the reasons why I dig (just before Eli tried to steamroll Charlotte)

(See previous post for an introduction to this series.)

Two of the many surprises of this last year have been that my “guts” are both far more limited and far more expansive than I ever dreamed. I have always known that I get edgy when I don’t get enough sleep or time alone or haven’t eaten for more than two hours. I need to pee and poo like anyone else, and tend to get cold easily. I like to have a small pillow between my knees when I sleep. My eyes are particularly sensitive to the sun. Things like this are all true, but I swear, my guts have been my superpower more than not when catering to my own needs has been difficult or impossible. “Mind over matter” has allowed me to make it through sundry discomforts with grace and dignity totally, and sometimes regally, still in tact.

Then I got pregnant for the second time, and realized someone stole my superpower. During that pregnancy I chalked it up to pregnancy–hormones and their accompanying insomnia and mood swings, constantly increasing physical discomfort and its accompanying insomnia and mood swings, anticipatory anxiety and its accompanying insomnia and mood swings, a two-year-old and his accompanying insomnia and mood swings. But once the baby came, and my hormones calmed down, I realized that try as I might, I could not find the bootstraps of my will. I wanted and had committed to so many things–exercising, writing, emailing, hosting friends, assuring dust and grime that no, a sublease wasn’t possible–yet very few ever happened. I came to feel cheated by my own body, since my will was alive but apparently had no one to do its dirty work. I had not experienced life like this before.

Simultaneously, I have been shocked and awed by the guts required to make it through the work of my days. On very little sleep, and rarely with even the buffer of that 4-hour block of deep sleep that happens early in the night for most people, I have needed to interact constantly with a totally dependent baby and a sweet and jealous and curious, active, inquisitive toddler. And I have had to find ways of transporting both of them safely into and out of those stores where you buy food and clothing and stuff. And make food into edible form for them. And deal with the “fall out” of said food hours later.

It all sounds so innocuous, and even appears so when observed, but the guts it has required for me to do it without being mean and destructive by the ninety-fifth time I’ve been asked the same question, or the thousandth time I’ve gone to bed without doing one of the things on the “really want to do once the kids are in bed” list (like, sit still; clip nails; read one page of book), or the millionth time I’ve tried to talk briefly on the phone with a friend or insurance broker or business owner only to be incapable of hearing them over the din–happy or sad–around me, have taken my breath away. I am without breath. Almost all the time.

But I do it! I dig deeper. And when I think I can’t dig one more spoonful more, there I am again, shoveling.

Apparently my superpower has been superfunneled into things I never expected needed it, so much so that there’s little left for that list of things my ego demands I want done.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 13th, 2008 at 12:13 pm and is filed under Motherhood, Psychology, Mindfulness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.