Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

There is a point a person's stress level when they can take no more.  Everyone deals with that point differently, and to complicate matters that threshold varies from person to person as well as from time to time within an individual's life.  How we deal with stress is a complex bit of magic that takes its influences from chemistry and hormones and all sorts of physiological balances along with a lifetime of lessons and examples that began at day one with our caretakers.

As a mom, I hope to teach my son my to handle stress with a smooth grace and a calm demeanor.  I want him to have the ability to manage a superhuman amount of pressure and still be cool and miraculously relaxed.  And I want him to be able to recognize when the stress and pressure he feels is just too much, and that he needs to ask for help.

This is something I am not good at, and that I fail in my parenting and being an example for him.  I do not have the ability to ask for help, I do not have a superhuman ability to handle pressure and the weight of a million tasks and responsibilities and remain collected and cool and un-phased.

What I do have, for better or worse, is a deceptive ability to APPEAR as though I can handle it. Until I can't.  These last few months have been heavy with stress, anxiety, pain, pressure, intensity and disappointment.  And given who I am, the time of year, the challenge of my circumstances, and a host of other excuses - I was unable to ask for or receive help to get out from under it all.  Instead I tried desperately to juggle, balance, manage, and maintain (often failing) - barely keeping my nose above the rising tidewater.  At times it poked through, at times the meltdown appeared imminent, and often I felt like a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.  (A much darker less entertaining version of a farcical Almodovar movie).

What I do know, what I can pass along, is a small bit of self awareness, that in these moments of unbelievable pressure and stress and turmoil - what often suffers and takes the lion's share of neglect is ourselves. The things that make us healthy and happy. They are the first to be ignored in place of the thousands of noisier moving parts requiring more attention.  And this is a mistake.

Allowing for a certain amount of madness and meltdowns and insanity is one thing.  It may even be unavoidable, given a balls to the wall sort of lifestyle (which can make one prone to those sorts of things).  But letting it go on forever without taking care of one's self is inexcusable.   its an indulgence that is supremely annoying and gets in the way of truly living.

So bring on the new year.  Bring on 2013.  And say goodbye to last year's stress and madness and pressure and upheaval and uncertainty.  In its place, make self-care and attention and health and happiness a certainty -  worthy of the time and attention it requires.  No one wants to repeat history, and last year only needs to happen once.  Deep breaths.

Sometimes Things Suck

When thinking about things I want my son to know, among the many life lessons that seem relevant to me in the moments I put my thoughts into words, I want to acknowledge the fact that sometimes things just suck.  This may seem silly or beyond obvious for most of us who have been around awhile.  But for my little man-in-training, who seems to love life from his first breath and is full of so much laughter and joy, I have to tell you this hard truth - sometimes things suck.

Sometimes life is messy.  Sometimes it is ugly, and sad, and frustrating - or full on just sucks ass.  It is true, and if you don't know this it will be a shock to your light-filled system.

But here is what else is true.  Even when it sucks and seems to be dark and gloomy and full of despair, I want you to know something else very important - it will get better.  It will always get better.  No matter how long the dark days last, whether it be one day or one week or one year, eventually the clouds will clear and miraculously everything will get better.  I promise you.  You need to remember this because, in the thick of it, this can be hard to believe.  But your mom and her 40 years (gasp!) of experience is here to tell you - now and over and over again whenever you need to hear it - that no matter how sucky things get they WILL get better. I know this. I live this.

As your mom I don't want you to feel heartbreak, pain, or loss.  If I had my way, your days would always be filled with nothing but happiness and good things.  But if my life has taught me anything, it is that this is not the way the world works.  Bad things happen, even to good people, and sometimes things just suck.  So that is why I want you to always keep in mind the more important life lesson here, which is that if you are patient, and let time pass, and continue to get up each day and do your best in all that you do and be the best person you can be, things will get better. They just will. How? I don't know, its part of the magic of life.  It might take a day or a week or a month, but things will get better.

In the suckiest of times, the future is bright for you my love. As it is for all of us, if we have the will and the strength to wait for it.  So when things suck for you, as they inevitably and annoyingly will some day, know that it is not forever.  Know that it will get better. Know that eventually it will pass.  Know that while sometimes things suck, they always always always will look up.  Eventually.

On Being 40

Last Day in My Thirties

Here is the thing - I never imagined myself at 40.  This could be due to several reasons, one of which is the depressing thought I had when younger that  - for no specific reason - I wasn't really sure I would live to be 40.  Another reason is that I just never imagined what I would be like when I got older.  Old.  And now that it is happening, and the number no longer permits denying it, I don't really like it.  I am not embracing it, as my healthier and perhaps more content self-assured friends are.

No matter which way you slice it, 40 sounds old when you are younger.  As a kid it sounds ancient (I mean my grandma BECAME a grandma at 34 years old so....).  And as a young adult it seems like forever from there.  And as an actual adult in your twenties and thirties it somehow still sounds like it will happen to someone else.  At least to me it did.  But here it is, happening to me - turning 40.

I am supposed to be wiser now.  But all I really know about being older is that it happens so fast.  One minute you are in high school and having those moments that will be burned into your memory forever about life, friendships and love.  The next you are in college and playing at being an adult and feeling so confident and brilliant that you will take over the world.  Then you are actually living as an adult with challenges and responsibilities for decision-making on real life issues like employment and relationships and housing.  And all through the decades, these decades that truly move by like fleeting moments, it feels as though at some point you will have it all figured out.  But the only thing you know for sure is that time is speeding up.  And before you know it you are that 17 year old, that 22 year old, that 30 year old, trapped in a body that is now 40.  Its confusing really.  Like waking up after a brief ride in a time machine.

So as I enter this new decade, I might actually be wiser, more mature, experienced, and certain skills like patience and thoughtfulness may have grown.  But also inside of me, in many way, I am still the same person I was 25 years ago.  The voice I hear in my head has not changed, in fact it sounds exactly the same - it has not grown older as my hair has grayed.

Being closer to 50 than I am to 20 makes no damn sense to me - and no matter how I try I have not yet been able to reconcile this in the inner monologue of my daily reflections, wants, and intentions.  Maybe I never will.  And it has nothing to do with a sense of achievement or success - I am so deeply satisfied with having lived in the present and gone balls to the wall in all that I have put my mind to.  I have a wonderful life that I am so incredibly thankful and proud for - not the least of which is my beautiful and joyful amazing son.  It is simply that despite all that my life has given me, I will never be young again.  I will never experience youth again, be considered young, or grouped in with that ridiculously optimistic, arrogant and un-jaded category of 20-somethings.  I will never again have my whole life ahead of me like an almost-blank slate.  Instead I will be called "Ma'am," I will be the "old" mom at my son's playground, and I will feel like Mrs. Robinson when I notice a super hot 20-year old.  And most of all I will have to be intentional in all that is ahead of me - knowing that 50 is right around the corner - and with the speed that time moves now I shouldn't waste a second of it.

30 Days Until 40

i have 30 days until i turn 40 years old.  this is no small event.  as someone who likes to think i have a long and interesting (dare i say exciting) life ahead of her, turning 40 presents some existential crises that are hard to put into words.

feeling old.
feeling unremarkable, invisible.
being called ma'am by boys i would once have consider hot.
watching my body and face change rapidly, and feeling the ever intensifying pull towards old age.
looking around and ahead and finding there is so much still to be done, to be accomplished.
looking back and finding that, despite my best efforts, there were missed opportunities and decisions that could have been better.
remembering moments that are long gone, and wishing i could visit them again.
grasping at memories, people, songs and feelings that remind me of my younger self.
wanting things that seem somehow harder or further from reach for someone soon to be entering their 40's.

i know a lot more about myself now.  i also see clearly the areas where i could be better.  it is obvious to me the many ways i would like to improve, change and grow as a person.  and with time speeding up it all becomes very intensified and serious for some reason.

initially i thought i should take on a challenge of doing one new thing for myself in the next 30 days - to mark the milestone of 40 more poignantly.  maybe things on my life's growing to-do list that would make me feel accomplished. but then i realized that there are enough challenges each day, that being the mother i want to be,  making progress in my professional life (slow but sure progress), and trying to live a life that is happy and interesting and balls to the wall on a daily basis (particularly this month!) doesn't leave a lot of room for an additional 30 day challenge.  so for now i will look at this countdown with wide eyes and hope that something awesome and delightful hits me over the head on september 29th.

Sacrifice and Love

I was ruminating on the nature of parenting, and the challenges i face as an individual with deep and dramatic desires for adventure and meaningful contributions and travel and impactful work.  and i started to think that the word that best describes how i was feeling these past few months is SACRIFICE.

Sacrifice - an act of giving up something valued for the sake of something else regarded as more important or worthy.

as a mother, i find that there are many things that i am choosing to sacrifice for the sake of something else more important - my son.  not surprisingly, i sacrifice some of the work that i value...i forgo certain projects and work less on things i care about in order to spend more time with him.  i sacrifice some of the things that i love, such as sleep and extensive travel, in order to be there for him.  i sacrifice time with my friends in order to put him to bed each night, and i sacrifice time getting ready in the morning (and as a consequence often sacrifice feeling good about how i look) in order to be sure to give him the attention he wants.  i sacrifice what i want to do a million little moments through out the day, because i happily give them all up for the sake of him.

its not something i need him to thank me for later on.  its something that is natural to me, and seems inherent in the position. its something that i can't imagine not doing, as he is always (and always will be) regarded as more important or worthy than just about anything.

i know the importance of being happy - and that a happy parent makes for happy children. believe me, i indulge my dreams and interests often.  i am not a martyr.  but i do see how critical and intrinsic the notion of sacrifice is to being the kind of parent i want to be. and its important to acknowledge how hard that can be sometimes.  its not that the rest of me shriveled away and died when my son was born and i no longer have the outlandish intentions and impulsive desires to act...those are all still there (sometimes straining to be unleashed).  it is rather that i, most oftentimes, choose to sacrifice my selfish impulses for something of much greater value.  and i am confident that not only am i happier for it, and he is better for it, but also that these pieces of me will be still be there when the time is right and selfishness over sacrifice makes sense again.  

Screw the Lemonade

So there is this saying, that may or may not still be around when my son is old enough to finally read this, which goes like this - If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

Well I don't feel that way.  I never have.  I am more of the mind that if life gives you lemons then tell life to fuck off and kick its ass.

I have a low tolerance for wallowing.  This is true in how I view myself and at times even others.  I don't know what it is.  Its not that I lack empathy, I like to consider myself super empathetic and compassionate to others.  Its more that I don't have an enormous amount of patience, particularly for myself.  I know that time speeds up and life is shorter than we all think it is -  I don't have the tolerance for too much self-pity for my own disappointments and raw deals.

What I do have, when life doesn't deliver, is a fire to do something.  Perhaps it is an unhealthy desire to move on, a little too rapidly (I have noticed this on more than one occasion, that I didn't allow myself the time to mourn a loss or feel the sadness).  Nonetheless, when life screws you I say screw the lemonade.  Instead go out and find something else to do, something else to feel good about, something else to pin your hopes on, something else happy to focus on, somewhere else to go.  There is an infinite number of possible directions in life, and so my balls to the wall philosophy doesn't allow much time for stewing in sadness - it requires me to go out and kick life's ass by doing something exciting and wonderful.

This something exciting and wonderful for me is climbing Mount Kilimanjaro this fall.  Take THAT life.

The Dangers of the Back Up Plan

Anyone who knows me well knows that I hate disappointment.  I deplore it.  Generally speaking nearly any kind of disappointment, no matter how great or small, for me results in crushing heartbreak.   One of the ways I have adapted to this disproportionate emotional reaction is to always have a back up plan.

Back up plans have worked wonders in my life - providing meaningful alternatives to plans and hopes in the event that those endeavors don't pan out.  A perfect antidote to the high risk of disappointment, particularly in a balls to the wall existence.  And it keeps my life moving forward, always changing and progressing, with many wonderful twists and turns.  So what if that job I went for didn't come through for me, there is always an offer equally interesting waiting as Plan B.  So what if returning to New York isn't in the cards, L.A. is equally fun and something different.  Who cares if this project or that desire doesn't materialize, so long as there is some beautiful secondary option percolating in the wings.

But there is a downside to the business of the back up plan.  As I get older I come to terms with the fact that sometimes a back up plan provides an escape, an excuse to move on to Plan B before Plan A disappoints.  A cowardly alternative to putting all your eggs in one basket.

And more important than that, there is the issue of the power of putting things out into the universe  - visualizing something positive to help make it come true.  If you have ever listened to guided meditation tracks or anything goal-oriented in nature, they never say visualize what you want...and also visualize a Plan B in case what you want doesn't work out.  Nope.  They focus exclusively on visualizing your goal, attaining your goal, achieving what you want, and seeing in your "mind's eye" what you want to see reflected in reality.

So what of the power of positive visualization?  Certainly one can't focus on making one's true desires and wishes come true if one is also planning for possible failure and disappointment.  These are not mutually compatible actions.   The latter will always take away from the former.

While I remain skeptical about my own power to will things to happen, these days I am recognizing the possible benefits to focusing on one outcome at a time and the drawbacks of entertaining back up plans.    Though I still believe there are huge benefits to having options and staving off disappointment, when the stakes are right.  I also am open to entertaining the possibility that I may contain within me the power to make the things I want most materialize, by harnessing the focus of my balls to the wall attitude and effort.

We will see how that works out for me.  To be continued....