Burned Out Thinking

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1711

Abstract

on is leaving. I have been pregnant or breastfeeding or caring for a child (or two) for 3.5 years without a break. Of course, this is only the beginning. So where do we go for escape? I can’t use drugs anymore. I can’t have an acceptable glass of wine or beer at the end of the day. Something you desperately look forward to as soon as you remember its existence. “It’s 5 o’clock somewhere.” The American motto. I don’t have that. Sometimes sugar will suffice. Sugar and some engaging, well-written or simply bad TV. Exercise. Sure. Sleep. I guess. “Build a life you don’t need a vacation from.” I mean, okay. It’s not really “life.” My life is objectively good. I couldn’t ask for more. It’s the brain that needs escaping. The nervous system that is jacked up beyond belief it needs to be re-trained for eternity. Exhausting. Human beinghood is exhausting, and I didn’t even touch on why. Why. Why we want to escape. Why some do. Why some, sometimes, almost get there. Why we are bored beyond conviction when there’s so much to do. I just want to sit. Sit, and escape.And I have researched and I will research to death. Until all the research is bleeding out of me and I’m lying in a pile of Google on the bathroom floor, incapacitated by decision and covered in blood.I get up in the morning, “time for school!” School. Daycare. Seis pool of possible Covid. Whatever we call it. It’s a break and hopefully something better, for her. I do wonder why we inflict this pain on our children. This “necessary” pain of ripping them away from their safety as we walk away, listening to the cries and screams, or just see the one tear drop from their eye because they know yo

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u’re leaving and that’s devastating. To them. To you. But it’s normal. “Normal.” It probably is, or it’s just normal because we repeat it, year after year. Kind of like sleep. Self-sufficiency is sleep and potty training. Kids become independent by crying themselves to sleep and choosing when to go pee or poop. But who says? Research, I’m sure. And I have researched and I will research to death. Until all the research is bleeding out of me and I’m lying in a pile of Google on the bathroom floor, incapacitated by decision and covered in blood.Did I cry out for my parents when I was learning to put myself to sleep? Did I scream, “I want my mommy!” and she never came. Was it to “strengthen my lungs?” Was it difficult for you to hear my cries, muting them, never getting to know what each of them meant? Am I hurt? Am I angry? Am I putting on a show? Am I fine? I sit and listen to my daughters’ cries. Every inch. I listen for them, and I listen for me. I stay connected even if it is painful. For them. For me.I wonder, with all the opinions in what to do for our children and all the lost parents drowning in Google’s blood, who is making the right decision? Is there a right decision? Why decision at all? Why not instinct? Innate reaction. Or is that just impulse. I’m not asking. We are all here trying to be in this world and weed out the “real” from the “fake” and the “right” from the “wrong” and the gluten from the wheat and the chemicals from my Starbucks and the bones from my fish and the fossil from our fuel and the human from our climate and the Covid from our schools and the cries from our sleep. Is it any wonder, I want to escape.</article></body>

Motherhood at its worst

I cannot escape this feeling of unsatisfactory life. Like no matter what I do to escape I keep coming back in with fresh “let me have you” eyes and then wanting, again, to escape. This feeling of anxious unease begins to eat at you. At me. I hear my daughter cough in the other room for the blank-day in a row and I want to tell her to shut up. She needs me and I feel love and then I comfort her and give her all she needs. I stay up with her in the night and give her medicine and rock her and sing her lullabies and gently tickle her and answer her questions and stay with her tantrums and sometimes feel immense love and understanding when she is sick and needy and other times want to escape. The need is constant. And she coughs again. She will be better soon and the need won’t go away. It will be different. “I want, I want, I want.” “I need, I need, I need.” And she does want. And she does need. And I want to give her what she wants and needs. I need to give her what she wants and needs. It is molded into my biology. Carved into my being like Mayan ruins, stuck for thousands of years, faded by the elements but never truly gone.

My compassion is leaving. I have been pregnant or breastfeeding or caring for a child (or two) for 3.5 years without a break. Of course, this is only the beginning. So where do we go for escape? I can’t use drugs anymore. I can’t have an acceptable glass of wine or beer at the end of the day. Something you desperately look forward to as soon as you remember its existence. “It’s 5 o’clock somewhere.” The American motto. I don’t have that. Sometimes sugar will suffice. Sugar and some engaging, well-written or simply bad TV. Exercise. Sure. Sleep. I guess. “Build a life you don’t need a vacation from.” I mean, okay. It’s not really “life.” My life is objectively good. I couldn’t ask for more. It’s the brain that needs escaping. The nervous system that is jacked up beyond belief it needs to be re-trained for eternity. Exhausting. Human beinghood is exhausting, and I didn’t even touch on why. Why. Why we want to escape. Why some do. Why some, sometimes, almost get there. Why we are bored beyond conviction when there’s so much to do. I just want to sit. Sit, and escape.

And I have researched and I will research to death. Until all the research is bleeding out of me and I’m lying in a pile of Google on the bathroom floor, incapacitated by decision and covered in blood.

I get up in the morning, “time for school!” School. Daycare. Seis pool of possible Covid. Whatever we call it. It’s a break and hopefully something better, for her. I do wonder why we inflict this pain on our children. This “necessary” pain of ripping them away from their safety as we walk away, listening to the cries and screams, or just see the one tear drop from their eye because they know you’re leaving and that’s devastating. To them. To you. But it’s normal. “Normal.” It probably is, or it’s just normal because we repeat it, year after year. Kind of like sleep. Self-sufficiency is sleep and potty training. Kids become independent by crying themselves to sleep and choosing when to go pee or poop. But who says? Research, I’m sure. And I have researched and I will research to death. Until all the research is bleeding out of me and I’m lying in a pile of Google on the bathroom floor, incapacitated by decision and covered in blood.

Did I cry out for my parents when I was learning to put myself to sleep? Did I scream, “I want my mommy!” and she never came. Was it to “strengthen my lungs?” Was it difficult for you to hear my cries, muting them, never getting to know what each of them meant? Am I hurt? Am I angry? Am I putting on a show? Am I fine? I sit and listen to my daughters’ cries. Every inch. I listen for them, and I listen for me. I stay connected even if it is painful. For them. For me.

I wonder, with all the opinions in what to do for our children and all the lost parents drowning in Google’s blood, who is making the right decision? Is there a right decision? Why decision at all? Why not instinct? Innate reaction. Or is that just impulse. I’m not asking. We are all here trying to be in this world and weed out the “real” from the “fake” and the “right” from the “wrong” and the gluten from the wheat and the chemicals from my Starbucks and the bones from my fish and the fossil from our fuel and the human from our climate and the Covid from our schools and the cries from our sleep. Is it any wonder, I want to escape.