Solitude

Yesterday a friend posted this on her Facebook wall - Overwhelmed By Motherhood: The Anatomy of an Anxiety Attack

I have read this before, but every time is like a tap on the shoulder....I didn't have post partum depression or anxiety, but I know what the author is talking about.

In particular, this resonated with me:

As someone with anxiety, and an introvert, I do well having many hours of the day on my own. I sit in a quiet house, with only the damn neighbor’s yapping jerk hounds to disturb me here and there, and I write. I answer email. I chat with people on Twitter. It is a comfort for me to have that peace for so long.

I am similar to my mother in that I am an introvert who enjoys her own company.  Whether I inherited that trait via nature or nurture who knows.  It is what it is.

In one session with my therapist, she brought me to a point of realising that having married virtually from leaving home, that I had had very limited time with my own company and being responsible for only myself.  In fact, I probably had no autonomous time, as I moved from my parents care and responsiblity to a partnership with my husband-to-be. 

I have always been happy with this - it was what I always expected to do, and figured whether it happened at 18 or 28, what difference would it make?

Don't get me wrong... I love my husband, and I don't want 'out.'  I love my kids and I love my life just the way it is.

But this revelation was such a shocking one to me that I actually cried all the way home from that session.  I literally thought 'What the hell have I done?'

I do feel like I have lived my life outside the rules.  Most of the time I don't mind, but some days I just wish I was like everyone else.  Got married at 19, had babies starting at 25, haven't bought a house, haven't got a tertiary qualification.  I don't fit into the handy little box that is middle-class Pakeha New Zealand.  But I don't feel like I fit into any other box, either.  Some might argue that is a good thing, but at the end of the day, people always like to belong somewhere.

After my reaction at my realisation that 'me' is wrapped up in so many other people, it made me far more conscious of making an effort to extract 'me' from everything else.

So, I put aside all my 'perfect mother' aspirations, and decided to be 'good enough' mother.  I put my preschooler into an extra day at daycare so I could have a 'self maintenance day.'  This title was coined by a friend, and was very fitting when I would use this day to go to the therapist, osteopath, doctor and so on.

As I move away from outside management of my mental health, I have changed self maintenance day to being my day to just do things I want to. 

I think my revelation about a lack of autonomous time wasn't about me regretting my choices to live an unconventional life as a younger-than-average wife and mother.  But it was more about how, since having children, I have not had these lengthy times of restorative solitude. 

Now its time to claim them back.

The Butterfly of Happiness

Yesterday my husband was really sick with a gastro bug, so I decided to get out of the house for the day, and embarked on something once familiar to me when he used to work Sundays - a family outing minus one parent.

As you so often do in the car and no other place, we got talking about serious issues.  Since Mum died, my five year old daughter often expresses her concerns about me dying.  She's asked me when I will die, and I have tried to be honest without being alarmist - I have said I don't really know, but probably not until I'm really old.

In the car we got talking about their grandparents (all of whom are dead) and about how long they lived for.  Sadly, my parents-in-law (whom I never got to meet) and my own father all died from smoking related illnesses.  My father was 70 when he died, but I explained to them that he might have lived a lot longer if he had not been a smoker for nearly half his life.  My 10 year old son, at times like these, exposes more insight than I usually give him credit for.  He pointed out that when my father and my husband's parents started smoking, that people didn't understand that it was dangerous.

I had tried to my my daughter understand that Nana died when she was pretty old - difficult for her to grasp.  "She was more than TWICE my age!"  Hmmm....?

One of the older boys pointed out that Nana had committed suicide - they know what it means.  So I talked to them about how Nana had been suffering from depression.  Insightful 10 year old said that she was sad about Granddad dying and that she had to move house.  Which was kind of true.  I said that she had been through a lot of change, and it was difficult for someone set in their ways.  I explained that depression is like being sad, only worse, because its hard to feel better.

I said that Nana chose to die because she was so sick that she didn't feel there was a way out of feeling that way. Insightful 10 year old said "So she decided it would be better to die than to feel that way?"  Right on, kiddo.

I also explained that I had the same illness after Nana died, and that was what happened when I wasn't feeling well last year, but that I had medicine to help me, and that I went to a therapist as well.  I could see a way out.

This seemed to satisfy even Worried 5 year old.

But this isn't the first time my mother's and my happiness has been compared.


In one therapy session, I got to talking about reasons why I was sad, upset, feeling lost and so on.  I talked about brushing my daughter's hair, and tying it up in the ribbons I'd had as a wee girl.  Those sorts of moments are special, and my daughter had been getting to an age where she was enjoying dressing up and having her hair done.  I wondered why Mum didn't feel like even those kinds of moments weren't enough to keep her here with us.

The therapist gave me this quote.

“Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you” - Nathaniel Hawthorne

Perhaps at the point Mum was at, she had been beset by so much grief and change, that she was actively pursuing happiness, and had forgotten that sometimes you just need to be patient, wait for it, and find it there with you where you didn't expect.  I think she had been making so much effort to be happy, that she wasn't seeing the small things that would have brightened her life.  She was trying to enjoy her garden, trying to enjoy the company of the people in her new surroundings (a retirement village) that maybe she didn't just stop to smell the flowers that were already there.

To be fair, depression makes this acceptance of the butterfly of happiness much harder.  Depression is the cat that grabs the butterfly and shreds it before it gets to land on your shoulder.  Sometimes you can get to the butterfly before the cat.  Sometimes the butterfly is a survivor.  But some just don't make it....

However, it provided a valuable analogy for me to apply to my own life, and it gave me insight into how my own mind works.

I suppose I am more like my father, who would happily have entertained hoardes of butterflies around him.  He found pleasure in simple things... polishing shoes, growing vegetables, a drink at the local pub.  We noted after he died how he would really have had to be at death's door to not make it to his local watering hole to see his mates - even when he was getting more and more unwell with his COPD that he would still grab life with both hands and run..well, walk..with it.

I know Mum's capacity for happiness was there once.  She wrote about sitting with a cup of tea waiting for us to come home from school, and feeling full of joy.  All her dreams had come true.  So perhaps this happiness was the kind that had been pursued, and found.  And now so much of it was gone, it was too much to bear?

My therapist believed I have a greater capacity for happiness.  I think this is true.  I have my moments of anxiety and doubt and fear, but I can still take great pleasure in brushing my daughter's hair, in having my little preschooler give me a huge bear hug, in breathing in the cool fresh air on a bush walk, in the sound of the ocean as I drop off to sleep camping at my favourite beach.

I hope my capacity for happiness stays with me.  I think I have the tools and desire to make it so.