You Are Doing Amazing
And other things I need to absorb right now
It’s ten-twenty PM. You just had a nice, good, full-body cry for no good reason on the bathroom floor. The kind that makes you feel your abs. Your mind knows what this is about, it’s just some old shit getting swept up to the surface so you can feel it one last time. Let it go, this is a good thing. The heaving hurts a little bit. You think about all the crying you’ve done since your son was conceived — four years ago. You think about how its quality has evolved. It’s visceral now. Guttural. It comes from a place deeper than you previously thought existed. Since that time you cried for yourself for the first time in that context, alone on a couch in your cave of a living room, crying and clutching your belly because your boyfriend valued his cat’s comfort more than your accidental, unwanted-by-him, pregnant emotions.
You felt it coming when you trudged downstairs in your new oversized sweatpants after lying in your bed twenty minutes too long with your sleeping son in your right arm, phone in your left hand, too tired to JSSI (Just Stop Scrolling on Instagram), as well as to not feel guilty about it. You saw your brothers, both in good spirits, in the kitchen for a bedtime snack, en route back to their respective dens to do what they do all day. You went into the basement to hang the laundry that’s been sitting in the machine since this morning up to dry. You heard your dad mutter something, come down half the flight of stairs, get the vacuum cleaner and furiously (or so it always sounds to you) vacuum some part of the carpet that may contain a few specks of sand from your son’s shoes from the 3-day-old sandbox in the backyard.
You felt angry briefly (It’s ten pm, for fuck’s sake! The boy just got to sleep!) — then realized what you may be projecting onto his supposedly obsessive cleaning. Is this about all that time you spent showing your ex how valuable you were to him, how great and good and devoted and sacrificing you were, taking care of the baby, nursing 24/7, and somehow also doing all the housework that never even got done before the baby came? Why did a new baby make you suddenly adamant about keeping the apartment spotlessly clean, though there was never a better time to say, “Fuck it, I’ve got better things to do.” Yeah, like absolutely nothing, just for five minutes.
Or is this simply, again, your fear of being a burden in this household, of making all the messes and being too overwhelmed or lazy or whatever the word of the day is to take care of it all. The need to make damn sure the others don’t suffer from your presence, to show them everything you do all day to be a real part of the community. Show them who does it all. Yeah, you.
You think — and you know — well, maybe, he just saw something — and it doesn’t have to be sand — that he wants to get rid of quickly. Maybe he dropped something. Maybe, whatever. Something. It doesn’t matter. It’s not about you. It doesn’t have to be about you.
But what about the times he spat in your face that you are responsible for not making his life a living hell, for staying cool, calm and collected for everyone’s sakes, for ranting in the ugliest tones in front of your son, quivering in your arms, on all that is wrong with you and you should be ashamed of and have you no awareness?
No, it’s all good now. Stop taking things personally. It’s not all about you. That’s what you’d like to tell him, anyway.
Oh yes, another complex trigger to meditate upon. What does this say about your need to show everyone how much work you’re always getting done — or not?
You finish hanging up the laundry. You’re tired, and your legs and your throat are heavy. You come back upstairs, your brother quips about his ramen and freeze-dried veggies. You force a chuckle. You want to sit down next to him at the kitchen table and cry until your tear ducts are parched.
He gets up to go upstairs. You follow him. Good night. Your door closes. Into the bathroom, head in your hands. Mirror: ugly cry. Mouth twisted into an infinity symbol. Ow. Ow, ow, ow. Fuck, it hurts. You know it’s just chemicals. You’re going through a lot, though it doesn’t look like it. You’re letting so much old shit go, it’s mind-numbing to think about.
Literally: every day, you gaze around the room into completely surreal spaciousness. The clutter has been gone since just before the new year. It was a lot. And the room is — seriously — all but empty now. Excepting books, a few clothes, and some kid stuff.
And you’re not only eating exactly the way you want to (simply; the same things often and in large enough quantities), you resolved to give your body some much-needed strength by actually working out twice a day for a few minutes.
It’s a lot. It’s new. Yes, it’s surreal. You tell yourself, again and again: this takes time. After all, you’re going for the Big Three. Health, Love, Career. At the same time. At once. You think you can do it?
Yes. Of course you can. But you know it will not be a fucking cakewalk. There is still so much madness to unearth, so much fear and anger and sadness and disappointment and frustration and sorrow and disgust and helplessness to see and feel and digest and write about and meditate on and let go.
It’s work.
You have a new routine. Your son wakes up and demands your phone. You give it to him. He watches informative kid videos while you meditate and stretch and journal. Sometimes, he decides he’s finished before you are. This delights you and you hold back a grin while you tell him to go on, play another game, so you can have your quiet time. Then you let the day come to you until it’s time for him to take his nap. You’re still exhausted from the night before, when you, again, couldn’t go to sleep early enough to not be tired the next morning because of all the things you want to do, but then don’t, because you’re tired and you know you need to sleep but you just want to do a little bit because you’re excited about all of it and want to get somewhere already, but it’s late and you’re tired and you know you can’t concentrate when you’re tired, but you try anyway and nothing really happens because you can’t decide what to do. And then you scroll on Instagram for a bit and bite your proverbial tongue before it can spit something nasty about your scrolling habits and look what you could have been doing with that time.
You contemplate using naptime to catch up on sleep. You think about all the time you waste thinking about what to do, telling yourself to write that post, that podcast episode, to finish that book, to work on that website. You’re sure that not giving yourself the space to rest is not a great signal to the universe. But there’s so much to do. When will your time come again?
After naptime, it’s playing again. Burying your feet in the literal sand, new sand, slightly damp sand, remembering the sensation, the grounding of it between your toes, and you feel your way into another sign from way back when that you were autistic and didn’t know it — the sand: smoothing it, feeling it. Just sitting there, smoothing and feeling and patting and feeling. Smoothing it into a level, slick surface. Encasing your feet. You could do it all day.
A little blue shovel rips it all apart. Stabs at your toes. You realize you, right now, at this moment on this timeline, have effectively one point five hours a day to work on your dream life.
That’s not much. Is that why you needed to cry?
It’s a lot. It’s a lot. Give yourself some time. Really. Take what you need. Take your MEDS. The rest will take care of itself.
Will it?
It’s midnight. Again. Your son will wake up at seven. You’re thankful you accidentally gave up coffee in November, the adrenaline spikes and withdrawals were not helpful on mornings like the one waiting for you.
You think about needing more sleep, again.
You think about your mind’s eternal comparisons. If they knew, it says. If they knew what you do. And you know: It doesn’t fucking matter. This is your life, not theirs. They’ll learn their lessons. It’s your life. Stop wasting it thinking about what they should be thinking about. Stop. It’s your life. You can choose what to do with it. Put your energy where it needs to be.
But you also think, fuck: They are men. They will, in fact, never know.
They will never know what’s it like to feel so worthless that you can’t tell your boyfriend who says he loves you that he needs to wear condoms because the pill is not an option for you. They will never know the burden is, in the end, always yours. They will never know what it’s like to then fall unexpectedly and very inconveniently pregnant and to have someone else tell you what is right to do with your body, and what is not. They will never know what it’s like to be pregnant, full stop. To think you’re imagining being so tired you can hardly walk. To gaslight yourself throughout the entire thing because you learned that showing and even admitting to yourself that you have female parts that do things that cost energy is not a way to be, ever. They won’t know what it’s like to fear giving birth, and then manifest the exact hell you imagined, complete with the actual inferno and white-hot seething, whimpering, then all-out screaming pain. They will never know the tug of war of being the kid’s mother, the flesh he came from, and not feeling a thing when you look at him for the first time, nothing but emptiness — and guilt. Because fuck, you goddamn mother, where is your love? They will never know what it’s like to try and make this thing work for the longest year of your life, they will never know what it’s like when your boyfriend chooses his mother over his baby, they will never know what it’s like to feel the shame of being the daughter moving back in with daddy and living on welfare because your boyfriend thinks his new job should pay only for his shit, while you stay home to do the baby things and have no time at all for anything, least of all yourself (what even are the things you’d do for yourself? You don’t remember.) and of course, you should pay your bills, as well as some of his, on your own, too. They will never know what it’s like to be a single mom and carry the entire weight of this new life, its emotional upbringing, and what all of it means in terms of the person it’s shaping him into, and of your own completely uncertain future and, thus, the child’s, and of your relationship to his father, and his relationship to the child, and that he isn’t there and when he is he doesn’t know what to do because nobody taught him and you should teach him because you know and you just think, fuuuuuuck. Fuckity fucking everlasting fuck.
I didn’t know, either. But I had to learn. The hard way. Everything. Because I am the motherfucking mother.
And they don’t know how the pressure of all of it combined, and of being what they call a woman just on its own, of needing to be nice but decisive but not aggressive but clear and communicative but gentle but firm but polite but honest and non-threatening but pretty and beautiful and strong but not that strong and feminine not weak not big not skinny but curvy and intelligent and stupid and stop being such a know-it-all and take a joke and everything and nothing and all of it is so much it threatens to combust into something the Big Bang wouldn’t compare to in a quadrillion years.
It’s twelve o’ five AM. This wasn’t supposed to be a rant. But it was about feeling the things. You wanted to cry in the kitchen to your brother because he knows nothing. So you wanted him to see what you feel. Okay. Why? So he’ll feel sorry for you?
Perhaps. But it wouldn’t help.
Would it?
As you came upstairs, you thought, again: Yes, yes, it feels like Groundhog Day. But you also thought about the phenomenon of writers and their routines yesterday, and how the exact same day repeated ad nauseam enabled them to focus completely on their work. And you know it’s working. You know that every decision you need not make over every day means a little more mental space to do great shit.
Every day, you do the same things. And you know — it’s working. You’re not as stressed as before. Your son knows exactly what is supposed to happen and when, and it seems like it’s good for him, too. It’s reliable. Comforting. Some parts may need tweaking, like his habit of demanding another snack right before bed. Like bedtime at nine-thirty. But all in all, it’s good. You’re doing well.
New things happen every day. You don’t really notice, but you take note. Today, you recorded yet another take for the podcast. It felt good, but it got cut off for some reason. Okay, you think, that’s just a hint to do it again. Practice. Practice is good.
Today, you were too wrapped up in thought to get a workout in. That wasn’t great, but alright. You were tired. You’re still tired. But you needed to write, so that’s what you’re doing now, and it feels fantastic.
You’re doing amazing. You know that? You are. Good things are happening. You will be fine. You’re very intelligent, you have great taste, you can write, you design beautiful books with hilarious dummy text, you have great ideas and you know how to cook. And bake. And you’re somewhat pretty. You’re avoiding “beautiful” right now because you’re still working through that trigger. But you look, well, good. Better than before. Alive and well.
You are allowed to feel tired. You are allowed to feel overwhelmed. An hour a day isn’t much to go on. Four hours on borrowed time, three taken from sleep you’ll be trying and failing to catch up on for weeks is even less.
So, yes. You are doing amazing. Please, have some cake. Buy a beautiful thing. You deserve it.
