Get Out: Or, How I remembered not to destroy myself.

I recently wrote a list of 17 things I do to keep sane each week. The plan was to write a blog on each one as I figure they're a good jumping off point, even if I do them only once a week (like bathe or vacuum or go outside) as they add up to make my life as "The Imperfect Wife" a bit less daunting. But there is one thing I did not put on there, one thing I somehow missed, and it took me awhile to remember. In fact, it took being stuck inside my house for 10 days with sick kids and me starting to lose my shit a little.

Outwardly, I was OK. Until the kids went to bed, then all I wanted to do was cry. And for the last three nights, I have. Not for any particular reason that I could pinpoint, aside from the weight on my chest and the feeling of being an animal trapped in a cage with no way out and the guilt associated with knowing it was directly connected to my role as mother and wife. OK, so it was for a particular reason.

(Help Me.)

(JP/Ainur Rohmah) Source

I love my kids and husband and I enjoy bringing them the best of me and I don't hate myself for showing them the worst of me.  I try to temper those harder times with opportunities to communicate better, to learn help one another, to overcome as a family. But right now, after 10 days of sick kids and a sprained foot that won't heal after almost two months I just started to lose it.

I turned to my online community because, that's about the only people I have in my life at the moment that don't live in my house. You see, we are transplants. My husband is Frisian and I'm from Cascadia (AKA as The Pacific NW), so unlike most of the people that move to Wisconsin in their thirties we didn't do it to be near family. Ours are 2,000-7,500 miles away depending on which direction you point. After being here almost five years I still have yet to find a group of honest, supportive and non-judgmental mamas like I've found in my online community. I have a couple of friends I see occasionally and they're awesome, but I've found no group like this, a group of people that I know have my back (and not in the stabby kind of way), and believe me, I've tried. So it's the internet mamas for me, most of the time.

Today, I found myself online, relating my pain to my mamas. There were a lot of good suggestions; Counseling, medication, asking my husband to step up a bit more (or a lot more), getting a sitter, joining the YMCA, putting my eldest kid back in public school. Unfortunately, all of them have been considered and dismissed (Either due to circumstance or for having already exhausted the option) by my husband and I. But something else came up that made me stop and reevaluate.

One of my friends asked me "What it is that you want, right now? what is your most immediate need?"

I knew immediately...TIME ALONE.

I need time to myself. I need uninterrupted time to write, or shoot (arrows or photos, take your pick), or do my art, or just sit without someone needing me 24/7. Despite my inherently social nature, I know this: I NEED TIME ALONE. I understand it. I even ask for it. But, I rarely get it.

WTF? How could I not list this? How did this not come up for me at all when writing down my list of sanity saving measures? Well folks, there are two reasons why it didn't occur to me. One is a very, very good reason. The other is a logical but no longer acceptable reason.


The first, I have a chronic pain condition and two auto-immune disorders that make me so tired I literally fall asleep while suffering level 8-9 pain (out of a 10).

 

(For those that are not aware of how pain is measured, here is a handy chart as re-envisioned (way more accurately than the doctor's version) and illustrated by the talented Hyperbole and a half - check out that link, she is hilarious!)

Now that you have a good visual, I'll give you another awesome visual for understanding chronic pain (Don't worry, it's less graphic.)



This article written by Christine Miserandino, who suffers from a different but no less debilitating chronic pain condition is called The Spoon Theory. And if you haven't read it. Do. (Just click on the link there, I'll wait). It will not only make the next few sentences of this blog easier to understand it very well may help you understand someone else in your life that "doesn't look sick" but suffers from chronic pain.


Go ahead, click through, really,  I'll wait…

Now that you've read it, you may be able to see why even though my husband supports me in my desire to get out, and I know I need to do it to keep sane, I don't often get to. I don't get out because with a chronic pain condition, a c-section last January (I'm still recovering from, yay for lowered immune system and slow recovery!), raising four kids under 7 years old in a near social vacuum, and the other mundane stuff that life endlessly tosses our way, I feel like I'm trying to borrow spoons from next year. Which, as you may have read, is impossible.  This is not a complaint, we all have our burdens, but this is my reality. I literally end up curled up on the floor, or couch (usually draped in two nursing babies) or a bath (if I'm lucky) trying not to cry, and it's all the energy I have to do that. So getting out, even for an hour is almost impossible for me most of the time and how can I put something on my list I don't feel is even a remote possibility? It's a good reason, but it doesn't change that my not getting out is intrinsically linked to my sanity (or lack thereof.)

The other thing that keeps me home and sad and desperate is connected, but it's more about me personally and less about my illness. As a mother, I want to use every one of my spoons for my kids. I use so many just keeping things from devolving into chaos, and I have so few, I want to use any I might have to hang out with my children (or god forbid, my husband!) Sadly, sometimes I can't be there the way I want to for them because I need to use that spoon for me. This is so hard for me to accept. I realize, I can't help my kids if I'm a raving lunatic (One of my mamas reminded me of the "airmask"…Y'know…if a plane is going down and you are on it, put your airmask on first or you can't help anyone), it is still so hard to take that spoon and as another mama said, and I quote… "GET OUT."

But I did go out. It wasn't really getting out the way it ought to be. It was going to the grocery store alone. Which though many a mama knows can feel like a vacation, it really doesn't "count" the way say, a walk in the park alone counts, or an hour, uninterrupted to do your craft counts. But I was alone and I bought myself a smoothie and took my laptop and wrote most of this before my battery died. Then I slowly got all the cold groceries in my cart (I'd gone through and grabbed the non-perishables first to buy some time). And as my breasts filled with milk, alerting me to the fact that my sons would most likely be screaming for me when I got home, I checked out and went home.

But I did it. With the help of my husband and the encouragement of my mamas, I got out. I got out. I got out.

 Me and my smoothie.

And with you as my witnesses, I will get out again. Hopefully the next time will be before I'm reduced to blubbering on the couch at 2 am draped in babies and there will be no groceries involved.