Peace+Tranquility On Fire

Today I’ve been trying to keep my cool.

Yeah right. Like I had any cool to begin with. To rephrase, I’ve been trying to keep my inner monologue – which today is only the sound of my desperate, frantic screaming – where it belongs, on the inside.

On the surface, the day has seemed mostly normal. Mostly.

Unfortunately, my robot vacuum lovingly named Olaf woke me up at 5am with a distant jingle followed by a robotic female voice informing me that DO-DO. BATTERY IS LOW. DO-DO.

Dazed and confused, my heart leapt into my throat and I prepared to die. Even after I figured out what was happening and realized I couldn’t fix the issue through the app on my phone, I still woke my husband to help because there was no way I was going downstairs by myself at night because the bent neck lady was waiting and fuck no to that. (I’m only two episodes in, and while my nerves may not let me ever finish, no spoilers please in case I ever do.)

Anyway, the point is that my day started off with me being afraid for my life and that’s keeping with the theme of this year.

I made coffee, I began helping my kid with online school. I wiped my littler kid’s butt.

I decided one cup WAS NOT ENOUGH so I made a cup of tea. Caffeine tends to make me anxious, but I like the ritual and I like the taste so while this may or may not have contributed to my goal you can fight me.

I decided my mid-morning hobbit snack needed some ambiance so I lit a candle. My husband hates scented candles but I did it anyway. To avoid a fight I decided to tell him about it before he had the chance to notice on his own, but looking back I’m wondering if maybe I could have used more tact.

Me, as I burst into the room: I LIT A CANDLE AND IT’S CALLED PEACE+TRANQUILITY. DON’T HATE ME.

Him: …Is it working?

Me, shouting: OF COURSE IT’S WORKING! YOU WANT SOME TEA?!

After school and lunch, I ran out of the house to do my normal Tuesday errands, which involve the library and picking up our grocery order. Today, the order was a bit bigger in case election rioters release the murder hornets and I blasted my car stereo so I could no longer hear the voices in my head.

While I’m wearing suffragette white under my jacket and RBG earrings, I decided I needed to make a louder statement.

After returning to the house and getting my kids outside to run around, now the real nail-biting portion of the day begins as I turn on the TV and re-learn the fucking electoral college.

Choose love, y’all. Let’s get through this.

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Day 3

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Quiet, Sluggish Chaos

I’m feeling pretty drained. That’s an understatement.

I’m trying to think of a good metaphor for how I feel that won’t make me sound suicidal – because I’m not. But I have no energy left, you guys. I’m just trying to make it through the days and sometimes I dare to hope and then other days my state gets set on fire or RBG dies and I find myself at a new low that I didn’t know was possible.

Three things happened all at once: summer [weather] ended, fire and smoke made it impossible for me to breathe or leave my house for ten days, and distance learning began for my 1st grader. It sent the precarious balance we had achieved in our household over the summer into a quiet, sluggish chaos.

In 2007 the fire alarm woke me up and my boyfriend (now husband) and I grabbed whatever was in front of us and ran out of our burning apartment building. For months after I would go to sleep and hallucinate the smell of smoke. That thick, putrid, choking scent that makes one’s pulse jump. My heart would race, I’d get a rush of adrenaline, and then I’d have to get up and check to make sure there wasn’t any actual danger. After that, it was pretty hard to calm down and get any rest. It was bad.

I was in my master’s program for counseling psychology at the time and I had started therapy for the first time as a client that previous year. When the fire happened I was on a break from therapy in an attempt to stretch my mental health benefits to last until the end of the year. American healthcare – you suck. At any rate, when I returned to therapy I mentioned the fire and the difficulty sleeping I was having. PTSD, you say? Oooh, crap. So this is what it’s like. It’s always so much easier to diagnose other people. Well, shit.

And, while definitely not as bad, it came back recently. Our sense of smell is so powerful, so tied to our emotions. And the smell of smoke is a warning to everyone – it’s supposed to be. But put that together with absolute terror and it’s a horrible combination.

Plus, the chest pains I was getting from the smoke signaled anxiety to my brain aaand cue positive feedback loop. Sore throat, headaches. I felt physically ill on top of everything else.

With my bucket being pretty freaking empty, I’m struggling to be a good parent, teacher, wife, and friend.

As far as the friend thing goes, I struggle to be social. Being social in person really sucks because I’m worried about Covid the whole time. Being social, while I still enjoy it, often requires energy I’m not sure I have. It’s hard to pay attention and remember details. I find myself so worried about my and my family’s health and safety that it’s hard to be concerned with anyone else’s enough to ask. It’s not that I don’t care- I do. Stress just seems to push everything else out of focus. I’m really sorry if I forget about that thing going on in your life. I’m sorry that I totally forgot to ask how your new job is going. Sorry If my texts come across the wrong way. I feel like my stress and survival mode make everything come out wrong, even more so than my socially-awkward normal. I still love and respect my friends, and I still want to be friends.

I worry that writing about my mental health issues sounds…wallowy, self-centered, whiny. Repetitive. Fishing for pity.

While it might be repetitive (and none of the rest), I decided that talking/writing about it helps me. It’s honest, it’s real. If it helps normalize mental health struggles – great. But this is mainly for me. It’s a journal, it’s documentation, it’s creative expression, it’s cathartic.

In closing, I’ll remind myself that I’m surviving. I’m coping. I’m doing the best I can. I’m just happy to be here.