My Unraveling

Can I be real for a minute? I mean, honestly, when am I not real, really? What I mean is, can we get deep? Can we go down to the depths together? Can you follow me down the long road where it’s not about mourning a loss, where most people can put on their sympathy hat and feel for me, ache for me, and pat me on the back and say it’ll be OK? Can I take you to a place that isn’t humorously parent/kid related, where people can put on their amusement hat, and either laugh at having been there, or laugh in relief at knowing when they get there maybe it won’t be as overwhelming as it seems sometimes?

Please follow me, as I take you on a tour of my rut.

I’m in a rut. Today is a fine day, and nothing is “wrong”. I have a very blessed life, and what’s more… I know it. But I’m still in a rut.

A friend (thank you, Kim) posted an article called The Midlife Unraveling, by Brenè Brown, a couple of weeks ago. (If I knew how to link it, I would.) In that blog, I found several things that resonated into my soul, to the point of bringing me to tears. She spoke so clearly, in parts of this article, about my life.

Part of the article reads:

“If you look at each midlife “event” as a random, stand-alone struggle, you might be lured into believing you’re only up against a small constellation of “crises.” The truth is that the midlife unraveling is a series of painful nudges strung together by low-grade anxiety and depression, quiet desperation, and an insidious loss of control. By low-grade, quiet, and insidious, I mean it’s enough to make you crazy, but seldom enough for people on the outside to validate the struggle or offer you help and respite. It’s the dangerous kind of suffering – the kind that allows you to pretend that everything is OK.“

For months, I’ve been pretending everything is OK. The rut has dug deeper. The desperation grown less quiet. The low-grade becoming medium-grade becoming high-grade.

Another section of that article says:

We are torn between desperately wanting everyone to see our struggle so that we can stop pretending, and desperately doing whatever it takes to make sure no one ever sees anything except what we’ve edited and approved for posting.

Now, to be fair, my “online self” isn’t always rainbows and glitter. I post “real” stuff, too. Some daily struggles, some sassy kid back talk, some grief and mourning, but it doesn’t paint the picture of what’s going on inside of my daily moments. I’ve kept motoring on, hoping there will be an end to my internal madness.

I found the article had some talking to do about that, also:

What bubbles up from this internal turmoil is fantasy. We might glance over at a cheap motel while we’re driving down the highway and think, I’ll just check in and stay there until they come looking for me. Then they’ll know I’m losing my mind. Or maybe we’re standing in the kitchen unloading the dishwasher when we suddenly find ourselves holding up a glass and wondering, “Would my family take this struggle more seriously if I just started hurling all this shit through the window?”

Most of us opt out of these choices. We’d have to arrange to let the dog out and have the kids picked up before we checked into the lonely roadside motel. We’d spend hours cleaning up glass and apologizing for our “bad choices” to our temper tantrum-prone toddlers. It just wouldn’t be worth it, so most of us just push through until “losing it” is no longer a voluntary fantasy.

I have counselled with friends, asked for prayer from our Life Group pastor and his wife, prayed for myself, talked to my husband, and even told my kids that mommy is a “nut in a rut”. Something I say they are, when they’re being silly. You know…trying not to make them worry.

I have been slowing spiraling in this madness for months now, not sure how much more I can take. And taking more, because I’m hoping that the time will tick down, and run out on this rut causing clock. But all I can see, is endless days of THIS day on the horizon. Where nothing moves forward, all stays the same, until I completely lose my mind.

But even then, I can’t completely lose it. I’m too strong to lose my mind in the sense of needing a padded room and a jacket that makes me hug myself. And then there’s the other option of running away, literally. Which I couldn’t do, because even though my husband and children drive me insane many days, I don’t want to be somewhere else. Not without them. What’s left?

Today, I don’t have a clear answer. Today, I’m lost and scared and confused and wandering.

But…

But I also live in hope of tomorrow. Tomorrow might be clear and bright. Tomorrow I may find the answer that eludes me today. Tomorrow, I may be able to look for the low edge, so I can climb out of this rut.

Until then, I will continue to seek counsel from trusted people. Until then, I will cling desperately to the tiny bit of me, left inside my unraveling. Until then, I’ll continue to really be me as much as possible.

And I will remind myself that I have been blessed with a tribe of people that cares about “nut in a rut” me, just as much as they care about #everythingisawesome me.