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I’m sorry for the delay. Things have been…weird around here.
My therapist has thrown out the word ‘manic’. My parents have expressed ‘worry’ and dying on a hill has entered the vernacular.
And the past few nights, when I couldn’t sleep, I wondered if everyone was right. If I’d lost the plot. If my life was headed towards that image of Frances Farmer being carried away to the asylum.
What I’m trying to say is a lot has happened (or been happening). So much so, that I’ve been unable to write a newsletter the last two weeks. And in trying to write this newsletter, to just get one out, I have uncovered something.
Something I wouldn’t have gotten to if I hadn’t sat down, stared at the blank page, and listened to the recording I took of my own therapy session about everything.
Have you ever listened to your own therapy session? I assume it’s as close as one gets to watching themselves in a sex tape. A naked soul is more indecent than an undressed body (Renée Vivien).
Someone, a therapist for example, might say this is a manic thing to do. To secretly record your own session and play it back for yourself later. I think it’s the opposite.
In my mind, this is someone who is actively aware of themselves and trying to understand what she’s missing. This is someone who wants to be in control when everyone is saying she’s out of control. And in doing this hard, weird, manic thing, I have discovered a few enlightening truths that have changed everything.
But where to start?
I’ll admit, I told my therapist. I participate in my own suffering. The past few months, I’ve been burning the candle at both ends. I know this, yet it didn’t help last Friday when I woke up, unable to pick my head up off my daughter’s pillow.
I knew how I got there. I fell asleep in the guest bedroom (my office) after working until 1 a.m. when I awoke to thunder at 4 a.m. I was running up the stairs just as Emilia was running out of her room. I brought her back to her bed and fell asleep there, rubbing her back.
Anyway, when I felt her stir at 6 a.m. and realized I couldn’t pick up my head, I fumbled for my phone and called my mom.
I was in the kitchen forcing down my cereal and pain, while the girls laughed and merrily ate their oatmeal, when I heard my mother enter through the front door. At this point all I wanted to do was say thank you and go to bed. Leave the world behind. But she needed their lunches. Their shoes. Where are their bags? Elizabeth’s milk?
I had just about finished packing and labeling everything, when I realized, standing frozen in front of the open fridge, unsure what I was looking for, it was happening. A breakdown.
My mom was upstairs, trying to find Ellie some clean pants from the laundry basket of folded clothes when I came up behind her. She thought I snuck up on her. I felt I had walked through molases to get to her.
“Mom,” said. I couldn’t get out the rest. I was choking on sobs. I can only wonder what she saw on my face when she turned around. “Something is happening with me. I need to talk to you.”
What I was trying to say was…
I remember her face. It was 7:08 a.m. She was holding a pair of baby leggings. She was caught off guard. But after the initial shock, the impulsive “what’s going on?” and my reactive “I’m sorry, I don’t know what else to do. I just need you to be my mom for a minute,” she handled it well.
She put the TV on for the girls and told me to sit down with her at the kitchen table. And I told her everything.
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