Category Archives: Universal Topics

37

Growing Up, Personal Opinion, Simple and Mind Blowing Observations, Universal Topics, Universal Topics, Personal Opinion

I’m 37 now which means nothing except I’m halfway to 74 and now might be a good time to evaluate things before moving forward.

At 37, my eyebrows have made a comeback, having been left alone for 2 years. I’m in a healthy relationship with my hair dresser. I have spare wrapping paper under my bed for last minute gifts like a real adult.  I have salad tongs that I’m proud to use with company. My car is paid off.  I am 37 and I have laughed hysterically with both my children. I have shamelessly boasted about my depth of knowledge to my kids and have explained to them the laws of gravity. It has something to do with apples. I navigate the parenting waters pretty well, despite some recent near fatal emotional drownings.

At 37,  I have friends. Some are old treasures from high school,  some are more recent. I have followed my passion and pursued the arts. I have chosen to redirected my focus to a life more predictable. I have crushed, fallen and married.  I read all sorts of encouraging memes all day and tell myself I should follow their advice. I read language-rich novels that tickle my heart’s belly and maintains a  dictionary of words and phrases that I can’t spew up fast enough.

I have fewer impulses to be arbitrarily liked, to ask for permission.I deeply enjoy the relief I feel at not being younger than I am. I know what it means to keep trying to get a job, to keep working at a relationship and to keep telling my kids I’m actually just winging it. Having tools to manage are a gift that the years have given me. At 37,  I have a beautiful life. A lot doesn’t scare me anymore.

However.

I am 37 and I’m constantly unravelling. I am a spinning compass of potential with a broken magnet. I have a degree in acting which means always the co-worker, never the manager.  I love writing and sharing it with others, but have only a blog to show for it. Sometimes I experience an ache so paralyzing from not being in the arts, I have to go to bed.  I have a deep unease living in me. Sometimes it’s in my throat, sometimes in my stomach. It moves around my body throughout the day but I am always carrying it, even if I am able to perform my tasks and play my roles. Sometimes a good day is measured by how many emotional showers I don’t have.

At 37, I have actual opinions about #politics, #justice and other hot hashtags, and have to choose when to voice them. Some friendships have matured, others have funeralized. My children are developing a skepticism of my knowledge and challenging its shallow depths. I worry about how much time I have left to be care-free about anything – everything seems so weighted. At 37 my body needs constant attention, otherwise it screams its years. 

An evaluation can be useful. It can bring into focus what has been learned, and what is being developed. I always appreciated my school report cards, and remember devouring my teacher’s comments. I’d compare with my friends and decide who was the teacher’s favourite and then we’d buy some gummies and have a playdate. 37 is a bit more lonely, I must say. Nobody is offering me grades, and instead I have to do it myself. Comparing is the stuff of evil – ask any self-help meme – so must be avoided. And there are no favourites. Everyone is busy, and favouritism waffles in and out depending on who you’re spending time with.

Evaluating myself is difficult. But at this time, reporting on the accomplishments made, and the hardships still being lived, I’ve decided 37 gets an E. E for Effort. My comments would be : “Shows resilience and an aptitude for expression. Needs support when feeling overwhelmed. Is encouraged to find new ways to make tasks easier while rising to challenges.” I haven’t stopped, and I will keep getting up. If 37 years has taught me anything, it’s that Effort has brought me this far, and will carry me further still. Effort is a form of love, and I am lucky to have so much love inside. Effort is something to be proud of. Time for some gummies.

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The Best Friend Tier

Issues for Women, Life's Little Moments, Personal Opinion, Universal Topics, Universal Topics, Personal Opinion
Best Friend isn’t a person Danny, it’s a tier. 
Hitting nails on heads since 2012, Mindy Kaling crushes it. This tier is a cherished haven, and usually spans years of fortitude, is emotionally cultivated and is rooted in time, honesty and deep challenge. It’s a winning lottery ticket, a rotating panel keeping the influx of emotional wealth ever flowing. Depending on the day, the situation, the need, I can reach out to the person that my guts need.
I cannot manage finances, take out the garbage and giggle on the couch with moisturized, smooth legs draped over my partner’s lap. I cannot laugh at his jokes, pay bills on time and offer our kids a healthy dose of discipline. What am I, a 1950’s housewife? At a time when we search, swipe and date looking for the one to be our best friend, lover, co-parent, financier, home cleaning company, impulse controller/instigator, life coach, and sounding board – it’s a matter of survival for me to have a stash of individuals that can energetically come to my aid when my partner is tapped out. The idea that one person can fulfill all our needs is a deep insult to me, and has created far more stress in my relationship than necessary. If only our vows had included “Within this sacred union of marriage, we will outsource support and not solely rely on each other because neither of us is capable, nor deserving of such an impossibility”.  If I go for too long without connecting with my BFT my wifing starts to falter. My mothering starts to fumble. The correlation is obvious, and this aspect of my health must be a non-negotiable.
Getting the quality time to interact with these precious people who live on this sacred Tier is paramount. Like any garden, the Tier needs tending, watering, sometimes weeding. It keeps the bowels of my soul healthy. As an extravert, I am at my best when my heart is tethered to the heart of others. I am at worst when I float aimlessly without these anchors. Finding the time is a challenge. Coordinating the time is near impossible. A trip without the kids here, a coffee with the baby there. A post-bed-time beer every 4 weeks, or a flurry of text messaging mid-day for the serious stuff. We get creative, focussed, serious about the need to make it happen. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. When will I learn that it must?
It never happens often enough. I always want more and need replenishment at a faster rate than my depletion. I feel guilty for needing more, even though I know it would make me better, keep me sane. I struggle to remind myself how important this is, to accept that these heart strings don’t snap. It’s hard to explain to my partner that sometimes it’s specifically not him that I need. When the BFT is populated with the right people, the demands of every day are manageable, the laughter flows easier and my ability to give back is strengthened. How is something so simple, so goddamn difficult at the same time?
Can we just agree that we are soulmates and have an open relationship? 
That’s kind of what we are doing.
Great, we are always on the same page. 
                                                                                    Gotta go, somebody is screaming my name.
Stay strong. At least we have each other.
                                                                                                                                                        Totes.

 

 

How I Talk To My Daughter About Her Body

Motherhood My Way, raising girls, Universal Topics, Viral backlash, , , ,

How I Talk to My Daughter About Her Body

An article went viral a while back. Then it went viral again and I had to sit through the comments of praise and revelation all over again. It was called ‘How To Talk to Your Daughter About her Body’. The second sentence of the popular article was ‘Don’t Talk to Your Daughter About her Body’.

I don’t take blunt instructions from strangers very well, even if they get published on Huffington Post. I acknowledge their advice the way I acknowledge the barking comments from the lady on the street who tells me my son is underdressed/overdressed/uncomfortable/too tired as I walk by. I ignore it. When this article first crossed my news feed, my first thought was ‘don’t tell me how to raise my daughter.’ I read the article – it was too tempting a title – and it made me feel like crap. Now, I have a strict rule as a mother than any material that shakes my confidence in my parenting style is better suited for the give away pile. Maybe I read it on the day I told my daughter she looked stunning in her new dress and felt guilty for having given her a compliment, or maybe it was that the article was a bit preachy and if I wasn’t a follower I would be sent to mommy hell.

Black and white doesn’t exist in my human experience. To me, the nuances and muddiness is what makes life so complex. It’s what provides the beauty in my world, and as I look around, extremes are often what get us into trouble.

My daughter is a bright 7 year old who attends school. She has friends who are from Canada, others from Sudan. She speaks french, plays sports and watches too much Netflix. She is a typical kid and as a parent, I am sensitive to her experiences. I am cognitive of her watching me put on make-up. I remember the first time I let her watch me wax my legs. The truth is, life happens, whether you address it or not. In my opinion the more open you are, the better the happening is. The safer. The more authentic. As my daughter has grown into her little girl self, she has come across friends with different approaches to body image, she has watched movies rated PG 13 and she has had questions. To avoid or spin those questions so that I am only addressing one aspect of those questions (the health or pure function of her body) is doing her a disservice. I am not arming her with the knowledge and wherewithal to make good choices, to know there are many choices and to respect the choices of others. The truth is, those questions include the frankness of talking about her body. Healthily. Functionally. Socially.

That’s the beef, right? That there is only benefit in talking to our girls about the health and function of their bodies, but not about their social place. I whole heartily disagree with that, and I can only explain why from my own experience. I can only explain from my 32 years of living as a woman, from having female friends, from having a daughter, from having a son. I disagree because it’s not whole. My human experience has been wholly social, and we accept that we are a social species. We need each other. We engage with each other. We compare, we celebrate we criticize each other. We always have and we always will. Health is about balance, and that balance includes how we function socially. When my daughter comes home and feels embarrassed that the other kids were making fun of her leg hair, that’s a social issue. It’s a social issue but it intrinsically involves her body, so what am I going to do? Not talk about how others will evaluate her as grows up? When she’s a teenager it will be about her breasts and when she’s a young woman it will be about something else. We measure ourselves against others and we can sit and wish for a time and place that that doesn’t exist, but I suspect you will be waiting for a long time. Maybe about as long as I will be waiting for the article to come out ‘How To Talk To Your Son About His Body’. Ain’t gonna happen. 

No matter what I do, my daughter will develop a relationship with her physical body, the way I have- the way we all have. She will develop a relationship with her body and the way it functions socially in the world. I owe her the ability to know that and be aware of the times it will effect her. She will have friends who have unhealthy body image and sexuality perspectives and friends with healthy ones. She will meet boys who have been educated on the topic and boys who have not. She will live through fashion trends, trendy revelations from new studies published in the most prestigious of journals and she will still continue to have a relationship with her body. The way she relates to her body will highly influence how she chooses to use her mind, body and soul in this world. So I work hard to make sure she knows there is equal weight in the knowledge about how to eat right, how to play strong, and how to feel comfortable in her skin. In her body. That hopefully she feels beautiful in. And sexy. And nuanced. And strong. And know that those things are okay. Important. Part of being a woman. (gasp! I’m raising a girl to feel like and celebrate being a woman?! I’m allowed to do that nowadays? Well, I’m gonna raise my son up to be about the best damn man you ever met, so you can bet your butt my daughter is going to be something fierce of a fine woman)

Compliments about a girls’s body and appearance are not the problem. Using compliments to fill a void in her self esteem is a problem. That is not what I’m doing, and it’s not what I’m advocating.

I don’t validate material that is written with the intention to prove a point, one point and only that point. Especially if it’s not written in I statements. I can stomach blogs and articles that are confessionals, that run so personally that what they say is so clearly their own experience that it had to be written. I don’t feel like those articles are trying to convert me, or scold me for doing it differently. My intention with this piece is to acknowledge for myself and maybe reassure others that if you’re talking to your daughter about her body, telling her that’s beautiful, giving her handfuls of compliments that are not about her diet but are just off the cuff observations about how awesome her body is, that maybe you’re not the worst parent out there. Maybe you’re not making things worse, but actually making things better. By raising confident, aware girls who will know how to talk about their bodies and know that how they use them in their life is a tool and an asset and that it’s okay to be conscious of that.

I’m not a stranger giving you advice. I’m a stranger sharing with you how I do it. You do it how you like. But if you publish an article instructing me to do it your way, I will likely blog about it after it goes viral. images-3

Finding Peace at Night

Get A Little Perspective People, Motherhood My Way, Personal Opinion, Universal Topics, , , ,

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In my new parenting book, to be published by me when I have lots of extra cash and time to write it, I talk about the craziness of not freaking out when your 16 month old is still waking to nurse through the night. There are other chapters. Chapters titled “Ask your African Neighbour What She Does for her Baby – and Then Copy Her”, “How to Lie Down in the Tub While Having a Bath with Your Baby”, and “How to Wear Your Food Splattered Clothing in Public with Pride”. For now, we will focus on the chapter called “Maybe Your Baby Wakes up at Night – Finding Peace Within”. 

As with all the chapters in my book, they are based on my own experience, and an inclination that other mothers are having or have had similar experiences. I have no PhD or degrees in anything legitimized by society, but I do have 7 years of motherhood under my belt, which is over 60,000 hours of work put toward this topic, which is why I felt qualified to write a book. I understand that anything I say can be poo pood by somebody with a formal education in this field, after hours in labs and studying other people’s babies to write reports on the importance of sleep so that these reports may be published by a journal and then I really look like a moron because I don’t have any reports, unless you count my sobbing diary entries as reports or my midnight text messages to my friends as controlled variables or something. All of this to say, the theme of my parenting book is very much about my own experience with my own children, because I heartily believe that if we all just stick to I statements, we  all might actually learn something, instead of all of us following the advice of a few people unconditionally.

This particular chapter was written with the intention of healing my own inner conflict at failing miserably because my child was still waking and nursing at night at 16 months old, and my secret feeling that this was actually not just okay, but necessary. Necessary for what? I asked myself. I first noticed the differences between my oldest daughter and my new son um, on the day he was born. The two of them could not have been more opposite. My daughter was born with an independent streak built right in, and the day she started walking, she never searched for my breast again. It was a quick break, but it made sense for her, and I barely questioned it, even as a young first-time mom. With my second, I found myself a little puzzled by his need to be close. He had independence, this was true, but he also had a clear need to check in with me more frequently. You still there mom? Can I get a little nursing to make sure? This room is really crowded, can I just put my hand down your shirt to make sure we’re still a team? I just woke up and am feeling a little cranky – 5 minutes of nursing? It was and continues to be a strong aspect of his development that persists throughout the night. In the spirit of ‘whatever works’, the truth is is that getting up to cuddle and nurse my son isn’t so taxing on me. He typically goes back to bed without much fuss and I have even come to trust that when he fusses as I put him down, if I give him another 2 minutes, he will then be ready. He knows. But this is in stark contrast to what the world around me expects. Every book and website I go on chides me for not having trained him to sleep solidly throughout the night. It’s the topic I like to avoid with other mothers or older women. Ironically, if I look back to my daughter’s sleeping, it took her 3 years to learn how to fall asleep. Once she was out, she was down for the count, and even at age 6 slept through the birth of her brother happening in the room next to hers. 3 years of back rubbing, of sitting with my back to her crib so she could see me, of hand holding, of trotting back to her room for the 11th time. Just last night she went through the same routine, only this time with words. For the most part she be put to bed and she can fall asleep on her own, but her instinctual need to resist sleep has remained, and yet, I don’t even question that. Then I hear the baby crying and I go in to comfort him and I have a million voices in my head questioning me about my motives, my perseverance, and my ability to ‘sleep train’ him.

Mob mentality is powerful stuff, and finding peace with something outside the parenting norm is hard. Parents who co-sleep with their kids are met with their share of awkward questions and glances, but there is a decent amount of material out there now that supports co-sleeping that one can easily say ‘Let me send you the link to The Benefits of Co-Sleeping’ and be done with it. So far I haven’t found much about the okayness of parents still comforting their babies at 16 months old – hence the chapter in my likely award-winning parenting book.

Key word in that last sentence is babies. This is a baby. Yes he’s walking and has a toddler presence, but if I’m totally honest with myself, the kid is a baby. He falls and needs his mom, he wakes and needs his mom. Everything in me says this is okay, because you know what? I watched my daughter go to school when she was 5 years old and I was shocked at how young she was to be out in the world and I thought long and hard about how quickly we take away the baby years from our babies. So why am I so conflicted when my baby still acts like a baby in the middle of the goddamn night? Once I made that connection, I found a little peace.

Parenting is 24/7. That includes nighttime. I started to look at my own angst towards having to get up at night, and I wondered when I started to draw a line between my role as mother during the day and during the night. I know that sleep is important and when it’s absent, things are hard. Like, really hard. But everything about parenting is hard the thing that nobody tells you us that you don’t get a break, and you are only given what you can handle. So when I started to put in my mommy hat at night fall, and trust that I would live to see another day, I found a little more peace.

I started to wonder if one training style met the needs of all people. Now, I know there are lots of different ‘sleep training’ methods out there, but they are all geared toward getting that 1 year old to sleep through the night. But what if some babies need a different method entirely – one that involves practicing reassurance, patience and comfort for longer than what is widely accepted? Is it possible that my baby needs to be comforted for longer during the night in order to develop a healthy relationship with sleep, something he will do for the rest of his life, everyday day, until the day he dies? Is it possible that I need to allow for perhaps a year, 2 years, 3 years to develop and nurture that relationship in order to create that foundation for him? When I realized that, and realized that there is nothing crazy about that concept, there was more peace waiting to be found.

The chapter ends with the observation that despite still waking, my son sleeps for longer stretches at night, while still waking and needing to be held and nursed. More often than not, he sleeps for 5-8 hours at a time, but there are the nights when I am up every 2 hours to prove that I am still there, or to reassure him that there will always be comfort when he needs it. At times I remember that between the two of us, this little human has a clearer sense of what is needed than I do. His head is not clouded by the words and advice of experts or published studies. He survives day to day with the purity of understanding what his body and soul need. In the dark, he knows that he needs the familiar hold of the woman he relies on for everything. The depths of sanity of that fact have sealed the deal for me, and I no longer harbour the inner conflict of getting up at night. It’s hard, but now that I don’t fight it, it is at least peaceful.

You can look for my book on shelves in 2020. National book signing tour will commence on July 7th in Ottawa ON. In the meantime, stay tuned for other exciting non-advice blog posts.

When Toddlers Slap

Growing Up, Motherhood My Way, Universal Topics, ,

On a typical day, in a good mood, my son will play, hug, laugh and show affection in the most endearing of ways. Most recently, he responds to my “I love you” with a giant open mouth as he leans in for a kiss. Wonderfully slobbery, his kisses lack any form, but their intention is clear as day and I relish in the expression. While nursing, the little guy will gently stroke my face, as many nursing mothers experience and it is a form of love that touches the deepest part of us. My face is the first thing he came to know, the first thing he saw without fog because of Nature’s amazing deal with mom. The distance between our face and a nursing baby’s is the perfect distance for his new eyes to see us clearly, while everything else in those first few weeks remain hazy. When he needs comfort after a fall, after a crash against something hard, the first thing he needs is my eye contact, my assuring face that everything is alright.

You can imagine my dismay then as he has entered a new phase of feeling so frustrated that my face and his need to destroy it is the only thing that makes him feel better.

As he learns that not everything he needs is going to be given to him, he is experiencing huge blows to his ego. Our fun game of walking, stopping, hiding – walking, stopping, hiding down the hallway to our apartment doesn’t fly when mommy has to be somewhere at a certain time. In those moments I use my words to explain why I am about to pick him up, and then the flailing arms and surprisingly accurate face slaps start. I have to be honest, in those moments I pray that nobody is looking. I never intended to have a baby that slaps me in the face when he doesn’t get what he wants. I am a waaaaay better mother than that. As I buckle him into his car seat and duck the blows he tries to plant on me, I remind myself that I have to cut his goddamn fingernails.

I drive through the streets and I think about how insane it is that the thing this boy loves the most, my face, is the thing he lashes out at when he feels he’s losing control. But there is something sane inside that insanity, isn’t there? I remember tearing up my artwork as a child, and I felt more release if I targeted the pieces that I was really proud of. It’s an expression of self destruction, at the heart of it, and I believe technically my son still thinks that he and I are the one and the same. I start to imagine that left unattended and unchecked, this need to destroy something you love becomes an issue far greater than I’m qualified to discuss, but I feel a deep calling to ensure my role as mother teaches him the important lesson of learning how to express his frustration. He doesn’t understand all my words yet, nor does he understand all his feelings, so it requires patience and trust in myself that everything I am doing is somehow ironing out all his jumbled emotions and clearing the path for their release in a much more acceptable way. Most of all this will go away on its own, as he gains more understanding, more language, and his frustration now will largely be quelled with age. But there are golden moments in parenthood when I get these rare glimpses of how important raising a child is and how I can be so instrumental in his understanding of the world.

Gross, we hear that all the time. But when it’s right in front of you, slapping you in the face, it has much deeper meaning than you thought it had when you read it in your parenting magazine or your 4th edition parenting book. I may not respond to his panicked slapping in the same way each time, but that’s because each time is a different circumstance. I respond differently in public than I do in my own home. I respond differently when I know I have given him no time or warning to a change and he is reacting out of loss of routine, rather than out of ego-centric thinking. I believe a child has the right to know the difference between those intentions, and while I do not allow him sometimes to hit, I allow him sometimes to be frustrated in a supported way. Like when he throws himself on the floor in utter defiance because I have *gasp* taken away his apple core, I think it’s okay to let him flip and flop until he is done and then needs a hug. My poor neighbours.

Patience and trust moms. With each day comes the giant opportunity to shape our children, and while we may be too tired or busy to respond to every single moment, we are doing the work of angels. Although I doubt angels ever get slapped in the face.

A Life Unravelled

Growing Up, Personal Opinion, Universal Topics, , , , ,

I stopped drinking in the middle of the summer as part of an inner cleanse and a personal test to see if I could even do it. I didn’t follow a particular diet, I just cut out booze all together and watched my life unravel.

It turns out unravelling is way more healthy than balling it all up. I’m in the middle of a knitting project and I find the analogy very fitting. Typically we call our girlfriends because our lives have begun to unravel, have begun to spill over and cause big messes and we panic at the potential clean up, but perhaps we have it backwards. Perhaps those phone calls should happen when we discover that we have been bunching up all our problems and it’s turning into a tight ball of avoidance behaviour and unhealthy practices. “I did it again”, she wailed into the mobile, “I avoided dealing with the problem and got drunk again” instead of “It hurts so damn much, I feel like I’m unravelling”.

For myself, I discovered many, many, MANY issues that were happily being swallowed with each delicious sip of sauvignon blanc. Upon removing the nightly wine I found myself sitting uncomfortably and wondering if I really had to think about a specific problem that I knew needed solving. Without a glass in my hand to distract me, I felt stupid not looking at what was actually sitting in front of me needing attention. Okay, so that’s a pretty straight forward lesson. Drinking distracts me from dealing with my life.

I was also surprised by some of the emotional hurdles that I went through when I took away the drink. For example, it became glaringly obvious that most friendships revolved around dulled senses and the absence of being present. Yikes. If I was honest with myself, I found that I dreaded most social interactions because I knew that without a slight buzz I would be forced to be present, which meant I might have to be honest about my life and my emotional stability and quite frankly compared to the glossy eyed conversations of long passed, I realized that I was quite unstable. Not in a frightening way, but in the way that we all try to avoid the real answer to How are you? when really all you’re looking for is idle chit chat at the dinner table or at the social gathering of the week. I found the urge to quit my little cleanse so overpowering that I wondered if I was a little more dependant on alcohol than I realized. Images of the word alcoholic haunted me at night and I wasn’t even able to pass out from a few drinks, but instead had to wait for sleep to come to me. Another reasonably predictable lesson. Drinking had become a social crutch that removed authenticity from my relationships.

Sleep. Holy moly, what a dysfunctional relationship I was experiencing with that necessity. I quickly learned that I was practicing self-destructive, abusive and toxic practices with something that could otherwise be giving me energy, clarity and fundamental health. As soon as liquor was removed, I realized that falling asleep was a huge problem. I went to bed with high anxiety (a great way to fall asleep) and had negative feelings about everything to do with the night. So strong was this reaction that it was slightly more obvious that alcohol had somehow convinced me that I was doomed without my night cap and it was almost, almost comedic. Of course after a couple of weeks I found that I was able to fall asleep on my own, that my sleep was uninterrupted, and that when I was woken by the screaming of an infant, I was not only less groggy (some might say I was hung over…?) I was also able to go back to sleep. Amazing. First surprise lesson. Drinking was having a negative impact on my sleeping. Sleeping is one of the most important things a person needs to function.

Surprise lessons. They are wonderful. I rarely embark on anything thinking I will be surprised, and then I am and I am left mouth agape. Without a beer or a glass of wine in tow, I saw how much we all drink. It’s astounding. When was the last time you had a group of friends over and all easily sat in each other’s presence and talked, played games, got animated, laughed, cried, left feeling amazing and not an ounce of alcohol was consumed? Collectively we drink constantly. Sure I have friends who don’t drink very much or at all, but that didn’t mean I had to decline when it was offered to me. And there I was – declining and tightening my jaw at wanting to say yes, and everyone else was happily sipping their craft beer around me. Only at home with my husband was I able to practice the skill of maintaining a relationship without the fuzzy haze of alcohol. I learned that I was able to laugh hysterically and find truth in our disagreements and remember it all. We had a lovely evening one time with friends, meeting new people and as we drove away I realized that if I had been drinking, I would wake up the next day and second guess everything. I would wonder if I had been too tipsy, too loud, not casual enough, not something or too much anything. Instead I knew that everything that had happened had been real and had been grounded, and I discovered that I was slowly building self trust. I was regaining faith in myself and in my ability to be engaging, to be liked just as I am, not because I was uninhibited due to alcohol but because I was enough. Surprise surprise, I had some self trust healing to do. Surprise surprise, I could still have a good time in a crowded room without intoxication.

Surprise after surprise kept coming. My inner compass was aligning itself again, I was saving almost $400 dollars a month, I was sleeping, I was present, I was engaged again. Then another surprise. I met a handful of people my age doing the same thing either temporarily or permanently. For one reason or another, I was in the company of other young adults giving up drinking. Maybe a few too many forgotten moments, maybe the longing of a healthier lifestyle. All of a sudden I didn’t feel so crazy, so shy to admit that it wasn’t so much a cleanse as a need to be unravelled, to iron out some deep issues. Where had these people been and are there more of us? Maybe we are closer to a night of board games and ginger ale than I thought.

I have had a couple of drinks once the cooler weather came. They were in celebration of, not in avoidance of life. I had never intended to give up drinking forever, but have come to see how my relationship with it has changed indefinitely. Looking back, I realize that my drinking never matured past my university days. It was a given social practice regardless of my fatigue, my want, my responsibilities. I suppose this could all be poetry for I am an alcoholic, but I don’t think so. What I think it is, for me, is a most important social and personal development experiment. One that has been eye opening and truth telling. One that has unravelled my life in the best way possible. So if you get a call from me saying that my life is falling apart at the seams, wait a minute to hear the good news.

11wtiTechHistoryrotator-1383753362260

Meet My Depression

Personal Opinion, Universal Topics, , , ,

The weather is changing. The days are getting shorter and colder. My first year with my second child is finished, and the question of going back to work hangs in the balance. There are many reasons why a person in my situation would be feeling a little down. A little blue. A little depressed.

That word. So heavy. I imagine myself walking along, light and effortless and then all of a sudden an invisible weight sits on me and I begin to cave in. Like a depression in a landscape, I sink a little lower than the people around me, I become camouflaged from far away and I am excellent at tripping people up when they unknowingly walk over me.

I wanted to glaze over it, muster something interesting out of the depths of my brain to write about on this most important blog. I thought maybe I could get some good material from my slight misery, but of course depression doesn’t work like that. So then I thought about faking it. Because we all fake it, right? But then I argued that that is the opposite of my brilliant idea of a blog that is about not faking anything. So instead I’m going to expose my depression in the hopes that with a light shone directly at it, it will scamper away. I will hold nothing back. I will simply introduce you to my pesky friend.

My depression is tired and sore. Angry to be woken and immune to caffein. The likes of a needy baby have no sway against it and there is a sharp ‘shhhhhhhhh’ at 3am when the baby wins the battle and I enter the room. The harsh ‘shhhhushing’ feels good on my lips and I want to do it again and again because it makes me feel like I’m spreading my anger and at 3am, the only thing that makes me feel better is everyone around me also being angry.

My depression is always dieting. There is no appetite and the only thing that easily passes through my mouth is sugar. Maybe my depression longs to have diabetes, and I do worry about it as I suck on my 6th spoon of Nutella. When my depression is not hungry, it is difficult to prepare food for everyone else. Meals become less interesting, people are less happy at the table and it all feeds my depression’s thinking that ‘see? Nobody is grateful for your cooking anyway‘.

My depression becomes socially disengaged. Sometimes aggressively, peppering my thoughts with how much I hate people in general, and sometimes passively, hiding from texts or emails and peeking through my phone call logs to see who loves me but who doesn’t. One call isn’t enough. Two isn’t enough. Unless there are many calls from a single person in a row, it is proof that I am not loved and I watch my friend list get smaller and smaller.

My depression sees no future. When there is no future, there is little motivation to do anything in the present, and so the present becomes pretty uninspiring. Why plan for the future when it clearly sucks and you’re doing everything wrong anyway? The idea that everything sucks and that the future will too becomes overwhelming and my depression takes swipes at my self-esteem until I am convinced that every choice I have made in my life was the wrong one.

My depression loves media. Too much television, too many browsed websites, too much time spent on Facebook and too many rounds of Candy Crush and Majong are played. My depression convinces me that I’m ‘just relaxing’ and that I deserve a little break. But once my head is foggy from too much screen time, I realize that I need another break, and soon the day is finished and I’ve filled it with breaks. A life of breaks is not much of a life.

My depression looks around the apartment, looks in my closet, looks at my bedding, looks in my fridge and tells me that nothing is good enough.

My depression likes to spend money.

My depression criticizes my handling of money.

My depression is well spoken on the topic of failure, and showers me with praise at how well I do failure. So elegant. So convincing. My depression is very supportive of me when I pursue my thoughts of failure. Being supported feels really good, when you’re depressed.

My depression hates my appearance.

My depression is in communication with all the people in my life that I compare myself too. They seem to pop up on my Facebook newsfeed, they get jobs on LinkedIn, they post pictures of themselves smiling. My depression loves to show me these people and because of its love for media, I then go searching for them.

My depression likes to get sick.

My depression likes it when I sit and imagine what other people’s lows look like. Does Jimmy Fallon ever feel so blue? Does my smiling friend? Nothing about my lows seem to suit other people, so it stands to reason that of course other people don’t feel so blue, and that I am the only one who embodies all of the above.

My depression likes it when I am the only one.

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When I think about it, it seems obvious to me that my depression really excels in this time period. Social media, over consumption, the ability to quickly compare myself with a stranger on the internet, a huge feeling of isolation even though we are told we are more connected now than ever before… I wonder if 50 years ago, if my depression would have flourished the way it is right now. Who knows? But I will say for all those who know me personally, that I am not one who gets goes so deep into the landscape that I cannot get out. Eventually I am hurled back onto flat land, and my time in the valley seems cruel but at least short. I can’t tell yet if my act of exposing my depression has made it run for the hills, but I can say that I am a bit hungry. On this cold foggy morning, that’s something.

You know those days when….

Personal Opinion, Universal Topics, , ,

You know when it’s 1:30am and your partner is coughing from a cold and keeping you awake, and then you finally resolve to ‘just be direct’ and end up hissing in the dark “Why don’t you just sleep on the couch?” and then kind of pat yourself on the back for improving in your communication skills, and kind of hate yourself for still behaving like a 9 year old?

You know when it’s a few hours later and your accumulated fatigue barely warrants mentioning, but then you see your partner on the couch sitting with his eyes closed because he’s so tired, and you can’t help but bang around the kitchen and snap at the kids and then finally make an underhanded comment about how he doesn’t know what it means to be tired?

You know when you see your partner helping the kids get and eat their breakfast, and you know somewhere in your cold heart that he is sick and even though you hate when he’s sick because men are the worst at being sick, you still kind of realize that you love him and that you would be a mess without him?

You know those days when you realize you got your hair cut a week ago, and you’ve been pushing the envelop to see how long you can go without washing it because for some reason no matter what you do, it will never look as good as it did when you left the salon, and you know your self esteem is walking on thin ice and you don’t know if you have it in you to risk the washing and look way worse then you have for the last glorious week?

You know when your logical side kicks in and says ‘you look greasy’ and you wash your hair and then as you dry it and stand in the mirror you think about all the things you hate about yourself and know that you made a huge error and probably should’ve stuck to the greasy look, and you have a moment of understanding those 80 year old women in the 80’s that your grandmother was friends with who would go to a salon just to get her hair washed and blow dried and it never made sense until this moment that you hate yourself in the mirror?

You know when you live in a co-op and you have no income, and so you apply for subsidy because that’s why you moved into a co-op in the first place, and you’re told you need a bunch of documentation to prove you have no income and you wrestle with a sense of shame for having no income but try to remind yourself that you are home with the kids and that’s ‘priceless’ but then you actually kind of picture a price on your kids’ heads and wonder if you are pricing them high enough and then wonder if you’re a bad mother for coming up with what seems like a reasonable price for a child and then have to deal with a couple of 20 year olds about how you have no income and you again hate yourself and wish your kids were actually worth money?

You know when you have 15 minutes to spare before your partner has an appointment so you browse through some shops in a trendy neighbourhood and you see a cool calendar that your husband really likes and as you leave he makes a cute little comment about how if you loved him you would have bought that for him, so then when he’s at his appointment you do one better and not only buy the calendar but also go into the trendy frame shop and somehow agree to have the 12 pictures from the calendar placed on a board and framed so that he can always have the cool pictures to look at even when the year is over, and you pay $307 for it and leave feeling like you’ve made a huge mistake and wonder if this is how you have no assets and start feeling a little panicked about whether you should tell your husband or not because you think you should-so he can tell you to stop the order-but you also want to give him this present even though now you’re thinking it’s kind of dumb so you do tell him and he tells you stop the order! and then you get teary in the car because he didn’t like your present and then he calls you out and says ‘you wouldn’t have told me unless you knew it was mistake’ and then you get even more mad because he’s right, but you can’t let him know that so you say he’s wrong and he says ‘please don’t let this ruin your day’ and you want to hold on to all the bad feelings because you feel embarrassed and awful for spending $307 and so you agree to go and stop the order and it’s awkward and you leave knowing you can’t go back ever again?

You know when you go to city hall to figure out how to prove you have no income and you tell your husband it will take 2 hours and you’ve already convinced yourself that this day is the worst and he forgot his phone so you can’t text him when your done so you send him away mad and he makes a joke about how it always makes you feel better to leave mad at him and that breaks the hold of the awful gift mistake you made and you finally feel light, and like you can face any damn 20 year old that needs proof you are unemployed and you head into city hall and instead of 2 hours it takes 5 minutes and you wish you hadn’t sent your husband away because now you have to walk home but as you do you realize you don’t walk enough and it gives you the chance to people watch and you can’t stand how university students take up so much swaggering space on the sidewalk and you pass a police officer and wonder why you never had any police officer fantasies as a younger woman and as you walk through the streets of downtown you feel so grateful not to be part of the hoard of students trying to make friendships and love connections and fulfill fantasies and go to classes or skip classes and have a skewed sense of what’s important and party too hard and then when you think you’ve listed everything you’re glad not to be a part of you remember that it’s important for people to experience life and that it all gives you character and you feel enlightened for a minute and then an Asian person cuts you off on the sidewalk and you feel secretly racist because Asians are always cutting you off on the sidewalk?

You know how when you get home from a day that was full of errands you just want to sit and drink tea, so you do, and then you realize you’ve eaten nothing all day and have only consumed tea and you know you should eat something now that you recognize this, but then argue to yourself that it will take too much energy to prepare something and you’re already weak with hunger so why not just push through to dinner?

You know when you agreed to do some simple yoga with your neighbour down the hall for $30 a week and halfway through you feel like you’re going to faint because you’re so hungry but she has autism and you can’t really explain yourself so you end the session a bit distant and rushed and feel bad but then also feel like fainting isn’t worth the $6 session today?

You know when you make it through the day, after enough ups and downs that you feel kind of winded and the kids are finally asleep and you tell your husband to get off the computer because he’s getting that crazy look in his eye so go do something with your hands and you know that you have just helped him and wonder if you are helpful enough or if you are just wrapped up in your own selfish needs and you want to take part of the day back and tell him you should have laughed earlier in the car and you shouldn’t have sent him away at city hall, and you should have eaten something and you should have remembered to buy cough syrup for tonight and you should go to bed early but you feel actually kind of okay now and feel like as your husband makes a weird design on a piece of wood and the kids are asleep that today wasn’t so bad?

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The Breakup.

Personal Opinion, Universal Topics, ,

EI broke up with me today. Just like that, without any explanation, it left. No note, no good-bye. I saw it coming, I can’t lie. I knew our time together was limited, that we would only last for as long as I needed it. Of course, the pain of it going away convinces me that we were soul mates, that I can’t live without it. I want to chase it down and beg it to stay. There is so much I we didn’t do. I spent hours, days, weeks imagining all the things I wanted to accomplish with it, and yet like so many other broken relationships of my past, I never managed to fulfill those imaginings before I was left on my own. Through a hazy fog of panicked tears, I search for signs that it may not be over yet, that there is at least a date in the future that will see each other and collide and engage in crazy make up spending. But nothing. It’s gone. And as much as it hurts to admit, I know it’s not coming back. It’s left me and found some new woman, some new idiot mama to give her all the dependancy she needs for a short while, only to sneak out in the middle of the night when her time is up. What an asshole. What a heartless way to sucker me in – with the sweet promise of security and a carefree lifestyle – only to yank it out from under me and laugh at me as I wonder where I will find the resources to create that feeling again. After months of getting used to this life – of being home and engaging in a way that brings sense into the world; of providing for a family and teaching children to grow up strong and kind; of eating wisely; of nurturing humans both young and middle-aged with attention; of developing cleaning, multi-tasking, cooking, organizing skills; after months of this, I am left to whiplash myself and my family out of this lifestyle and head back into a different existence. One that stretches us this and still doesn’t give us enough to make sense of the sacrifice.

I can hear your sweet laughter, EI. I can hear your whisper, once telling me that it will all be okay, now laughing about my panic and saying ‘I told you this would never work.”

But have a secret, EI. You can taunt me with your paycheque and convince me that without you I am nothing, that I have no purpose. You can go on to the next woman to do to her what you did to me, but now that you are gone, I see your games. But you can’t change what I’ve learned over the last year, and you can’t force me into a lifestyle I’m not ready for. Because of your absence, I am forced into a new way of thinking and it will be hard (my god you made it so easy) but I will learn new ways of security and a carefree lifestyle. I will keep my family in calm and attentiveness. Your disappearing act will mean nothing to me once I am on my feet again, having not sacrificed my morals. I will laugh at our ridiculous relationship and wonder how I fell into such a short sighted, meaningless situation.
Tonight I will listen to some gushy love songs. I will cry over my lost love. But in the morning, I will throw away your first love letter to me and move on.
Goodbye EI.

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