The whole “online advocate and volunteer for mental health organizations” thing didn’t actually happen all that long ago. I only got serious about treatment around 2010, and it wasn’t until after my first child was born in 2013 that I joined an online community for mental health support and wellness.

One of the best take-aways from the stories told by other people with mental illness was Spoonie Theory. I’m not going to try and break it down for you (if you want to learn more, go to the source) but I will give you my summarized version: basically, Spoonies are people that, for whatever reason, have a limited amount of resources (physical, mental, and emotional) available to them that are spent throughout the day as you go about your business. Cooking dinner, making small talk, cleaning the bathroom; even basic functions can be a significant drain on the individual.

An individual like me.

And especially now. Especially at this moment in my life, while I’m surrounded by all these plates I’ve got up on rods, spinning like tops.

Gotta work, gotta hustle. Get your money, put food on the table. Make sure the girls are not just fed and watered, but engaged, cuddled, listened to, played with. Manage the household. Keep the budget. Remind the husband. Make To-Do lists. Grocery lists. Honey-Do lists. Check off all the boxes. Remind the husband. Pick the clothesfoodtrashtoys up off the floor. Shower off the sweat. Go to bed late. Do it all again tomorrow.

I don’t mind spinning plates. I actually get a lot of gratification from it, when I’ve got it under control. When the conditions are just right, all of them whirring smoothly, I feel like I’m flying.

But the world stage? It’s foundations are a little cracked, and the floors are uneven. The whole ground shakes sometimes, and god help me, but I only have two hands. That something will be broken is an inevitability.

This isn’t to say that I don’t have help. My aforementioned husband is the bedrock of my whole life. He is solid, no question. And even though I’m often a little territorial about my forest of spinning plates, I do have friends and family that will step in when and where they can, to lend support as they are able. I am also blessed to have a home, a good paying job that I love, and all the privilege implicit therein.

I’m not complaining.

I strive to be more solution-oriented than that. Problem-solving is a tried-and-true mechanism for shoring up the cracks. Trouble is, it’s also part of the reason why I have so many damn plates to begin with. I am always ready with a solution. And in lieu of something actionable or constructive, I’ll just ruminate on the problem. I probe at it from all directions to identify a new angle. I’ll draw my plans out over time, plotting out the next weeks, months, years. I’ll make contingencies. I’ll consider the possible effect of world events, natural disasters, and alien invasions.

My mental vision board is a prime example of the String Theory trope.

Actionable responses to stress on my environment are the only productive outcome from my overactive, hyper vigilant brain, but they aren’t always easy to come by. Recently, I’ve found myself with more unknowns than knowns and I’m sort of stranded in “Well, I can’t plan for what I don’t know”-Land. That’s miserable enough as-is, but it’s also very costly. Right now it’s costing money I don’t have, spoons I can’t afford, and a significant measure of my fucking sanity. There are so many other places I’d prefer to direct those resources.

My family comes first, of course. They get all the spoons I can give them, and aside from those days when the girls seem to suck the lifeblood out of my eyeballs, we do okay. Then my job, which often gives me spoons because I’m such a lucky bitch I get to do something I completely love. There’s a flip side to that of course, because owning a small business comes with its own hazards and expenses. But it’s okay, because I can keep those plates going, no problem. I’ll just pray there isn’t another tremor. I’ll just cross my fingers that a stiff breeze doesn’t come by and knock all my shit to the floor.

That’s fine. I can keep the faith.

But where I really get in to trouble is when the combined demands of EVERYTHING far fucking exceed the number of spoons I have to give, and then a butterfly flaps it wings outside and the whole damn thing blows up.

Today I feel like that’s where I’m headed.

Because life is an avalanche. A house of cards. A crapshoot. And it builds. It builds up because they aren’t enough hours in the day to do all those things I need to do and then take sufficient time to recharge. I’m spending more spoons than I’ve had time to wash and put back in the drawer. My plates are all chipped and the sink is fucking full.

I am as bled out as these tired, overwrought dish metaphors have become.

———

I stole some time throughout the day to write this piecemeal. I started over lunch and continued while my littlest one slept. I let the older kid watch another movie on the TV. It’s been on almost constantly since 9 o’clock this morning. I’m ashamed but resigned — yes, I know that too much screen time is bad. And before someone gets all sanctimonious: yes, I play with my kids everyday. I’m their goddamn pleasure cruise director. I plan healthy, delicious meals, structured indoor activities and adventurous outdoor excursions — about 90% of the time. The other ten I reserve for self-care because here’s the thing: I can’t have a breakdown.

Essentially, self-care is an alternative means to an end because I can’t put my family and my career first if I’m a wreck. The unfortunate truth, though, is that I don’t get a break over the weekends, no matter if my nose is rubbed raw from this week’s grindstone. I’m on duty. I know if I don’t keep them busy and entertained, they will eat me alive, but sometimes the best I can do is the bare minimum. Hello, iPads and leftover Chinese food for lunch!

Yes, I feel guilty. I am aware that I am sometimes missing (my self-imposed, society-informed) mark.

It is an instinctual, biologically-programmed imperative to put my babies’ needs before my own. However, I’m also introspective enough and intelligent enough to know that if I am not equally as devoted to maintaining my health, my girls mind end up without a mother at all. And that is unacceptable to me, insomuch as I am able to prevent it.

We all have an obligation to those that love and depend on us to take care of ourselves. Our children ought to see us not just survive, but thrive, because they learn by our example and they deserve us at our best.

So, today we didn’t make it to the beach. Our only excursion was around the neighborhood, walking the dog. The girls got to watch three feature-length films while we cuddled on the sofa and played tickle-fight. I made macaroni and cheese for dinner and gave them each a Snack-Pack for dessert. I drew a fragrant, pink bubble bath and after I washed their hair, I let them play in the water while I checked social media on my phone.

Now I’m sitting at my kitchen table, listening to the soft notes of the girls’ lullaby CD drift down the stairs. They request it every night after I’ve already sung them each their own bedtime song. After I press play on the CD player Moira got for Christmas, I sit in the dim light with them while they fall asleep. I relish the quiet.

Our nighttime routine helps to center us together, no matter what’s gone on during the day, and it is sacred to me. I recall as a small child being rushed into bed and out of my parents’ hair, feeling so desperately lonely while I struggled to fall asleep alone. When I was really little, I’d scream for my mother. I have a memory of her flying into my bedroom while I cried, clearly annoyed as she told me she was going to leave me in the dark until I cried myself to sleep.

Funny thing about traumatic memories — I can’t say if this happened once or a hundred times. I can only tell you that I have relived the pain of that moment over and over again in my mind since the night she stood in my doorway with one hand on the , backlit by the hall light, one hand on the doorknob, her posture telegraphing terrible impatience before she closed the door and walked away. It’s been on my mind ever since I screamed for her in the dark knowing she wouldn’t be coming back.

That’s the sort of thing I’m trying to avoid here.

My mom wasn’t a bad person and she wasn’t an abusive mother. She was a woman at the end of her fucking rope, day in, day out, just white-knuckling it to survive her chronic pain, undiagnosed and untreated mental illnesses, abusive alcoholic husband, and five needy children. She left me to cry that night because she truly had nothing left to give to me.

Been there.

I’m a fantastic mother. I know because I work hard at it, every minute of every goddamn day. My girls might sometimes get stuck inside all weekend with their eremitical wingbat mother, but in the long run they will be humans who are secure in the knowledge that they are beautiful, powerful, strong, intelligent, miraculous beings born out of pure love and light.

I know, because I’m going to teach them radical self-love by example, and make sure they never forget it.

2018 was kind of a big year for me. I did a lot of new things that made me uncomfortable, and it really paid off. I proved something to myself this year; that is, I realized I only needed to prove it to myself, and no one else. The ultimate task of my life these last fifteen years has been learning how to love myself like a parent would. Like my mother no longer can, like I never had when I was small.

Learning to take pride in myself and my accomplishments was the first step. The next was taking greater risks, reaping greater rewards, and finally feeling confident enough to reach even farther, to end this life as I know it and build a new one, entirely on my own terms. I feel like an honest-to-goodness Grown Up.

To me, a Grown Up is someone who takes responsibility for themselves and the things they love. They know themselves and they remember their own worth. Grown Ups construct a foundation of life experience to assemble a platform from which they may do good things in the world. They don’t just own up to their mistakes, they learn from them, and they do better. Grown Ups aren’t possessed of a victim-mentality, because they know that even when terrible things happen, they are capable facing it head-on.

After a literal lifetime of feeling like the picture of helpless and vulnerable, this sort of matter-of-fact, unapologetically self-driven, Carpe Diem attitude is a very welcome reprieve.

A lot of this growth has come as a result of getting treatment for PTSD, the result of childhood trauma and inevitable subsequent traumatization. I had been broken for a long time — not an excuse, but an earnest explanation — and I made a lot of mistakes in that time that I haven’t had the opportunity to apologize for. After leaving an abusive relationship in 2017, I came to understand in retrospect that, quite to my surprise, I had been a toxic influence in a loved one’s life at one time. It was unintentional, and it masqueraded quite effectively as love. I learned the pain I’d caused my lost friend while I was being victimized by someone else, and I came to respect their choice when I too had to walk away from someone who truly, honestly believed that they were loving me right.

People aren’t perfect, and even decent people can do horrible things. In adolescence, I learned this lesson as children do when they are confronted with the limitations of their caregivers’ great and terrible power and realize, quite intractably, that these Goliaths are merely human. I survived a childhood in the care of flawed humans and thus became a flawed human myself. Now exiting my unfortunately prolonged adolescence, I’m realizing that the best thing I can to do is confront my mistakes and then deliberately stop repeating them. Somehow, I have to dismantle the core beliefs behind these maladaptations.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the next chapter in my life will be all about how I navigate that path. I’m ready. I know I’ve got this. After all, I’ve already come so far.

This election cycle took a whole hell of a lot out of me before the coup de grâs last night: an unapologetic bigot, racist, rapist was actually elected to the highest political station of our country. Finally, this horrible election is over, but I feel no relief. Instead, I have been looking forward to the future with increasing anxiety and fear, much like many of my friends and neighbors. 

I acknowledge, though, that my fear is largely a result of the unknown. I, as a white, cisgender, educated female, stand to lose very little personally if President Fuckface makes good on the promises upon which he founded his campaign. I might lose my healthcare, but my family could work that out if we needed to. I’m middle-class and self-employed, so my family might end up paying more taxes, but we could handle that, I think. The fact that my family has the ability to think around and plan for contingencies just illustrates our tremendous privilege. I hope that we can use that privilege for the good of others, but more on that in a minute. My point is this: yes, we all have skin in the game, but for some Americans, their very lives in this country are at stake. 

I might be afraid in an existential sense, but as I look over my Facebook and my Twitter feeds this morning, I realize that the majority of people in my social sphere; my friends, my chosen family, colleagues, neighbors; woke up this morning in a country that is no longer safe for them. Their ways of living are threatened because the people in power and the powers that be have asserted on a national level, without fear of reprisal or natural born shame, that their “differentness” is a threat. 

My step-dad was Jewish. We once had a long conversation about what it was like to face anti-Semitism in the modern era. He told me stories about his grandparents, victims of the Holocaust and eventual immigrants to the United States; how they came here for asylum but continued to face adversity. All because the powerful majority had ceased on the idea that Jews were a dangerous minority, a threat to the “common good”. My step-dad was the first adult to ever open my sweet, sheltered eyes to the reality that bigotry and discrimination never go away — it goes underground for a while until the popular opinion comes around in support of hate, and then the gross underbelly of humanity rears its ugly head. 

Of course it isn’t that most people are “bad” or “evil”. Most people aren’t even bigoted, at least not in a conscious sense. We are products of a system of oppression that goes far beyond what our parents and teachers taught us about right and wrong. I agree with David Wong’s point in this article: the majority of people who voted for Trump are not racist or misogynistic. They are all feeling disadavantaged and frustrated and worried about their livelihoods and the safety of their families. They are thinking about their immediate social circle, their “monkey sphere”, and making decisions based on desperation. Our political machine thrives on fear and distrust — that’s what this election has clearly illustrated, and now we must all confront the consequences of our short-sightedness. 

So what now?

I’ve been looking for answers to that question since I woke up this morning at three o’clock, unable to sleep while my mind mulled over this new reality. I like the ideas discussed in this Huffington Post article. I think we owe it to one another to be a little kinder, a little gentler, because we are all raw in the aftermath of this election because no body really won. We need to love each other, because boastfulness, distrust, and blame will only take us farther away from the America that we want to see in the coming years. We can’t just turn away and shake our heads in disappointment — we have to keep going to work. Volunteer, donate, be an ally. Keep moving forward.

I’ll admit: I am having a hard time galvanizing myself for the fight. Last night at dinner, I overheard a woman at another table causally mention that she hopes to see Roe v. Wade overturned in the new year. Her words hit me like a threat of violence hurled across a battlefield: no one has the right to tell me or any other woman what to do with her body, and I am petrified that the minimal protections we have currently could be repealed. From that moment on, I felt myself looking at passers-by as though they were strangers, potentially dangerous threats to my safety, my daughters’ safety, and the safety of those I love. The outcome of this election has made me distrustful of my community, even living as I do in the liberal enclave of Hawaii. Fear will do that to a person, I suppose.

I see the anger and frustration of oppressed members of my community, and I feel helpless. Hopeless. And then I feel like a hopeless, over-privileged fuck because of course I am helpless. These communities have been suffering silently since forever, their experiences cheapened and mocked for the peace of mind of the majority. Michael Moore’s “morning after” to-do list points out that we must “Fire all pundits, predictors, pollsters and anyone else in the media … bloviators will now tell us we must “heal the divide” and “come together.” They will pull more hooey like that out of their ass in the days to come. Turn them off.” Because honestly, how can we possibly be expected to come together and heal when we have failed each other so grievously, time and time again?

I’m going to have to work long and hard to unpack that irrational fear and use it to build something constructive. As I mentioned, one of the most important things moving forward will be to lend increased support to marginalized and oppressed groups, to use my privilege to amplify their voices and concerns. Education and awareness are key, along with empathy. I will teach my daughters to love, to know, to will, and to be boisterous. I will teach them treat others with kindness, even if they look different, if they love differently, if they believe differently — even when those differences are diametrically opposed to every value you hold dear. I will teach them by word and by example to use their privilege constructively and without fear. 

I’m making a commitment to confront the next four years, and whatever else may come, with tenacity if not hope. It’s not enough to say “this is in God’s hands”, “trust that whatever comes is part of a divine plan”. We can’t rely on God to fix what we broke, but with any luck, we will eventually be able to rely on each other. We still have the opportunity to “continue working for change, continue standing up for what is right, continue facing hate with an unflinching gaze and steady hand — with action, with compassion, with standing on the side of all that is good in people.” So don’t panic.