I don’t know if it was when I yelled so hard my face hurt, or the arrival of a sit-me-on-my-butt stress cold that was the low point of the week, but all systems have been blaring “red alert, red alert” for a little while now.
The thing about being good at over-functioning, is that sometimes you don’t realize you’re doing it until you’re so far in that it feels almost as overwhelming to get out as to keep going. When you’ve backlogged four months of emotions by quitting counseling and journaling at the same time, you might get little internal nudges saying things like, “You really need to talk to someone”… and then you also might stubbornly hit the “ignore” button the same way you hit the “remind me later” button every time your phone asks if you’d like to download the new software1. I mean, it’s not like I would know this from experience, but I’ve heard it can happen.
How do you reestablish rhythms that keep you sane, when everything feels upside down and people are constantly dysregulated? Where do you even start? My tendency is to just numb out and disappear a little, and the worst part of having done this my whole life is that almost no one except my family will notice that I’m checked out. But my family will notice, my children become slightly berserk, my head gets glued into a dopamine loop newsfeed, and everyone is worse for it.
It’s a self protective response, but a destructive one all the same. When the feelings are overwhelming and I don’t know where to begin, I want to run. And yet, I know where this story ends, because I’ve done it enough times. My body will always tell the truth, and for that I both love it and hate it. For as much as I can fake it, acting “normally” regardless of whether I want to or not, the story comes out in other ways. The hip pain, the rashes, the stomach discomfort. It’s eerie and annoying. I could be such a great robot if it weren’t for living in a body.
I’ve been here before, and I know that when it gets to this point most of the processing that needs to happen is not the write-it-on-the-Internet sort, because most of the feelings I’m having, while valid in their own way, are not the kind that are helpful to share with a wide audience. The rage bubbling up under the surface might make for a viral quick take, but it’ll be one I regret. Rage, as I’ve learned, is rarely ever “just” rage, but is often the tip of an iceberg of grief and pain that needs tending. And while it’s easier to be angry, most of the time I need to give myself the space to be sad.
What I need most right now is to not have to make things more tidy than they are. If you could name a facet of life, it’s probably upside down in some capacity at the moment. Everything, and I do mean everything, is new and slightly uncomfortable. It doesn’t mean it’s bad, but I do feel like I’ve been running a three legged race all summer.
You can only squash feelings down for so long before they start to surface in increasingly noisy ways. Depression is complicated, but in my experience, it’s usually a reasonable response to an unreasonable situation. I don’t mean to minimize the chemical or hormonal components, but maybe we forget that sometimes the reasonable response to life circumstances is to be sad or feel a little hopeless. I remember my counselor once telling me that it would make sense if I were feeling a certain way that felt too awful to be voiced2 and the relief from her saying that was immense. Maybe you’re not crazy if you can’t just muscle through things and slap a #blessed on it. But you also might need to change what you’re doing in order to get out of the hole you’re in. Been there, done that. I know the drill. It’s like the feeling you used to get when you shoved all your toys under your bed or in the closet and announced your room was clean, only to later have your mother come in and systematically remove everything from the closet in a huff. It never felt good to have all that mess exposed, but in the end it was a relief. Once it’s all out there, you have no choice but to start putting things back where they belong.
Feelings are a little bit like that messy closet. It seems easier to stuff them, until eventually the system breaks down and they spill out all over the place. Even those of us with good organization in place can resort to stuffing when life gets especially hectic, and I think the same is true for our emotional health. There are times when stuffing things in the closet is a viable fix, but it’s never meant to be a long term solution. Much like deep cleaning takes dedicated time and space, sorting through an emotional pile-up requires the same. You need a time set aside where you won’t have to be interrupted too much, because you don’t really want to invite anyone into the house when you’re sorting through that mess, unless they’re the type of person who knows your stuff well enough to tell you whether you should keep it or throw it out.
I hate to say it, but the Internet is really good at disrupting closet cleaning. It’s just so conveniently distracting. Writing posts here where I get dopamine hits from people liking them is the equivalent of baking banana bread when you’re supposed to be writing an essay for a class the next day. It’s rewarding! It tastes good! But then you have to wake up at 4 AM to write the essay the morning before it’s due, and you’re grumpy all day long3.
I have thoughts about things, it’s true4but I know everyone will be better served by my taking the time and space to filter through all my cynical hot takes before they come at you. I’ll be back in October, but for now I’m hoping to say,
I sat in a cafe, I drank coffee, and I wrote nonsense in a journal. And then, somehow, it was not nonsense. 5
Here’s to sorting out our messy closets offline.
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Lately:
Reading: I blazed through Sandwich by Catherine Newman and Funny Story by Emily Henry this weekend. I don’t know if I could in good conscience recommend either, because the content was riding the line for me in both. But sometimes you read the thing when you need it — while Catherine Newman has a much different perspective (read: liberal and feminist) I could appreciate her raw vulnerability in naming the cost of being a woman. I found her particular take on it pretty depressing, but I think when we gloss over what it actually costs women to be fertile or infertile, we lose a lot of opportunities for compassion, both for ourselves and others.
Listening: Since we’re just talking about things we don’t talk about today, here’s another podcast episode that is worth listening to. They delve into the complex interplay of neural pathways, physical issues, hormonal issues and trauma that can all contribute to painful sex. Why do people not talk about this?? Do you know how many friends I have learned in even just the last year are struggling with this? Purity culture did us wrong.
Learning: A lot of really annoying educational songs… We just started our first year of Classical Conversations6, and while I love that the memory work is so fun for the kids, I also get things like this stuck in my head on repeat (sung to the tune of “Mama’s Little Baby Loves Shortnin’ Bread”)
Mama’s little baby loves the Fertile Crescent, Mediterranean Sea *quack, quack* Mesopotamia, between two rivers, Tigris on top, Euphrates below, Sumer is where they flow, flow, flow… to the GULF.
Send help.
I am attached to the old things. I don’t want your upgrade, Apple.
This was in the very worst bit of processing some memories — I needed her to tell me it made sense that I felt like it would be easier to not be alive. Not because I wanted that to be the case — I didn’t, but because validating that it really was that awful helped. My little soap box bit is that I just don’t think dark feelings come out of nowhere. There’s probably a lot to be said for a genetic disposition towards falling into these holes, but the more I learn, the more I think depression usually makes sense if you understand the context. I think for some people, myself included, trauma can damage the neural pathways enough that extra support is really helpful, but maybe we should actually be curious about why we feel the way we do, instead of assuming it’s an error.
I definitely pulled this specific example from a highly theoretical scenario, not one that I lived on repeat throughout the duration of my high school and college career. Obviously.
Essay topics for the future: 1) Disparity between “valuing life” and actually making accommodations for pregnancy and postpartum 2) Medical advances making us think we’re God, and removing any of the fear and trepidation that rightly used to accompany pregnancy. What happens when we think we’re in control? Is the end result that women are all gaslighted into thinking pregnancy and birth is not a big deal when it’s always always always been a matter of life and death?
Points if you can name this 90’s movie
Jury is out on whether we’ll continue, but it was a known quantity for this year :)
“I could be such a great robot if it weren’t for living in a body.” Oh my word, I felt so much of this essay on my bones. Thank you for sharing your messy closet with us. Even in the midst of the mess, your writing hits home. Grace and peace as you attend to your needs. Be gentle with yourself (Is. 40:11).
I feel all this in my bones. All of august has felt like I’m barely keeping my head above water so this post felt very timely. I hope you are able to recharge and rest Annelise.
I’m a fellow “bake instead of do the thing” person, all my university essays were written the night before they were due. The other day I was complaining to my husband how I didn’t have time to get everything done, then he came into the kitchen and found me about to start icing a carrot cake at 9pm, and he quite rightly pointed out that this is partly why I feel like I don’t have time to get anything done. “Becca, does the carrot cake need icing? ABSOLUTELY NOT”