Sinkhole

Today I fell unexpectedly into an emotional sinkhole. That's the only way I can describe it. This has happened periodically since about this time last year, but usually on weekends when my daughter is with her dad and I am home alone. It got to where I could almost schedule it and be ready with plenty of books, tea, preemptive self-forgiveness, and outdoor tasks if I was feeling up to it. Today's sinkhole opened up right before lunch, which is in the middle of the work day. I was not feeling up to going in to work so I let the team know that I would be working at home. I had been feeling sick-ish earlier in the week and was hoping to make up some time by being super productive. I had a lot on my plate that I was hoping to finish before the day's end. Then this hole opened up and I just fell in. 

At first I went to bed thinking a 30 minute rest would help. I rarely actually sleep during the day, but I do find that a rest can be just enough to get me through. My daughter was home with me and had been watching TV all morning. I think that was the first thing that may have triggered it. I had felt a sense of crushing weight earlier at the prospect of trying to both keep her entertained without electronics and put in some productive work time. I was able to do that for the first 6 months of the pandemic, but then got to a point where I just burned out. I was so far behind and the time with her was never quality - she sensed my anxiety and became moody and irritable. So TV became the default, along with a sense of failure that runs in the background of my mind like an open computer program that saps energy throughout the day. Simultaneously feeling like a failure of an employee and a failure of a mother for about 6 months straight, then intermittently for another 6 months after that, has left me just burnt out, exhausted, and somewhat traumatized. Of course that much TV and the lack of attention leaves her cranky, and the pre-teen attitude comes out. She doesn't want to leave the house, but she doesn't want to be in the house. She only wants to be with her friends. She is so hungry, but doesn't want to eat anything I suggest. She is angry because I have not yet fixed the roach problem, cleaned the pool, purchased new sox that she needs, etc. This combined with my heightened irritability and sense of exhaustion, sensitivity to stimuli and full-to-capacity mental load, creates a situation where I feel like I am barely there, just trying to meet the basic needs of my child and not doing a particularly good job. I send her to get her own snack, and then feel guilty that I can't be there to make her amazing healthy snacks. I wonder why she eats normal amounts when she is with her pod, but eats like a tiny bird when she is with me. I desperately need time to hide, be alone, and sort myself, but what I really want is to be free of just a fraction of these other obligations so I can think of something we'd both like to do and do something fun for once. I feel like I am loosing her. 

Once I laid down, it was almost as if I was unable to even get up. I tried several times and felt frozen and paralyzed, I had to remind myself to breath, I was terrified by the idea of getting up and facing the world. I could not lock my mind on to one singular problem to try to solve, it was just all there in a large, constant rush. I started to feel even more anxious at the idea of falling even farther behind, and horribly guilty at wasting time. Still, I couldn't get myself back up. Finally the time came for me to take her to the sitters for an hour while I attended a meeting, which at least forced me to get up and pretend to be alright for a time. 

I tried resting again after the meeting, as I was feeling physically ill at this point. There was no particular symptom or symptoms that I could point to, it was just that weird, persistent burning and heaviness in my chest and a feeling like there was poison within my entire system. I could not tell if it was physical or psychosomatic. This made me feel even more guilty, like I was wasting time on something that was not even real. 

In trying to figure out where this giant sinkhole came from, a couple of ideas presented themselves, but not in any clear way. One was that I am much less happy with how things are going with my ex-husband than I have been willing to admit. It seems that every time he has our daughter, he is telling her something that undermines me or doing something that puts her in the middle of us, and forces me to make difficult decisions. I don't think this is intentional on his part, but it doesn't really matter, the results are the same. She becomes angry at me and protective of him. She tries to manage his emotions, and I have not yet been successful in convincing him that this she should not have to feel the need to comfort or advocate for him. She already holds some resentment toward me for the divorce, of course she does, I was the one who initiated it and was the one who made it happen. My ex simply shuts down when faced with difficulties, and so the responsibility, and thus the blame, falls entirely on me to try to put things right. So now, after years of ignoring her and treating her with contempt much of the time, he is free to be the fun parent every other weekend, mess things up, then send her home to me to try to raise while working an extremely demanding job with limited childcare while shelling out $1,200 per month in childcare expenses and paying for everything. I am addressing the mistakes with him and he has been apologetic and agreeable to changing, but it just keeps happening and it erodes my relationship with her a little more every time. So there is one thing. I am feeling like a shitty mother, and no matter how many well intentioned memes I see about mothering during a pandemic, no matter how many people tell me that I am doing fine, no matter how many times I tell myself that this is really short term in the grand scheme of things, I still feel like I am failing her and missing critical time with her. 

The other thing is just the climbing workload, and the constant strain of running a non-profit with a budget that has been hand over fist, and does not look like it is getting better any time soon. We have been turned down for funding by organizations because we don't have an updated DEI policy or a strategic plan, two things I have wanted to do for a long time but have finally admitted that I do not have the capacity to pull off by myself. Again, failure. Why haven't I don this yet? Why haven't I found the time to find the funding to hire someone to do this? Why haven't I been able to build a savings by now? If we manage to get through this year, what about next year? Will I always feel this way? Will I ever have time for family, my new relationship, and friendships which have become ever more important? What if I lose control and are unable to maintain the organization - who would I even cut? 

The other thing that came up was a sense of loneliness that I wrote about in the previous post. Not only do I miss my person painfully and horribly every day, but I feel distanced from the rest of the people in my life as the result of the relationship. I want to shout it off the rooftops and share how amazing this is, and it is like no one really cares. I can't really expect them to, but it still leaves me feeling sad and empty. 

In the mix, of course, is just missing my second favorite person (my daughter is first). It's gut wrenching sometimes. Worth it, but so painful. 

There is a sense of just being at the end of something, whether I like it or not, which is scary because I still have work to do at my place of work to get it ready for a transition, and I and my daughter have friends that feel like family for the first time, ever. She has been through a huge amount of upheaval and I just want to see her have one semester or one year where things feel even somewhat normal. I have a house that I am afraid that I might not be able to sell, due to some of the alterations I made and my quirky native plant landscaping. I don't know, but I feel the need to start taking some kind of control of the situation, before it blows up in my face. It really is only a matter of time. Between my shifting focus, the constraints on my time that will continue until September, and the yearning that is drawing me to something new and different, I am really feeling like I am just hanging on. When I lose focus altogether and become unable to think or function, I feel like I have completely lost control and I feel helpless and hopeless. And these are not normal states for me to be in. 

Right now I feel better having written, and I will try again to get some work done tomorrow, will try to do something fun with my daughter, and will try to do some socializing. I'll do my best to forgive myself if I don't do as much as I would like. I'll just keep putting one foot in front of another until I can figure out where I am going.