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These past couple of weeks were pretty hard around here.
October’s approach and settling-in usually spell trouble for my son, Ben, whose depression--unipolar or bipolar, depending on his current presentation and other imponderables--almost always waxes as the daylight wanes. Recently he’s sounding pretty blue when we talk on the phone, and his home visits--the last one, at least--have become slightly more challenging.
He’s in great hands at his residential school; I know he’s safe and surrounded by peers and adults alike, who appreciate and admire him--and just plain enjoy his company.
But still, I worry.
Hey--it’s what they pay me the big mombucks for. Plus if I don’t, who will? (OK, OK. Lars, Saskia, Grandma, Grandpa, and a few loving others will. But sorry, guys: nobody does it quite like Mom.)
I have told our story in many places, over several years. The trauma of parenting a boy hell-bent on taking his own life. His trauma, in school and out in the world. Our family, stretched and strained way beyond our natural capacity. And my own chronic illness, germinated in that maelstrom of chaos and stress, and sometimes as incapacitating to me as Ben’s illness has been, at its worst, to him.
Today I’m writing about me, not Ben. And a bit about my daughter, Saskia, as well.
The time I spent, over the past year, taking care of myself along with everyone else, has finally begun to pay off. And I’ve become protective of that me-time. I like my new position on the importance of Mom’s Needs. And I’m not going down without a fight.
As the poet once said (but not exactly): I can be as red in tooth and claw as an insulted tigress, Baby! Mess with my kids and you get the teeth. Mess with my me-time, you get the claws.
The tricky part is when it’s one of my kids messing with my me-time. In order to ensure the claws remain retracted, and that, on the other hand, I don’t simply slump into a fetal position for a week, I call in the reinforcements.
I do not recommend you try this at home. Read on, Readers, and you will see why.
Recently, Saskia admitted to me she’s been caught in a monster migraine cycle since the end of August and that she is FINISHED with that horrible business, thank you very much.
Oh, boy--who wouldn’t be? (And Saskia, I love you dearly, but why didn’t you tell me about this two months ago??)
I know damn well why she didn’t tell me. It’s because I’ve discovered this me-time thing. And she doesn’t want to make me sick again by taking it all away so soon after I found it.
Well, that’s not good. No child of mine is going to suffer needlessly because I’ve become too swaybacked and long-in-the-tooth to gallop her to the emergency room.
So like I said, I called in the reinforcements--which are single, actually, and not plural. And their name is the Mombot.
The Mombot
What is this Mombot, you ask? She--or it?--is the version of me that pushes and pulls like a bulldog infused with caffeine and chocolate. That takes care of her family even if it’s gonna kill her. Which it isn’t, technically, because she is a robot and basically indestructible. Cold steel and gears and velocity and efficiency and all that stuff.
The Mombot is not me. Except...she is. Stress may not kill her, but it could certainly kill me.
Confused? Good. So am I. Always.
Anyway, the Mombot and Saskia spent two days and about 15 hours in the hospital emergency department last weekend. Saskia had a cocktail of pain meds and steroids infused into her veins, and the Mombot injected caffeine and chocolate into her...ah...gears?
The Mombot has escorted me through seven of the nine circles of hell and pulled me back out in more or less one piece. She has made me temporarily numb to pain and fear and galvanized me with endless energy, so I can get the job at hand done and collapse later, when it’s more convenient.
Readers, I HATE that Mombot. I really, really do. Because after she takes over and drags me down through those seven hellish circles and pulls me back up here, she goes away without cleaning up the mess she’s left behind.
That mess would be me. Because if I am temporarily a robot, in times of crisis, I am just a regular woman on regular days.
Oddly enough, the dreaded Mombot is like a drug to me. So I hate her, but also I love her. I NEED her to keep me going. I seem to feed on crisis, and the cycle of pain and recovery it perpetuates. As I haven’t yet found a way to keep crisis at bay--can anyone, really, unless their crises are self-fabricated?--I find myself enlisting the Mombot's help on a quasi-regular basis.
If my family is generally better off after the Mombot’s interventions, I am always the worse for them.
She is a peddler of cortisol. Because the way she responds to things gone wrong is to ramp up the old fight-or-flight mechanism, fire up my poor, tired adrenal glands, manufacturers of cortisol and adrenaline. The Mombot may help me carry on, in a way, but she is anything but calm. She is a steely, exacting, tireless machine.
Know what chronic elevated cortisol can do to a person? Once the Mombot (or Dadbot or Sisbot or Whateveryougotbot) retreats, you begin to notice what they’ve done to you.
t’s not all that pretty. Here’s a partial list:
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Digestive problems
- Heart disease
- Sleep problems
- Weight gain [often in the form of a HUGE spare tire around the middle]
- Memory and concentration impairment
The good folks at the Mayo Clinic tell the whole story right here:
So when I say, “keeping calm really does help you carry on,” Readers? You should definitely listen.
I wish I could prescribe a pill for us varsity-level stressers. Wait, there ARE pills for that--Hello, Ativan!--but believe me, you don’t want to go that route without lots of other interventions. I’m still working on those. And I’ve got to help Saskia work on them, too, so her head pain does not disable her.
They include dietary changes, exercise, meditation and mindfulness, learning the word “NO.” I’m trying Tai Chi--I’ll give you the skinny once I’ve finished up the session. And finally, I’m trying to toss self-judgment, anger at myself and the universe, and the ingrained belief that it’s self-indulgent to take care of myself, right out the window.
All harder than you would think.
My goal is to find another, better mode of being when things go wrong. I first promised myself I would do that a couple of years ago (you can read about it here). As you can see, I've been rather slow at making progress.
Still, I think it’s time to retire the Mombot for good. How about Tahiti? She deserves a break, too.
Readers, how do YOU respond when life goes awry? Do you have your own inner Bot? And how, if at all, do you keep this stuff at bay?
