I’m writing this from my third coffee shop of the day, and it’s just now noon.
This isn’t at all my normal style. I do enjoy, and often find great focus from, working in public spaces, particularly those that hit the very tender balance between sensory vibing and the sacred anonymity that’s pretty crucial for me when writing.
But today has been different, and not in any way I’d typically prefer. Different, like on the emotional precipice different.
I left my first café of the day, having only worked through a half mug of black drip, in hasty response to an email from our kindergartener’s teacher alerting us to a ‘tough day’ in progress. (Mamas: I can’t tell you how magical this woman is. She knows my kid better than I do some days.)
I’d already started this newsletter, on an entirely different topic, but bagged (temporarily, I thought) in favor of fetching Lincoln’s forgotten library books from home and hand-delivering to him, hopefully with enough time to attach a note of encouragement.
The note would feature a sticker of a dachshund holding a valentine in it’s mouth. It had already been a tough day for me too… we would both feel better.
I called my husband from the parking lot, to let him know I’d be swinging by the house and then continuing on with my work day, believing his absence on the email thread was also an absence of awareness of the situation.
He’d already dropped off the books, along with a hug.
I’m typically a pretty cool cucumber—measured, reasonable, some might even say, unflappable. This moment though, after a good few stressful days of slowly building anxiety, corrosive in it’s flavor and effect, I was very much flappable.
‘Well. This would’ve been f*cking helpful to know. Why didn’t you f*cking tell me? Or respond to the f*cking email?!’
I’m a mom. And a stepmom. And a wife who’s also married to her husband’s ex-wife.
I’m many things, of course, as we all are. But these ‘good few stressful days’? They’ve demanded a lot of the mom/stepmom/wife me. And with those demands have come injury—fresh wounds and the reopening of the many in a constant state of just nearly healed.
I got in my car, staring at the license plates in front of me in that semi-catatonic calm that often precedes an emotional bloodletting, and… cried. Fat, juicy, overfed tears, viscous and hot.
It was all just too much.
I’ll spare you the laundry list of stressors, dear reader, out of respect for your own very real and numerous challenges. We’ve all got our shit, and perhaps just one of the fires I’ve attended to this week will make it into it’s own post. Each of them have deserved my careful attention and processing, before, during and after; the makings of any good story.
For now, just travel with me. From one parking lot to the next, with a warm embrace of a phone call with my mom in-between, stopping for a salad, a bag of sugar-free chocolate peanut butter cups and a stupidly expensive (and is it even a thing?) alkaline water, ultimately to this last stop on this particular route.
I spent the majority of these last few hours asking myself, over and over, what I needed. From my marriage, from my mom, from my son and stepsons, from the rest of this day, from this writing.
I went from listening to Joan Sutherland and Jane Berbie’s Duo des Fleurs to Beyonce’s BREAK MY SOUL. From silence, to the white noise of communal coffee drinking and remote working.
I considered going to my parent’s house, a quick 20-minute drive, to nearly fall asleep in a hot bath (as I’ve so often done, and over the course of an entire lifetime).
I thought about bailing on my husband’s birthday dinner tonight and instead booking a hotel room with a hot tub. Or an off-the-grid treehouse. Or a one-way ticket to X.
I wasn’t sure how or where to go next. Next came nonetheless.
My instinct in these moments of precision anxiety is to run; to escape the feeling of restraint and perceived imprisonment. I buck. I get steely-eyed and resolute… ‘you won’t break my soul…’
And also, I know myself well enough at this point, respect my process deeply enough at this ripening age, to allow for the escape. To entertain the instinct while not necessarily fully acting on it.
Not unlike how we’ve all looked at job boards on a soul-annihilating workday, only to be almost immediately reminded of our relative good fortune by entertaining the alternatives.
‘Next’ brings with it, perspective. Both in the contemplation of it, and the physical experience of it.
The immediate threat disappears into the darkened wood, our pulse returning to baseline, and we persist.
It’s a fascinating and affirming process, this emotional regulation. Our ability as humans to move from feeling existential danger to relative safety, all within the confines of our mind, gut, heart.
It’s not un-hard to do, running this course from beginning to end, and we’re more often encouraged to launch straight to the reaction vs. noticing, contemplating, understanding, ultimately, responding. Responding, with intention and respect, to ourselves, as well as to the situation itself.
It took me most of this work day to do the work, but I got there.
And, I did book that hotel room. Though for tomorrow night, just me and my 5 year-old. It’ll be just what I needed.
I love your writing
Isn’t it though?! We could all spend our entire writing lives on the topic of being in relationship, with family, peers, coworkers, ex-spouses, et al… ripe and juicy ground. Looks like you both have some stories to share on some of those same complexities, so glad to connect. 🙏🏻🧡