Girl, Stop Apologizing

Something broke open in me yesterday.

School’s out, now. I feel like I rode through the last month and a half on a ship through an unholy, raging sea. Blinded by the mist and the crashing waves. Pure mayhem. When they say there aren’t enough hours in the day, they are referring to my life, specifically.

Oh yes, and everyone else with children, in June (and everyone else, every other day, for that matter).

Life is short, and messy, and chaotic. It demands so much from us in this crazy world of connection. Staying on top of things is not my forte at the best of times, but I’ll tell you, this year took me for a ride. I felt it – a lot of guilt, a lot of obsessing about all the things I wasn’t doing right.

Sometimes I think I am still reeling, still putting pieces back together, still relearning how to be a normal, balanced, focused human being that gets shit done and remembers things and doesn’t take everything so seriously. Other times I think I am just milking an excuse – a tired one, now – that uses a tough period of time in life to justify not having (getting) my shit together.

Yesterday, though, I got tired of that, too. I got tired of everything.

I am a poster child for neuroses. I just can’t stop overthinking. Maybe it’s the reason I’m a writer. All those obsessive thoughts need to go somewhere. But they get in the way, even when I try to clear them out on the page. Maybe I’m not alone. Maybe others can relate. Or maybe I am, actually, out of my mind – as exhausting to others as I am to myself.

But I just felt like I couldn’t keep up this year. Before Violet got sick, I was on the PAC Executive, and a Girl Guide Leader, and running a business, and making lunches my kids would eat, and keeping the house clean (ha, ok, let’s keep this honest…). I remembered birthdays and anniversaries. I got gifts for all the teachers and leaders and coaches to show appreciation. I called my friends (never enough, but sometimes). But this year, I was the parent that had to be reminded 16 times to return a library book. I was the family member that forgot that annual phone call to say, “Happy Birthday, I love you and I’m thinking of you.”  I was the Business Owner that forgot to return messages, or update her website, or pay her taxes. I was a good ol’ hot stinkin’ mess.

Jesus, Shawna, big hairy deal.

About six years ago I was “diagnosed” with PMDD (I use quotation marks as I’m not exactly sure what the protocol is for an official diagnosis). Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder.  It’s like PMS on steroids, and cocaine, and amphetamines, and a season’s worth of Hallowe’en candy. It very…unpleasant. And consequential. There are mood swings and cramps, and then there is the utter hell that unfolds for me each and every cycle. Sometimes, as it approaches, I become deeply afraid that, perhaps this time, I won’t be forgiven. I won’t be able to rein it in enough. Every single thing in my life will fall apart and I’ll be left at square one, alone to pay for my “sins”.

I took the girls to see Inside Out 2 yesterday with Matt. The first one was my favorite, and I knew this one was about puberty and pre-teen girls and anxiety, so I expected it would resonate.

There is a scene (spoiler alert) where Riley, the main character, has a panic attack. All of her emotions are screaming at her in her head, along with the beliefs attached to them – “I’m not good enough, I’m afraid, I need help, I can’t do this, I’m a bad person, If I don’t perform no one will like me.” As I watched it, I fell apart. Like, embarrassingly, right in the theatre, trying to time my audible sobbing with the voices on the screen so I wouldn’t be found out for being a total, complete lunatic.

Then I looked at Violet, and she was crying, too.

The day before was Canada Day – one of my favorite celebrations in this town. We had the whole thing planned. We parked the trailer down along the beach at the far side of town (Peachland’s claim to paradise is, at least in part, due to the fact that you can park right along the road all the way through town and step out of the car and directly onto the beachfront) and walked the 20 minutes along the water to the park downtown, where there are always activities – bouncy castles, a magic show, live music, food trucks. But the weather turned, and the 20-minute casual stroll became a burden as we navigated timing and pounding rain. Lucy was in the parade with her soccer team and my obsessive brain struggled with how to coordinate cooly enjoying the festivities with getting back to “camp”, feeding the kids, making the most of swim time, getting her to, and through, the hour long parade while someone minded our mess on the beach, getting home to feed the dogs, getting everyone back from the end of the route to the trailer, making sure my kids were happy, my husband was happy, my parents were happy, my friends were happy….meanwhile, inside, my roster of emotions were screaming bloody murder at me at the top of their lungs…

Exhausting. So goddamn exhausting.

But here’s the thing – I have come to identify so strongly with this “exhausting” version of myself that I’ve forgotten who I was – who I am – beyond this anxiety and insanity. I wasn’t always this way or, at least, I used to identify so much more with the cool, calm, collected version of myself then I do now.

I used to be a “world traveler” that would spend hours ambling along unknown streets just to observe others, ponder things, let life happen and roll with it all. Soak things in, seize the day, savour every moment, let the chips fall where they may. When I met Matt, I was a hippie, fresh off the boat, living in sarongs I bought in Thailand while his fancy city friends tried to figure me out.

Life has, for lack of a better explanation, beaten me down since then. It turns out, marriage is hard. Parenting is hard. Working for yourself is hard. Keeping up a home, particularly one with high maintenance dogs and no fence, is hard. And cancer – childhood cancer - that was hard. Real hard.

And I’m hard on myself, too. Really, really hard.

My dear friend bought me a book: “Menopausing” by Davina McCall. Someone had bought it for her when she shared her struggles with hormones and rage and all the other lovely pieces of this process. It’s not a medical book, or a guide. It’s mostly stories – women sharing their experiences with all this stuff. She told me when she gave it to me that although it might not have any answers, it hopefully would be something that could provide some soothing. Knowing I’m not alone.

Sitting in that theatre yesterday, I felt the same way I did when I read pages of that book. “Thank God, I’m not alone.”

I have struggled this year with so many things – impatience, shame, guilt, jealousy, rage – and I haven’t wanted to fit them into the picture. Afterall, once upon a time I was the girl living in the Galapagos, wandering the island alone, poi in hand, spinning away next to marine iguanas and sea turtles, with confidence that everything in life unfolded exactly as it should, and worry was wasted energy, and beauty was everywhere, and blah blah blah blah blah.

But that was before adulting, before real responsibilities, before grief and loss and unimaginable suffering. Before people relied on me. Before I, really, relied on anyone else. Before hormone shifts and weight gain and aging. Before it mattered whether or not I got out of bed in the morning to feed my pets and children. Before the world judged me for my decision to vaccinate my kids, or let them drink juice boxes, or eat processed cereal. Before I “had to care” about any of this.

I’ve been resentful about things, and to be honest, they are completely valid. I can make an argument for a lot of injustices in our lives, and do, amid the onslaught of thoughts in any given day. I don’t like it, because at heart, I want to be cool and calm and collected all the time. I want to be that hippie, free-spirited, in-love-with-every-second-of-life person I imagine I used to be with sentimentality and denial. I’m pissed about things – things my husband has done, my friends have done, my family has done, the world has done, to me. How dare they?

But the thing that broke open was this – it’s ok. It’s messy and it’s ok. I’m exhausting and it’s ok. In fact, I’m a hot mess a good 87% of the time, and it’s ok. I keep wanting to explain myself, just like this, to everyone, all the time. To make excuses for my emotions and behaviour and lack of control and forgetfulness and judgments and rage and sadness. I carry the burden of needing to validate it all, and make it fit, and make it right, and make it normal. I’m so damn afraid, all of the time, that I am right on the edge of oblivion where I’ll make that one fatal move, that one reaction, expression, that will give it all away, and I’ll never be able to recover, never be able to explain myself out of it.

But maybe I’m not alone. Maybe, in the end, all we have to really, truly, tie us all together is our messiness. Maybe we all, at times, look around us and think “how the *&%$ do they have it all together?” while we are reeling inside against all of our imperfections.

Matt said to me the other day when we were at a friend’s house, “our home will never be this clean and organized.” And I wanted to kill him. I wanted to rage against the gods that I married a man so ungrateful that he could say something so judgmental and cruel. And then I looked at him and he smiled and kissed me on the forehead. And I realized that he didn’t care – he didn’t need me to be perfect. No one does. That’s all on me.

I may have a hormone condition that keeps me stuck in the emotional maturity of a pre-teen, but I don’t have to attach the stories I do to it. Nor do I have to condemn myself for all these imperfections that make me who I am. Take it or leave it – God, that’s a liberating thought. What if its ok to be a mess and not be understood? What if it’s ok to fail all over the place and just keep going? What if it’s ok to know how lucky you are for everything in your messy little life, and still be mad about stuff that makes you mad, or sad, or jealous, or scared, or guilty?

My daughters are little Buddhas, sometimes. They remind me every single day of what matters. “Don’t worry, Mom. No one has it all together. No one is normal. No one is liked by everybody. Maybe you just carry too much? Maybe you care too much about the wrong things? Maybe everything is just right, just as it is? We love you. You don’t have to explain yourself.”

Maybe I don’t. Maybe someday I’ll stop trying.