Whatever Gets You Through
Some days, the best you can aim for is to make it to bedtime and hope that nobody pees on the carpet, and even that is negotiable. I’ve been so dead tired lately that even typing this is a real effort. I’ve got all the classic signs of being way over-stressed. And I think I just stared blankly at the screen for five minutes before writing this sentence.
Some have encouraged me to write down a few good things J-Man has accomplished even in the midst of the really bad days. Since I wouldn’t call him having digestive issues and whining constantly for the last several days worth celebrating, I had to try a bit harder. I just feel like wallowing in self-pity, and the sage advice I received once that “when life gives you lemons, remember to lead your targets and follow through with your throws” seems a lot more appropriate. Regardless of your strategy, whatever works is good enough.
In OT today, I watched him actually ride a plastic rocking horse for the first time. He pushed back and forth a few times and leaned along with it some to build up a little momentum, too. For him to coordinate all of the motor functions needed to rock that thing on the floor by himself was quite an achievement. He even sat on one of those pushable riding toys and pushed it around in reverse using his feet. He hates those things, so again, this was a real achievement. It was only a few minutes of the day (though he did well in OT overall today too) but it has gotten me through most of it.
It’s not really despair or hopelessness by any stretch. I think it’s just sheer exhaustion with the gravity of knowing that we have a couple of very busy, very stressful months to go before it lets up much at all. I look at all the to-do lists for preparing for his IEP, all the people we need to contact, all the stuff we need to write up, all the day-to-day stuff we need to do, all the projects on my work lists, all the stuff that needs fixing or cleaning around the house, the weed-infested yard in front of our house, some green junk growing on our deck, all the lint stuck in the dryer exhaust which vents out from the roof, and God knows what else, and in the moment it all feels like too much. I notice a loose toilet paper roll holder and feel like sobbing. That’s just how it’s been.
It’s like getting to mile 17 of a marathon and realizing you just hit the wall, except you can’t just turn right, get in the car, and go home. Deciding not to run isn’t an option. In our area of the world, people often call it being ‘bone-tired’. That sounds about right.
If you go looking for it, some nugget of something will pop up and hopefully nudge you a while longer. I forget who it was, but someone once said something to the effect of, “We can only see in the dark with our headlights a few feet in front of us, but we can make the whole trip that way.” From some recess of my brain, that came up and bumped me along a little bit. I guess getting through the day is sometimes just about driving a couple of feet at a time.
Not long after, I read this quote in a book about typography of all things (it was an example in the book - no idea who said it): “Today’s mighty oak is just yesterday’s nut that held its ground.”
I guess sometimes feeling like a nut isn’t so bad. Good thing. I’d still prefer some other way.
5 comments
I’m right there with you, and don’t even have any advice beyond breaking things down, prioritizing, and getting as much help as you can.
Sometimes life just sucks like an Electrolux, and it’s okay to allow yourself to wallow in it. But not for too long. Go ahead — give yourself permission to have a pity party! Celebrate, wallow and then take a deep breath and get back to that beautiful boy of yours.
@magicdrgn - I’ve tried to go geek with this and attempt to implement David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” (GTD) method for the freelance work I do, and then somehow evolve that into every other part of my life. The theory behind his method is that carrying stuff you need to do in your head just kills your available emotional and physical energy to do stuff. Your mind just can’t keep up with all that without feeling massively stressed all the time.
The theoretical goal is to offload all that stuff into some organization system that you trust and will refer back to regularly. He said a big part of GTD is being able to consciously choose *not* to do something in any given moment and knowing it’s written down so you can come back to it later without having to worry about it in the interim. That’s a bit of a simplified version of it, but it has helped me in patches. The hard part is making sure you carve out the time to regularly work through your lists, which is where I’m failing at the moment. I get to where I’m just too tired to care sometimes. That’s the big problem.
@Gigi - Yesterday was rough. He’s still feeling bad and the whole house seems to have gone into our own respective rough patches. Usually after his bath, J-Man stands up to get his pull-up on, and once that’s done, he gives me a quick kiss and starts off toward his room. Last night he just stood there peacefully and looked at me. (Great eye contact!!) Then he gave me a hug. And then he stood there a minute and apparently decided one didn’t solve the problem, so he did it again and hugged me longer.
In about a minute, he erased a whole day of me feeling down. He knew when he hugs me and looks with eyes full of love that he so often has that I often forget everything that’s going wrong around here. Who says they don’t understand?
“I notice a loose toilet paper roll holder and feel like sobbing.”
Oh, do I know the feeling of days like that! Hugs to your family from ours.
I’ve come to realize that my current method of ’scorched earth living’ isn’t working. I’ve been burning it at both ends and then creating some other ends to burn as well.
I’d say we need a vacation, but vacations aren’t really vacations for us. We have to pack 50 tons of stuff in order to duplicate our daily life and retain some sense of the routine, or else chaos ensues. Often spending somewhere between hours and days walking laps in a different environment trying to get used to it, about two days away from home and J-Man starts becoming unglued, which means we do too. So it’s pretty much like trying to recreate our home and routine in some strange place, which is just more hassle than it’s usually worth.
Ugh. I don’t know. I guess I just need to reboot my perspective or something.
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