An End

Last night I dreamt our house was sinking. Every time I looked out the window I saw the earth around our house swallow up more and more of our home and everything in it.

Peter and I were scrambling trying to get our two kids and four animals out of the house before it was swallowed completely. It seemed impossible to get all of our family together and no one would leave without the others (which was kind of sweet but also infuriating and troubling).

I woke just before the house was swallowed completely.

Here is the completely unsurprising dream interpretation of a house is sinking into the earth:

To dream that you or something is sinking suggests that you are feeling overwhelmed. Someone or something is pulling your down. Alternatively, the dream means that some important and significant stage in your life may be coming to an end. 

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For those who have followed my journey, you know the story. For those who have not, my mother was a bright, funny, spirited, woman with so so many dreams. She achieved several of those dreams. And she did so while not getting support and help for her pretty significant mental illness.

However, she found a way to numb the pain and began self medicating with drugs and alcohol about 20 years ago. We have not seen each other in 8 years. She died at 65 of complications resulting from alcoholism.

These past 2 weeks I have felt flooded much of the time--so many thoughts and feelings that I can't tease them apart or think them through. Flitting in and out or sinking deep into my bones, these thoughts and feelings are pulling at me as if being tossed by a wave....wave after wave after wave...

And, the rest of life doesn't stop. There are still children and pets, with their own crises and needs and lives. And there is still a pandemic and we still are living in this altered state. There is much to wade through in the turbulent flood and I am chest high.

I am processing this significant stage of my life coming to an end and will be for as long as it takes. This week we are preparing for my mother's virtual memorial. Watching old videos and looking through her writings and pictures have been both painful and healing. I hope the memorial we are planning brings others who have loved her some catharsis. Creating it certainly has.

Scream

What is that screaming?

I am the scream.

When did this happen? How did I become this screaming person?

Swirl of grief and doubt and panic. Oh no. I've become undone. Is this how it goes? Is this what I didn't see? This is what's behind the curtain. This is what happened to those who came before. To the women in my family. To the women who felt so much. To the women who passed on the trauma, and smuggled the hope. I don't know but there is this huge wave nipping at my heels and I am screaming.

Let me step back from the scream and the wave for a moment.

I haven't written here for a while. There are 3 main reasons. I would like to share them with you:
1. Wondering why I share--is there utility in the sharing or is it narcissistic naval gazing?
2. Worry that my mother will read my posts.
3. Realization that some of the things I, as a younger person and mother of a younger children, said was only momentarily true.

But, I want to share. I need to share. Much has brought me around to this again and this fucking pandemic feels like the final straw and allows me to realize I actually don't care about 1 or 2 anymore, and I think 3 is really important. So let me speak to that.

I used to find comfort in all the ways I was not like my mother, as I think, she did with regard to her own mother, and likely so on and so forth. I drew lines in the sand. They helped me find my (tenuous) footing when I had no roadmap and no true north. I'm not sure what I'm shooting for, but it's not that. Good. Great plan. Let's start there.

But now that I've been parenting for almost 15 years I know I don't know much and that "not that" plan is not panning out because honestly, there is a lot that my mother did that was great or totally fine. It is like a great unraveling of self this whole parenting thing. Far from shriveled I am laid bare...and this rawness is real and, well, fucking raw.

As my daughter likes to say "cussing is for mamas." And so it goes.

I am more raw and real and difficult and hopeful and angry and joyful than I was before and there is still no roadmap. But now, at 44, I'm not looking for one like I used to. So to point 3 above. I wrote years ago, I don't scream. I don't scare my children.

All of this was in service to me sorting out how I was handling the stresses of little children and figuring out if I was causing them real harm. I so did not want to cause them harm but I was walking in the dark, bumping my way through parenting feeling for guardrails that would steady me. I did what I needed to do. I see that and I send my 30 something self love and gratitude.

Back to the scream.

Which is me.

In case you forgot.

So what do you do when you are the scream? When you are the crazy laughter? Do you panic and shut down and spiral into doubt and worry? I did. For quite a while. I felt the wave at my heels and I paddled out ahead as much as I could to try to get away. It would be my undoing I thought. But now, no. The wave and the scream have me.

But lately I am owning it. I am focused on the recovery. The swings and feeling it all. And feeling it hungrily and honestly. Sharing that with my kids (because we are certainly not going to feel much without them right here...and I mean RIGHT HERE for the foreseeable future)...and sharing the path to calm as well. Because not only do I scream, I stop screaming.

For a while I harbored this fear that if I started to scream I would never stop. But I do. And I'm sure you do too. If for no other reason than shear exhaustion. Just like a big wave, it goes just like it comes. Staying just out ahead of it just makes you exhausted from paddling. For years I worried that the wave would take me over and that would be the end, so I tried to stay just beyond the wave. But life IS the wave and all that exhausting paddling just keeps me from feeling it as fully. So I'm diving in.

And what I want to say to you is I recover...my kids recover...you will recover. So scream if you need to. Let your kids scream if they need to. Sometimes we all need to just feel it and go there and find our way out again and realize the wave wasn't the end of us.