The Stress Toll

The piling and piling of stress that I didn’t even recognize as stress finally broke me on Monday, ending in a pretty pitiful mess of raging at my husband and saying terrible, mean things to him (…maybe that’s where James gets it from – not that he was there or anything!!), driving like a crazy woman as if I had a death wish, eating lunch alone at my mom’s house while crying into my burrito bol, and then finally going home to tearfully babble on and on about how I can’t do “this” anymore. What “this” is, I’m not entirely sure. I guess… everything, maybe?

It’s a pretty terrible place to be when you feel like you simply cannot “do it all” any longer. The realization that you never really could, were just sort of playing pretend at being a Real Live Adult, and that you have absolutely no tools to manage stress and depression while working full time, mothering full time, house cleaning full time, chefing (totally not a word) full time, taxiing full time - laundering, food shopping, schedule-keeping-up-with full time.

That’s like a 168 hour a week job…s.

It kind of makes me feel like I want to say: Fuck you, feminists. It didn’t work the way you thought it would. You wanted us (your daughters and granddaughters) to feel as if we COULD do it all… and now we are stuck in a world that tells us we SHOULD do it all. And by should, I really mean MUST.

Gone are the days where it was perfectly acceptable to expect one’s husband to be the sole provider for the family. My husband, personally, would have his feelings deeply hurt by that notion. As if it would take some miracle for him to possibly be able to handle the stress of being the only source of income for his family.

-.-

Do you see how sorry I feel for him? Can you FEEL my sorriness pouring through your screen? My OVERWHELMING SYMPATHY?!

Be a fucking man. There’s a reason it’s called “man-up” and not “woman-up”. You are the provider. You provide. It is what God intended for you. It is what biology designed you for. Quit being a whiney baby.

Oops. There I go, being mean again. Apologies.

This is not a “I should be able to stay at home if I want to” conversation, though. This is a “I do it all and I do it all all the time and am allowed to be upset about that once or twice a year when life is so overwhelming I just wish I wouldn’t wake up tomorrow” conversation.

I am allowed to feel feelings. And I deserve to be happy. The problem is: I have no idea what will make me happy.

I know coming home to a disaster of a home every night after work doesn’t make me happy. I know spending my evenings and/or my weekends making that home clean just so 24 hours later it will be destroyed doesn’t make me happy. I know having to squeeze in my grocery shopping at 9 or 10 o’clock at night or amid the madness of every other human being on the planet that does their grocery shopping at 10am on Saturday or Sunday morning doesn’t make me happy. I know staying up until midnight (or later) every night just to get some goddamn peace and quiet and then still getting up at 7 in the morning for work and/or my children doesn’t make me happy. I know cooking… makes me happy… but cooking the same 3 or 4 meals every week because the idea of trying to find an hour or two to actually plan out a menu and shop for that menu and then assume that my children would give me 45 minutes of peace after getting home in evenings in order to prepare the meals on that menu, none of which would ever happen – DOES. NOT. MAKE. ME. HAPPY.

Things that make me “happy” right now (I put these in quotes simply because they don’t make me want to stab myself in the eye with a fork…I’m not sure if that really constitutes happiness):

-drinking lots of wine

-drinking lots of beer

-drinking lots of wine and beer

-sitting on my porch smoking cigarettes (so healthy)

-going out and being social, pretending as if I have no real responsibilities in life

-shopping (not for groceries)

These “happy” things are sad, sad happy things. Pitiful, sad happy things.

Part of me knows that if I would make a real effort to clean up my eating and do something physical daily, it would help to control these feelings of being overwhelmed and depressed - but when you're in the middle of all of that it seems a little hopeless. And to describe the intensity of the lack of motivation is nearly impossible. The lack of motivation is staggering.

Mike asked me the other night to really think on what would make me happy. That he would do anything he needed to do to allow me to do what makes me happy. But I don't know what that is. And I think about it, and it feels like all of the things I come up with are just really shallow and selfish things - and I think, those things won't really make me happy. It just seems like that would make me happy now because it's the opposite of everything I'm currently living.

So in feeling all of this, I called to schedule an appointment with my counselor... well, she apparently is not currently practicing. She's on an indefinite hiatus.

God must be testing me. This must be a trial to see how/if I can keep it together and not just lose my mind completely.

So on top of all of this crap, I woke up this morning feeling like I'd been hit by a truck... the idea of facing the world was not an option. I worked from home, I hit from the world in my bed.. and I thought to myself, "This. This makes me happy." But that is definitely a lie. Being a big blob of do-nothing is not happiness. It's just having some time to myself... which I don't get much of out of either my own doings and because I live with 3 other people. So you know what I'm going to go do right now? I'm going to go take a shower. Because I can. Because right now there is no one else here that needs me to do something for them, or "watch this", or answer a billion questions.