Brain meltdown and disassociation

Or how to navigate the shit that happens all at the same time

This week I navigated:

Sick kid

Kid going in for 3 hours each day and then coming home in what is commonly known as a ‘staggered start’

Work

Partner being AWOL

I haven’t exercised. I haven’t eaten well. I have back ache. I have butterflies in my stomach. I have the sickness coming that my kid still has. I am typing this and feeling all of these things. I feel about 150 years old. I am wishing I was someone else. I have spent every day this week wishing I was someone else. I have been overeacting. I have been emotional. I have been ratty. I have laughed but not in a good way. Instead it has been an evil laugh. The laugh of someone who has just disposed of a body and the police are on their way. I have wished ill of quite a few people for minor things.

Things that I’d usually dismiss because I’m not overwhelmed.

This has been my week. The highlight of it all was listening to the news about more climate change disasters, and realising I needed to recycle food in the bin again which had been abandoned for a week for a variety of complex reasons.

I reached into the bin. I did this whilst one child cried because they wanted to avoid school and the other wanted to have more school. I did this at 6am in the morning after waking at 5 with a bad feeling. Mornings are always bad. I survived some trauma that I can’t even remember properly, but it means that mornings are when I feel I am in extreme danger. I drink coffee and at the same time reassure myself that I’m not going to die and that I’m safe.

I reached into the food bin and there were crackers someone had tossed in there that had decomposed. I didn’t have my glasses on so I just reached in and was thinking how bad these crackers smelt, and how they were really mushed up and gross. It was only when I went back into the kitchen that I realised it was in fact fox shit that I’d been picking up, that I’d got stuck in my fingernails, that was oozing through my fingers. This was enough to convince me that it was more than just a difficult week. It was more than transition blues.

When I was in the early days of motherhood I would often have this strong visual image in my head. It was of a woman bent over in prayer. She was repeating the words- I surrender. I surrender. I surrender.

This is what I do. I don’t try and fix it. I surrender. I accept that I am living through a shit storm. I don’t sugar coat it. I bumped into a dad on the school run and instead of saying - ‘I’m fine,’ I said ‘This is not a good time for me.’

He looked perplexed but then he confided that it wasn’t a good time for him either. It was a connection. It made us feel one tiny bit better. I imagine this was what rich French folks did before they had their heads chopped off during the French Revolution. They didn’t say -I’M FINE THANKS as they walked up to put their head on the block. Their souls shot out of their bodies. They became laser focused. They finally surrendered and stopped fighting.