(First of all, it was last week, but whatevs.)

After a super handy internet helper diagnosed me with chronic depression based on the last blog post I wrote, I figured it was time to make some changes.

I jest. That’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.

First of all, EINSTEIN. You can’t diagnose strangers, even if they write things that make you go “Hmmmmmm?” Depression is a real thing, a serious thing, and 1,200 words on the internet are insufficient “evidence” to make such a determination. Or you might, at least, want to meet the person first, and then diagnose them based on blog posts.

Kidding. STOP DOING THAT.

Secondly, please consider just for a moment how goofy it is that you diagnosed a person with chronic depression based on A SINGLE piece of writing. Chronic, one blog post. CHRONIC, one single blog post. Do you see the problem here?

I love the internet.

Also, if I were clinically depressed, I wouldn’t be writing. I’d be in my bed, possibly with some cocaine and a bottle of whiskey. I’m sorry. Was that a little dark? Yeah, well, so is clinical depression and THAT’S how it manifests for me and THAT is why I’m calling this human out rather than “being grateful” for her “concern.”

I think maybe people find it so utterly baffling that a woman wouldn’t be totally and completely fucking INTO MOTHERHOOD at all times that they can only conclude there’s something wrong with her brain. I mean, clearly this shit is adorable and infinitely fulfilling and it’s just irrational and frankly, incomprehensible that sometimes it could turn into a slow soul-sucking death.

Is hyperbole a symptom of clinical depression? I’m sorry. Inappropriate. Let’s move on.

When I was a kid, I grew up about 40 minutes from the ocean in Central California. We went there a lot. It was often cold and foggy (northern and central Californian beaches often are, no matter what they show you on TV). My mom would pack us up and head to the beach on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. Often it would be 4 or 5pm. The fog rested on us, turned my hair into ringlets around my face. I loved those curls. I thought they were adorable. I’d wear a sweatshirt and jeans rolled up and my toes would flip the cold sand. It smelled like life. There were these trees that seemed to grow out of the sand with sprawling branches and a thick cover, like the coolest natural fort you’ve ever seen. Maybe cypress trees? We’d play under them while my mom made hot dogs and we listened to the waves and smelled the water and made up stories and got lost.

When I was in high school, I moved further north. After school when I was drowning in nondescript teenaged angst (maybe clinical depression?!) I’d listen to live Dead as I drove the 30 minutes to Bodega Bay. Often, at some point the sun would turn to deep fog, but I always had a sweatshirt in my car. I’d sit on the beach and smoke cigarettes and drink coffee and write profound shit in my journal. Sometimes I’d fall asleep. I was alone. I loved being alone. I got back in my car and nothing had changed but it had all changed.

The ocean still does that for me, though I live 2 hours from it now.

We went Saturday morning to Monterey. My 35^th birthday was on Friday. It was a birthday trip. My mom was there, as she’s always been. She rolled up her jeans and held my toddler’s hand.

My closest friends came. They drove 3 hours and paid for a hotel room to be there, with us, to celebrate, with us. It takes my breath away to have friends like that, people who love me like that. And people I love like that.

It rained on Saturday, but we went to Lover’s Point where there are rocks and tide pools and shelter from the wind. Sometimes all we need is some shelter from the goddamn wind.

I always seem to find it, in time.

It was so beautiful I wanted a romantic selfie with my husband, but he licked my face because he’s a fucking moron.

It didn’t rain on Sunday. We went to Pacific Grove and found this amazing little restaurant that serves perfect breakfast. PERFECT BREAKFAST is no joke. Shit’s revolutionary. George got a buckwheat pancake and Rocket ordered lox, which I found adorable, until I saw it was $12.50. OOPS. Oh well. Kid’s got class. Or something.

Then we went to Carmel. And it was sunny.

some people “jog” on the beach for fun. I shall never understand such behavior.

my mom and georgie.

And then I came home, on the almost last day of March, and fell asleep remembering that my hell month is over and the universe always, eventually, hands us what we need, in salt and fog and sand, or lox, or the kiss of a friend or a licked face. Asshole.

Saved again, in the nick of time.

***

Also, I wanted to introduce a new sponsor. I’m really excited to have her join us because a.) She’s a mom like us making genuinely adorable things out of her home in southern Oregon and b.) part of the reason she started her business is so she could keep herself from going nuts as a sudden stay-at-home-mom amidst her 4 (!) offspring, a fact that strikes me as amazing.

I mean, when I’m overwhelmed I EAT SCONES. Rhiannon makes adorable baby and children’s products.  

Check out her Etsy shop. She makes teething rings (totally getting one for my baby) and blankets, burp cloths and children’s clothing (all at fair prices). She uses bright, engaging fabrics not traditionally used for “baby” items. In her words: she tries “not to make single-use products so people can enjoy our toys for longer than just the teething stage. Same thing with the clothing  – the dresses can be worn for years just by adding leggings, shorts, long sleeved shirt etc.”

Favorite quote from our interactions:  “My kids are awesome most days…when they’re not I put them to work in the ‘sweat shop’ that is my home-based business.” Need I say more? She’s our people. We love her.

I’m feeling ill-equipped for motherhood lately. I can’t stop being an asshole to my kids.

I’m yelling too much. My patience is almost always already gone.

I lose it over nothing. Them. Being kids. Doing annoying kid things. Leaving their shoes on the couch one more time. The 5^th time I have to ask him to get dressed. The bickering again about the dishes. The flailing in the back seat.

I know it’s me, you know. I know it’s my exhaustion and profound discomfort and the weight of this baby on my back and bladder and heart.

I realized the other day I haven’t had time to love this baby. Does that make me a monster? That probably makes me a monster. I feel distant, disconnected. Though I feel her (him?) against the deepest swells of my body, and the little pushes and jabs comfort me, I only barrel forward through the days. I only wonder how it’s possible to pee so many fucking times a night. I wonder how many thoughts can awaken me at 4am. I wonder why I screw around on my phone until 10:30pm when my whole self needs only sleep. Maybe it’s the privacy, the silence. Maybe I’m just not equipped for adult life. Maybe the responsible decision will always elude me. Or it will sometimes, at night, when I should be asleep.

I want to settle down and wonder at my baby.

I feel the weight when I rise, go down, roll over in bed. Every time I get up I wonder how so simple a task could be so hard. The pressure shifts. My joints barely cooperate.

My kids drain me. That’s pretty much all.

I do it one more time. I do it a hundred more times.

I should be in better shape. I should have taken better care of myself. I should eat better.

You think I’m feeling sorry for myself.

I am, though it doesn’t manifest in inactivity. I wake up in the morning and think “I can’t.”

But I do.

Not because I’m some fucking martyr, but because there’s no other choice. It’s a job. You get up and fucking do it.

I look at the calendar and wonder how much longer. How much longer will I be teaching these classes? Standing for hours at a time. Standing until my hip and thigh go numb. I took on too much, I guess. I took on too much but we need the money. A woman in Austria told me pregnant women get 8 weeks standard time off before the baby comes. I went to Austria. Austria is nice. Do they take Americans?

They say “You should feel blessed and lucky to be 30 weeks pregnant with a healthy baby.”

What a lovely family you have.

What a sacred thing.

Well, it doesn’t feel sacred now, motherfucker.

It feels like work. Grueling, brutal work. It feels like relentless work, like the kind that robs you of your air and laughter and body. It feels like taunting teasing heavy heavy labor.

I wish they’d stop calling it sacred.

I wish they’d stop talking about motherhood like it’s some sort of gentle rainbow across a bucolic meadow. I wish they’d stop telling women like me who are barely doing it that “motherhood is the most important job in the world.”

Is that true? Is that really true? Then what does it mean that I suck right now? What does it mean that I just cannot pull it together and I probably won’t for at least 2 more months?

I am failing my kids. Myself. My husband.

Right?

The weight of the souls of 3 kids. Their futures. Their whole beings: It rests on me, right now, ME this broken human who hurts and took on too much and can’t or won’t do much of anything beyond getting through, barely, trying not to get mad today, to keep it under control when all I want is for it to end – RIGHT NOW – this pregnancy – this job – the finances and futures and laundry – I’m crushed under it all (And what were we thinking anyway? And will it be worth it and how will we handle it all?)

Are these lives really on my shoulders, right now? Am I all there is?

No. I don’t think I am, and I wish you’d stop making that shit up.

The fact is that motherhood is important, and my role in the lives of my kids cannot be diminished or overlooked or ignored, but it’s also a fact that sometimes humans suck and my kids will be just fine.

Sometimes this shit is sacred.

SOMETIMES THIS SHIT IS NOT SACRED AT ALL.

Sometimes it’s day after day of just pulling through and wondering when things will chill the fuck out again. Sometimes it’s wondering what exactly you were thinking. Sometimes it’s searching for the meaning in all this work, just like any other job.

Only with this job, you’re raising America. With this job, you break souls. With this job, the world looks at you and yells “YOU DID THIS TO YOURSELF. Figure it out.”

Do you realize how insane that is? We tell women “motherhood is the most important job in the world” but then bash them for struggling with it.

Incidentally, it’s not the most important job in the world.

Let it go, people.

I am a mother, but I am a whole lot of other things, and right now, I am a woman who is totally and completely NOT FEELING IT.

Will that ruin my kids? Probably not.

Will that crush their little hearts? Doubt it.

Rather, they’ll probably learn that people struggle sometimes and battle personal demons and sometimes you don’t get the “best” version of a person. You get a piece of them. You get glimpses. You feel their love in splintered fragments, as it’s always been, because this is humanity. These are humans. This is as good as it gets for us.

Right now, I am the mother who doesn’t read stories.

I am the mother who can’t cuddle for more than a minute or two.

I’m the mother not tucking you in…getting you late to school, letting you watch too much TV, feeding you questionable dinners.

I’m the mother who doesn’t want to hear stories or endless toddler questioning and “what happened at school today?”

I’m the mother who doesn’t care.

I’m the mother not RSVP-ing to parties, forgetting commitments, not helping with projects.

I am the one irritated with the way the kids eat, the one telling them to brush their teeth because damn! That breath. Foul little creatures, really.

I am the mother finished, demolished, pulling herself up with nothing.

I go to bed.

I’m the mother in bed, who lies down at night and feels the weight of all these things, hears her own yells rattling in her gray brain, wishes she could be a woman who holds her fucking tongue and lets it go.

To preserve the sacred family. To stop messing with goddamn rainbow meadow and shit.

In 5 years she’ll be 16 years old. My first, nearly grown.

I turn my giant body and flinch at the pain of my back, and that thought.

In 10 weeks my toddler will gaze into the face of a new baby. She stomps in each morning “Can I cuggle (cuddle) with you?” I hold her though my bladder protests violently. In 10 weeks a baby will be in this bed too. Where will she fit? There will be times I cannot hold her. There will be times she is not the center anymore.

I close my eyes and hold those mornings.

I listen to my son breathe as he sleeps on my husband’s chest. I wonder how his first 2 weeks of homeschool went.

I realize it’s 5:30am.

I’m so tired.

I wish my love were enough, enough to make me the kind of mom who doesn’t cave sometimes, into some place only time can dissolve. I wish my love were enough to make me “strong enough” or good enough or pure enough or whatever the fuck it is that makes women capable of doing all this and feeling all this and finding themselves pinned to the ground by life and still, not yell at their kids. Turn off. Shut down. Crawl away.

Yesterday I read them The Tale of Tom Kitten.

Today maybe I will make some stir-fried chicken.

In 10 weeks I’ll birth a baby and find myself reborn too, with a gush of waters I’ll enter this family carrying a new extension of my heart, my blood, my life.

I’ll watch my family enfold him as they’ve done me, and I’ll kiss their heads with a whisper of thank you, for holding me as I trudge humanity. Motherhood. The shattered sacredness of today.

because they look like little rocker warriors.

1. For the past few months, I’ve had a mantra. It’s very complicated. It goes like this: “All you have to do is get through March.” I knew this month was going to be a killer one. I’m teaching 5 classes: 3 at community colleges in 2 cities and 2 high school English classes for homeschool students. And I’m 29 weeks pregnant. On Mondays and Wednesdays I’m gone from home for 12 hours straight, working. I used to “relax” and “rejuvenate” (did that make you laugh out loud too?) on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Fridays, but now I teach two of those days too. So basically I just want to off myself.
2. Had I known this would be the month Georgia’s preschool would suddenly close, AND the month wherein we would decide to pull Rocket out of school, I would have just thrown in the towel on March 1. You win, motherfucker. I’m out.
3. I wake up every day thinking “I can’t do this.” I can’t get up. I can’t get them ready. I can’t drive the hour it takes to get the three of them dropped off (Ava is still in school in our old town 30 minutes away, and Georgia’s preschool is 30 minutes away from that). I can’t prepare these classes. I can’t stand and teach. I can’t grade these papers or write or send those emails or find shit or do laundry. I can’t. I can’t do my life.
4. And then I get up and do it one more day. Sometimes I text my best girl and she tells me “You’re already doing it.” And she’s right. Our greatest struggle, our hardest time, we’re often already doing it.
5. Ava went to her first dance on Friday night. A 6^th grade dance. She was worried her dad wouldn’t let her go so she told me “Hey mama I’m just gonna tell daddy it’s a ‘social.’ I mean it’s a 6^th grade dance. It’s not like anybody dances at 6^th-grade dances. People are way too freaked out for that.” I think it’s funny that I have a 12-year-old observing and analyzing the social dynamics of other 12-year-olds. That’s normal, right?
6. We have pulled Rocket out of school. He is being homeschooled by his grandmother out on their ranch. We are working together but she has essentially taken it over. I am one lucky woman, and so is my son. There is no way he could be homeschooled by me right now.
7. He was coming home from school with headaches every day, learning absolutely nothing and losing his soul (from what I could tell). Maybe it was a terrible classroom. Maybe the school just wasn’t right, but it doesn’t really matter who’s “at fault,” right? It wasn’t working. Period. In the week that he’s been home, for the first time ALL FUCKING YEAR he was excited about something he did at “school” and told me all about it… “Mama! Did you know yeast can grow without sugar! We set up this experiment…” and “So there was this guy who started this bird organization (Audubon) and he had a ‘lifetime bird list’ so Nana and I started one and I already have two birds!”
8. It’s nice to have my boy back. I’m glad this disaster of a school year left enough of him that he can be rebuilt. Cheers.
9. Georgia is obsessed with the baby exiting my belly (admittedly, I can relate). As I mentioned on Facebook, I explained it comes out the vagina, and she said something involving milk and vaginas and I was like “no milk is boobs” and the whole thing was slightly disastrous. There was some hope of comprehension this morning when she said “So the baby comes out the bagina,” but then she announced: “But the bagina doesn’t make milk because it doesn’t have the recipe!” Right. Sure kid. That’s exactly what’s up.
10. Why are kids so fucking weird?

And is this not, friends, exactly what an 8-year-old boy should be doing for his “school day?” Hanging with his grandpa, eating an apple out in the country?

Ah, fuck it. I have no idea what kids “should” be doing and I have no idea what’s right or wrong or good or bad with any of this. I’m just trying really hard to keep my boy’s spirit and curiosity intact (or at least not diminishing before my very eyes).

I’ll do anything to not lose him.

Also, hey. In case you forgot (since it’s been so long), I used to write these “week in review” posts on Sundays. I’ve kind of gotten out of the habit (um, understatement?) but I’m going to start writing them again (maybe every 2 weeks?). And at the end of these, if I have a new sponsor, I’m going to tell you about that sponsor. And I’m really, REALLY excited to tell you about this one.

Heather Thorkelson is the founder of “Republic of Freedom.” Her title? “Architect of Freedom, Idea Generator, and International Sherpa.” Or, in fewer words: a fucking badass, real-deal life/business coach for people trying to build a livelihood rooted in freedom. For people like me who have a vision, desire that vision, know the vision is possible but have no fucking clue how to get there.

She helps us get there. She’s done profoundly interesting things. She is living a life most of us only dream of (um, she just got back from some crazy trip to Antarctica with some team of researchers or some shit and then she was in Peru and apparently her 2014 will be in “Canada and Europe”). But she started terrified, too.

I don’t call people “inspiring” because, um, most people aren’t. It’s a word so overused it’s degenerated into platitude. But when you see a human living a life of freedom, her definition of freedom, a life that she designed  rather than some other person’s version of “success,” well, that’s some actual inspiration.

She has helped me personally, and in a time when I was ready to throw in the towel on everything I was trying to do. (writing, etc.). Here was my email to her: “You’re amazing. I can’t believe you’ve just helped me like this, outta the blue. Thank you for carving a path for me. Helping me see shit. You really are fucking awesome and I am elated we’ve crossed paths.

Jesus. What luck. I feel empowered and alive.”

I sure love it when a “new study” hits the internet, particularly if it relates to some super-heated parenting topic. It’s just so fun. All of a sudden, all the people have new “evidence” to sling at the “other side.”

All the humans now have “irrefutable proof” that they were, after all, right as fuck and you were, absolutely 100% (as they always suspected!) WRONG. So they shall post it on Facebook with a barely perceptible shrug and smile, just so damn happy to have this “new science” validating their opinions.

No worries if it refutes 20 years of prior research. No worries if it’s profoundly biased and/or funded by a company with a vested interest in the outcome. No worries if it’s flawed in its research methodology or put together by high schoolers on mushrooms.

In fact, there’s no need to read any of the actual study! All you gotta do is read the article in the Huffington Post written by some asshat with as much relevant expertise as my toddler, summarizing the study and paraphrasing the “science” they don’t actually understand (or trying to, while remaining SEO effective, of course).

Forget they’re writing for a damn media source with a financial interest in sensationalism and the “latest trends,” (so they can trap new parents on Babycenter who are simply fascinated by this “new research”). And forget the emphasis on keywords and polarizing, extremist titles that will increase Google hits and traffic, translating into PURE CASH for the website. I mean, there’s nothing like a bunch of well-meaning parents to feed “latest studies” to by the spoonful.

Nothing sells like: “New Study Shows Breastfeeding is Over-rated” or “Research proves that homebirth kills” or “Study concludes pacifiers stunt emotional development.”

Here’s what they’re actually selling us:  You want to be “in the know?” You want to remain on the cutting edge of informed parenting? All you gotta do is read our 3^rd-party interpretation of a “study” you’ve never glanced at, avoid  critical thinking at all costs and use what you read as “irrefutable evidence” to post all over Facebook, Pin, Tweet and email. This weekend, regurgitate at playdates. And then, bask in the glory of your rightness. All you need is a link, homie!

I mean how could you argue it? It’s science! It’s data! It’s REAL.

Obviously. There’s acronyms and shit.

Look, internet, unless you’re going to read the actual study, examine who funded the bastard, research the methodology (and have the ability to assess it in the first place), study what other experts in the field have to say about its outcomes, assess where this study fits into the larger picture (what else has been said over the years?)…I don’t give a flying rat’s ass about your “new study.”

Basically, one study means jack shit, even if it does validate your side of every flame war you’ve engaged in during the last 5 years.

One study is ONE MOTHERFUCKING STUDY.

You gotta look at overall flows, dude. You gotta look for patterns, for trends, for recurring information. I’m not a scientist. I get confused by words like “force” or “planet.”

My geology professor hired me in his paleomagnetic research lab because I got the highest grade in his survey course. I worked for him for a year or so while he tried desperately to explain to me 3-dimensional magnetic properties of rock (or some shit) – ultimately mumbling one day “Um I’m not sure science is your thing.”

Yeah, it’s not.

Neither is math. BUT I DIGRESS.

The point is that even a moron like me knows that science doesn’t work in giant, sensational sweeping movements, particularly if it involves lots and lots of humans. It’s not ALL GOING TO CHANGE because A study was published.

In other words, we’re getting played, people. They play on our desire to do right by our kids. They play on our devotion and love and profound fear of fucking up our offspring.

But you know what? These “new studies” may mean something significant within the field, but they are almost wholly irrelevant when it comes to my immediate, on-the-ground parenting decisions. They are contributing information to the discipline. They are lending new insights. They are donating to a body of research from which scholars can, over time, pull accumulated information that may actually inform my parenting.

But until then, it’s just “Oh good, another study I can completely ignore.”

And watch the shit-slinging begin.

Calm down, internet, it’s just one study.

SETTLE DOWN ASSHOLE.

Things are the same as yesterday.

in case you missed it the first time

On this day 5 years ago I woke up in a bed in mom’s house and it was not a special day. I had called in sick to work, again, and I was sweaty with a pounding head. The sun insisted on attacking my face. The bed was under the window, in prime sun-assault location. It was 10 or 11am. I probably heard a leaf-blower or gardeners, a car cruising by on its way to work, or somewhere, engaged in some life, somehow. My mother was at work. She let me come back to her house a few months earlier. My children were at school, though I didn’t drive them there and I hadn’t in months. Years?

My husband was at work. My dad and stepmother were at work. The whole fucking world was at work, or so it seemed. But I was in that bed, again. Twenty-nine years old at 10am in a bed in my mother’s house, shaking and sweating and not going to work, again.

Again.

More lies. More deceit. I knew that bed.

I rolled over and looked at the nightstand. I specifically remember rolling over and looking at the nightstand. Another day. Another 24 hours. Another span of failure, of deceit, of faking it. Another 24 hours of Tylenol and water and a shower, cigarettes and some food and smiling at my mom when she came home, pretending I was sober and she needn’t worry now. Another 24 hours of the haze in my brain, the low hum of failure rolling on and on and on in my gut until the whole thing is fog.

It clears with the first drink. Or it did, before, when alcohol still worked.

I had no idea why I lived the way I lived. I had given up examination. There was nothing left to explore, no corner left to illuminate. Five visits to rehab countless psychologists (DBT, CBT, Jungian, biofeedback!) psychiatrists and an institution of mental health – I take my pills to fix me. They never fix me.

I looked at the nightstand again. Books piled up. Glass of water. Maybe a journal I hadn’t written in. For years.

The sun keeping on and fucking ON and the cars going by and me, there, one more time a heap of not-in-the-world. Failure. Cannot hang. Cannot work, drive kids to school, be a wife mother daughter employee friend.

It crushed me, that truth. I have never felt a pain like the one that morning. I had never and probably will never again feel reality eat my heart and guts and soul into nothing. I writhed. I physically writhed under the crush of the other worldly.

I saw my life roll out ahead of me like a carpet might unroll across an empty room, or a street. A walkway. It went on for a long time, rolled fast and hard all the way to the end. I saw it all. I knew I would end up a desperate drunk. I knew alcoholism was THE ONLY OPTION FOR ME. I would die a useless alcoholic. And there was nothing, nothing I could do about it. Freedom was not for me. Life was not for me. I was not a victim. I deserved it. I made it. I lived it.

I am this. This is me.

I was out of moves. I was out of fight. I was out of new angles, approaches, bullshit. I had no new perspectives, ideas. I had not a single source of life.

The bottle killed me that morning.

You don’t have to stop breathing to die, you know.

It’s 8:49am on Wednesday, March 5, 2014.

I can’t keep writing. I have to take a shower so I can get to work on time.

My kids had some eggs this morning, my mom drove them to school because she helps me out on Wednesdays. I brushed my toddler’s hair and yelled at my tween to get off her brother’s case. I reminded my son to brush his teeth. When the kids got in the car I yelled ‘Have a good day at school!’ I walked in the house and had a cup of coffee.

It’s March 5, 2014.

It’s the best day I’ve ever had.