Yet Another Effing Revelation
by Amy Teffer
It’s time, I say to myself after reading yet another comment on the state of humanity mid-pandemic. I look down, there is enough coffee in my mug for a page. My dog follows me with her eyes. My kitten follows me on his little legs, doing everything in his power to distract me from my purpose. Sorry little guy – it’s time.
Time for what? Time to know myself. Yet again.
I was depressed long before the “baby blues.” Conversing with friends now about the common ailment of new mothers, it hits me hard that what I had, what I still have 4 years later, is not baby blues. Having a child strips you to your core, pure selflessness birthing out of you in human form. We do so much to care for our image of our selves. When you can no longer tend to that vision, it all comes crumbling down. Who am I? I’d done my best to reinvent myself so many times, usually by switching locations, lovers, studies, jobs, but always came back to the same place. That same emptiness. The emptiness has been with me since I can remember. I was afraid of it. I did not respect it. I covered it. Painted it. Dressed it up. Called attention to the idea of it, but never showed the emptiness itself. To do so would mean weakness and I could not be seen as weak. I am strong. I must be as close to perfection as possible or they will see, and they will rip me to shreds.
But now. Now with years passed and my daughter grown enough to have pure expressive thoughts that she can coherently convey. After years of not knowing what she needs, not knowing what I need, not knowing what my husband needs and hating myself for that ignorance. Now, I face the emptiness. I feed it what it really needs: antidepressants, attention, and love. And I am so glad I came to this point. Finally medicating my illness, thankfully before the pandemic hit. Thankful, because I see others stripped as I was but with untested baselines. My foundation is built on the crumbled remains of failed kingdoms past, which finally rose above the mire, no longer disappearing into the depths. We all need help. No one is truly self-sufficient forever. For a time, yes, but we all fall. We can and will pick ourselves up, but the reframing, rebuilding, and fortifying – we need help. I have my network. My husband and now my daughter. She has grown so much, is still growing, and will someday know how much she sustains her broken mother.
In isolation, we are forced inward, much like having a newborn. We are trapped, sometimes by our own doing, in the current case, against our will. But the end result is the same. Introspection and peeling down of the walls we put up to shield our frailty from the world. Living in a patriarchy forces us to cherish strength and will and determination and a bastardized form of success. But learning comes from failure. Building strength must come from a place of weakness. Will and determination are only useful in a depleted state. So, we have trapped ourselves in a catch 22, unable to accept our imperfection in order to grow.
I think I finally accept it. I see it. I see it in me and my husband and my daughter. I am cursed with an analytical mind and I seek fault and failure as a means to measure. That instinct comes from my chemistry and it is not helpful, for growth or existence. But I can acknowledge these thoughts, I can hear them and know them, but I do not have to take the path they provide. I do not have to dwell on inadequacies and most of all, I do not have to label them as such. We have faults as much as we have positive traits, and the labeling is our own. We simply are. The classification is our own assignment.
I have always sought to move forward. But our current pandemic state requires a full stop. We are frustrated. We are bored. We are angry. We are afraid. Many articles have spoken of the trauma we are dealing with and how we must be kind to ourselves and our loved ones during this time. I agree and can feel it when I go to the grocery store and the list in my mind disappears into a blank void. All of the awareness of our current situation floods my periphery: masks, newsfeeds, arrows, distancing, empty stores, plexiglass. It overwhelms us and seeps into the empty space we have protected for so long inside of us. We can hear it dripping into the hollow void, and it brings visceral terror.
We are facing our own humanity, every day. We are telling our kids it will be okay and we do not know if we are lying. We are asking our partners and parents to take care of themselves because we are doing everything we can to not crumble. We are watching the days go by in a sad repetitive march towards death. We are waiting, but we do not know for what. What sort of story is this? And more importantly, how does it end?
I say now that it has ended. It ends here and now. Wake up, open your eyes. You are home. In every sense. This is where you are. I see it. I am accepting it. Every day. Stand up and take ownership the walls you have built and more importantly, the foundation they stand on. When we are stuck in place, we seek to improve our surroundings. You can see by the endless posts about home renovations and landscaping. Find the cracks. Find the holes. Know and give them your attention. We are not just stuff. We are the spaces in between. And we can love all of it.