Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down

www.amateurparenting.com — There’s this thing that happens when you spend all day every day saying yes to other people. You stop saying yes to yourself. At least, that’s what’s happened to me over the last several months.

I said yes to work. I said yes to friends. I said yes to organizations and groups. I said yes to everyone and gave and gave and gave. And while there’s nothing wrong with that exactly, where I went wrong was that I stopped saying yes to myself. I gave and gave and gave to everyone but me and then my storehouse was empty. I tried to pretend I was fine, that my life wasn’t closing in on me and I wasn’t having trouble breathing or controlling my heart rate every time I thought about having to do it all again tomorrow.

And then something very interesting happened. I asked for help. And nobody answered. And that was when I realized what the real problem was. Well, actually, first I had a complete meltdown.

I was sitting at my desk and Emmett was crying in the other room and suddenly I went deaf and blind except for hearing his crying echoing all around me and seeing a vision of my miserable life stretched out before me with me as this little catatonic rag doll floating through a tunnel and suddenly I couldn’t breathe and the only thing that kept me from falling over was gripping the edge of my desk so hard it hurt. I’m not sure how long I sat there like that. It may have been 15 seconds or maybe 15 minutes. I think Jesse was scared when he found me sitting there. I know I was.

The day before, I had posted this in a private Facebook group:

It’s like everything is completely unraveling at one time and any moment now everyone is going to know I’m a complete and total fraud and what am I even DOING. I have always had that sense of waiting to be “found out” but never to this degree, never feeling so utterly inadequate in every area of my life. I was just telling [name redacted] that I don’t even know who I AM anymore. I feel like I’m having a nervous breakdown or something. My self-concept is so effed up and I feel like I have zero concept of what’s real anymore. Not like I’m hallucinating or anything but like I don’t trust myself to perceive situations or my own ability or role in anything with any level of accuracy. I’ve been either crying or on the verge of tears for weeks now. And perhaps the most alarming thing is how few people have noticed. Which makes me feel like every relationship I currently have or have ever had with the exception of two is completely superficial and my feelings of loneliness are completely valid because I have no one and it’s my own goddamned fault because I’m a crap friend and that’s why I don’t have any friends. Like, wtf. I am losing my mind. Seriously. Wtf. Someone slap me.

It was the first time I’d been able to articulate what was going beyond saying, “I’m having a really hard time right now.” And that Friday afternoon, with the crying and the to-do list and the expectations, oh my GOD the expectations, and no end in sight and feeling utterly alone and completely overwhelmed, I broke. That was 3 weeks ago.

It took about a week of maintenance mode to even start to get my feet back under me. Thank goodness I have a husband who was willing to step up and drop everything and just HANDLE STUFF for a few days. I think if one more person had asked me for one more thing, no matter how legitimate or reasonable… He rubbed my neck and brought me wine and got up with the kids and made me food and forced me to take time for myself and I’m pretty sure it saved me from going over the edge completely.

And THEN I realized what the problem was. It wasn’t that I was giving and giving and giving. It was that I was giving and getting nothing back. It wasn’t that I’m a crap friend — I’m actually a great friend — I was just investing the wrong stuff in the wrong types of friendships so of course I felt lonely. It wasn’t that I’m incompetent — I’m actually exceptionally competent — I was just saying yes to things I had no business agreeing to and that benefited me in exactly zero ways so of course I felt uncomfortable and overwhelmed and exhausted. It wasn’t that I’m a terrible mom — I’m actually a pretty awesome mom — it’s that I was personalizing normal toddler behavior and interpreting it as a message that I suck, so of course I felt like I was doing it wrong. And so on.

I was giving in the wrong places, places where all that happened was me giving and there was no receiving. And I set it up that way by ignoring my gut and conveniently forgetting things I already knew because I wanted to believe it was somehow different and I could do it the way I was “supposed to” (what does that even MEAN?) and I ignored everything in me that asked for something different; that said, “Hey, this isn’t working”; that said, “Stop doing things that make you feel like you’re being taken advantage of.” Of course I was empty. How could I possibly not be empty?

I created that for myself. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I did it. It was me, my choices. So now I’m choosing to do it differently.

I quit. Not everything, but a lot of stuff. I quit the things that left me feeling most put upon, most empty at the end of the day. And it was terrifying — mostly because I have spent so much time defining myself by how I appear to other people. I’m scared of being lonely, of feeling isolated with fewer people and activities and obligations in my life. But I was lonely and isolated before, so really, what have I lost?

Guilt.

Blame.

Excuses.

Those are the things I’ve lost. And I don’t miss them.

I’m not sure I’m doing this right. But it feel like it’s going in the right direction. I can breathe again. My chest feels less heavy. I still have that weak, vaguely ill feeling that you have after coming out of a flu or a stomach bug. You’re not throwing up anymore, but you feel depleted and it takes a while to get back to normal. Well, I don’t really know what normal is anymore, but I’m determined to find out.