My role as Chief Child Wrangler was really frustrating me a few days after Christmas.
I was spread way too thin. My right ear was clogged and was giving me intense vertigo. Two days before I had been up from around 2:30 am until 4:30 am with our littlest one who was teething and sick. That morning I was up with him around 6 without any time to catch back up on sleep. With the holiday season, house guests coming and going, dinners to attend, and general “on-ness” that I’d been maintaining for weeks, I had not gotten the quiet alone time that I need in order to continue functioning as a member of a family unit. I hadn’t had the energy to write anything in weeks, despite my eagerness to research and plot my work in progress (WIP).
I felt cranky upon wakening. I felt selfish for being cranky. I felt tired, sick, drained…no sapped. Sapped is the word for it.
There was one diaper left in the entire house. Hot resentment boiled in my stomach, as i pulled long pants and a sweatshirt onto my my dizzy, exhausted, mom-body that hasn’t really belonged to me in sixteen months.
My husband kept the baby while I drove to the store in a sleep deprived state of vertigo and delirium, imagining myself suspended in a glass sided vat of amniotic-like fluid, scientists monitoring my “status” as my family sucked energy from tubes attached to my body.
By the time I got home, I knew I was done. I was in no fit state to be the mommy I want to be. I unloaded the car, poured a cup of coffee, closed myself in the office, and curled up in a fetal position on the bed. Sleep would not come. Could not. Resentment coursed through me. My body shivered with self hatred for my resentment and my inability to be what they all need all the time.
My husband and baby played in the adjacent living room while my anger gave way to deep sadness. Tears streamed across the bridge of my nose, down my temple, and dripped onto the bed beneath me. Sobs broke free from my throat and shook my shoulders. My body curled tighter. My eyes screwed shut.
This was no one’s fault but my own. I had not been clear about my “yeses” and “nos.” I had not been clear about my needs. I had set expectations of myself too high.
Now here we are in a new year, a new decade. I’ve had a week or so to think through what I want to do about this. I shared with my husband and oldest son that my goal for 2020 is to finish the novel I’m working on.
I’ve said it out loud. I’ve put it out into the universe. Now I have to move my feet and make sure it happens. It isn’t just a matter of carving out time to write. It’s making sure that my needs don’t take the back seat all the time. I’m too old to not be able to “use my words” like I tell my children when they’re throwing a fit. And that’s exactly what ends up happening when my needs aren’t met, when I’m not able to fit in time to write or time to sit quietly and think, when I’m not getting the sleep that I need, or when I’m not able to get the exercise I need.
As I write this last paragraph, it is 5:21am. I took a melatonin last night because I need to start getting my sleep cycle back to what it was pre-baby. I am in my chair listening to my dogs snore, thinking up the next scene for my WIP. Come along with me on this journey, won’t you?
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