years but find yourself thinking about cup-o-chino more and more… and trying to figure out what to have for breakfast. You stick with the facts of how you got here – they are safe, and you know them by heart; after the second cup-o-chino you feel more adventurous – more feel; less fact. Come to think of it; it is very funny how woman think; I am trying to convince my friend that I am doing better; while I am at the same time trying to figure out how to tell my husband that I am doing worse. Well now we know why men find it difficult to understand their wives.
Well, the fact is that… blah, blah, blah. We thought that … blah, blah, blah. I am rambling like a lecturer about what I’ve been through, and at the same time being non-emotional about it as much as possible. If I have to think about it as I write this, I can but say that I am too tired for emotion. I feel incapable of any of the main emotions, maybe it was not just putting on a strong woman act, maybe this is just part and parcel of where I am. Incapable of emotion… I know things – I know I love my husband and our child. I know I dislike some stuff… they all seem unimportant now. It seems that I am on an island – isolated, and through the mist I see the people I love most and hold dearer than anything else. I am however not sure if the mist is coming or going…
My friend is empathic, she listens nods, offers her house for a retreat. I really think she is great, although I have not felt a connection to her in a while. Come to think of it I have not felt connected to many things lately. I have taken refuse to MSN, and conversed with a friend miles away, maybe I feel safety in the distance between us, as though the physical distance mimics the actual distance I feel to the people around me at the moment. We end our breakfast; we both have things to do… I feel better, I must confess not ready to go home though. I buy stuff from the shop and bump into my sister-in-law we talk and make a date for a girl’s night out later this week.
I decide to take a drive, and not go home immediately. I still need the sanctity of being alone, I need to just BE for a bit longer. I need to have a non-prescriptive role for a while, when I get back home it will be mother, carer, feeder, jungle gym, washer, cook, nurse and sleeping partner all to my two-year-old. All the things our mothers did as stay at home mothers, that we never thought of. It just happened like that; that was how it worked, dad worked, mother stayed home.
Today I think about it and wonder about the loss of self when you have four kids. Is there more you can lose of yourself; that you have not given up with the first child? I need to make a note and ask people who have had more than one child. When I say this, you should not think that I blame my child for my state of mind, as most mothers will tell you, you surrender when you become a mother. Sometimes there are just too many OTHER people who want their pound of flesh, and that is where the problem comes in.
Women fought for our right to work, a right is something you do willingly, and without reserve. In today’s world we have made the jump from being able to choose to; have to work. Very few people I know can make a decision NOT to work, our equal right has bitten us in the proverbial butt. We now take up arms on all fronts, and although men have stepped up to the plate in most cases to shovel some of the proverbial home bound shit, women are still seen as the responsible person in the house.
This is an important job. Women need to be able to multi-skill which we boast about pre-pregnancy, just to find out that adding a baby into the mix, makes it impossible to have as many balls in the air as you could previously deal with. I think the biggest difference between pre, and post pregnancy is that of all the balls in the air, there are none who will really break when it hits the ground, whereas all mothers know that this is not the case with children… I mean we all have issues…
Think about it regardless of how much your parents tried and how well adjusted you are under normal circumstances when we are under pressure we crack, and it is then that you see the scars of too many balls in the air. Skewed priorities, deadlines and demanding clients, a boss who does not understand and care even less. We all know our realities, we all know where our soft underbellies are, we all know where we need to fend the proverbial fox from the hen house… Now back to that juggling… Okay you think you can do with less balls. Which of these are you willing to sacrifice? You cull the herd, you set some out to pasture, you reorganise, and you wait… You wait to feel better more in control.
The unfortunate part of this cleansing experience is how much it takes out of you… you need to let go, you need to acknowledge that you are human and fallible, you are not able to do it all… you also need to make peace with the fact that the path you chose is the one that thousands of women has chosen before you, you are going to be a work from home mother…
This brings new problems to the fore, you are now your own boss, and dependant on you alone to make the grade. You also need to try and remind your husband that you are NOT at home and that all household emergencies are NOT happening at an opportune time, “as you are home to deal with them…” Most of these happen at a terrible time – as you are coming to grips with your new life. Your new journey… So you pick up new balls, all of these you tell yourself are part and parcel of the choices you’ve made.
Then one day you look around and there you see it… it is all clear… you have more balls in the air than previously and yes they are all balls that can’t be dropped… There is still the odd demanding client, there are still deadlines, there are still a boss who does not understand but this time it is YOU… and indirectly your husband… You try and explain it to yourself first off, but it does not sound right. I mean this was your path of least resistance. This was the choices you have made… HOW DID YOU END UP HERE????
Well back to my day… Back home from breakfast I find out my toddler has mastered her own graffiti signature and practised it on the wall in the kitchen, I walk into her room and find the play carpet full of dots, and one wooden block from the Practica balance beam marked with the sign of ZORO. I look, I see… and try to sound less hysterical than I feel… You ask your two-year-old how this happened, and the nanny answers, “she just stepped out of the room to make tea and when she got back this was what she found”. You sigh, you shrug you look at your daughter and remember the stories of puppies left home leaving their mark in those favourite shoes and you wonder what will be happening next week when you set off to appointments whilst making a mental note to keep your bedroom door locked when you leave the house!!!
The nanny goes home and it is time for the afternoon nap, your daughter comes riding into the room on her zebra, for now you have given up trying to get her to sleep in her own room. She is two, and you hope that whatever you do this afternoon will bore her to sleep. It does not. After an hour of my room, your room, punishment and warnings you give up… You will both rest. After another half an hour of more warnings, where your body surrendered to the idea of a nap long before your toddler… it finally happens… blissful uninterrupted sleep…
You wake up as the dogs start barking, you feel cold you climb under the duvet. You hear your husband is home… for a moment you wonder how you are going to explain this… You wipe the saliva from your pillow. He offers tea, you accept; your still in bed… he tiptoes around not wanting to wake your daughter, you say not to worry she needs to wake up, what is the time? He does not ask. you do not answer, while drinking tea he asks how your day was, you think you do not answer…
After tea, and all awake your hubby, and daughter sets off to the shops; you to the kitchen. It is time to make dinner, your husband asked how your day was… you owe him an answer… and somewhere between mac and cheese, bath time and bedtime, you write this… and you wonder if this is an answer… and whether he will understand.
September 2024 – So May 2009, seems to be exactly how I felt most of last month.
I’ve been struggling with my health and went through a terrible detox, cleansing from some of my meds trying to find an alternative approach. This will become an article as my teen refers to this as my unmedicated self.
Reading this article pretty much also remind me that being undiagnosed with bipolar disorder and being on a mild anti-depressant did not really do the trick to keep my mental health in equilibrium.
I will share more of this journey in a future article. Today I just pat myself on the back and celebrate that I survived day-by-day.
