Rock Bottom

I’ve been needing to get much off of my chest. Writing is surgical ablation. Words have been bursting within me like popcorn in a microwave, furious and fervent, but my nerve was lacking.

Generally I’m able to share about my experiences while disallowing others to pin the who and the what. You know, out of respect. But, to quote Joan Didion:

“That is one last thing to remember: writers are always selling somebody out.”

Or Zora Neal Hurston:

“If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”

And Mary Carr’s mother, on the events Mary planned to parade down the page:

“Hell, get it off your chest…If I gave a damn what anybody thought, I’d have been baking cookies and going to PTA.”

What time do you go to bed and wake up currently?

Writing prompt #1995

This has been a struggle for me lately, along with many other things. I’ve been waking up around 7:30 a.m. and going to sleep as late at 1:30 a.m..

I was proud to be an early riser, waking up between 4:30-4:55 a.m. on weekdays and an hour later on weekends for a few years. It was not only an identity achieved through a culmination of years of effort, it was foundational for the self care that set my days on track.

I suffered a pinched nerve early this year and purchased a new, cozy mattress. Shortly after, my son fled the nest. Grief has been all consuming, and I’ve lost the will to wake. I stay up late at night with pain in my heart. Yesterday, I snoozed my alarm for over an hour, then woke up from a dream about my closest local friend for the last six years, who ghosted me at the end of last year.

I woke up from a dream about her and it was her birthday. Was it a sign? Should I reach out again? I let the tarot cards lead me to a no.

Later in the morning, my youngest, not wanting to go to camp for a third day in a row, was asked who he plays with there. He spoke the child’s name, adding “from preschool.” I realized the boy was the son of a friend who dropped me after my text message snafu with another friend, long out of my life after the mishap.

Then I got a call from the carpenter who is supposed to be installing cabinets in my studio—a project that began in January with an interior designer friend that is no more, postponing the work to another day.

I can’t help but dwell on the losses, obsessing over my actions and roles for accountability’s sake. My teen is avoiding me, as is my mother, who keeps sharing weird passive aggressive Facebook posts regarding familial situations. With friends I tried to patch things. With family, I worked with professionals to mediate. Is everyone isolating themselves or is it me that is unlovable? Does everyone view others as disposable or am I the only one getting disposed of left and right?

It is soul crushing.

let us consider the facts:

My mother is without lasting relationships. Friends from high school, college, medical school have not remained, the former, after the pandemic, she decided were “bad people” all along. She was married once, briefly, three fathers of her children incapable of coparenting alongside her. She lacks quality relationships with her siblings or the three children she neglected and only recently patched things with her own parents. To sum her up, in a word: transactional.

My son is 17. There are people in my home whose safety relies on his absence from it. It is developmentally appropriate for him to rebel against his parents. It is not developmentally appropriate for a 60 year old woman to be in cahoots to aid and abet that.

I have many friendships I’ve kept for decades. Relationships that are nurtured regularly, some with people who I could have abandoned after offense was taken, but healthy communication cleared things up. We have taught each other how to treat one another, we have stuck things out.

I have enriching relationships with neighbors, siblings, grandparents, cousins, aunts, in laws, my husband, my younger son, people I see in shops, gym friends, artist friends, contractors, parents of my children’s peers.

The majority of my relationships are satisfying. Not everyone likes even the juiciest of peaches.

yet

My mother wound is so grand and encompassing, my experience with abandonment a consistent thread. If my parents chose not to care for me, how can I ever feel worthy?

After weak, failed attempts to get my not-camper out of the house, still reeking of smoke from my burned shrimp the night before, to do something fun, I went stir crazy. In a moment of weakness, I sent more texts that will go unanswered. I messaged people who I’ve tried to leave out of the situation to see if I could receive insight. The pain of knowing that I can sacrifice for someone for 17 years for them to not return communication is unbearable. I’ve given so much but if everything is my fault, how can I do it differently? I have spent my adult life reading books, articles, talking to friends, clinicians, and working to instill values I wasn’t taught at home. How am I supposed to play the role of Mother when I didn’t have that modeled for me? I tried so hard to work with the scraps listed above, to mimic what I saw on television or read in books, and now I’m left with what to show for it?

it all works out

I phoned a friend from my Al-Anon group. Al-anon, for the uninitiated, is like AA, but for people who love or have loved alcoholics and addicts, be it a parent, child, sibling, spouse, ex, friend. She has experiences that mirror what I’m going through with her own son, but years in. I wanted to hear her story and she left me with a nugget of wisdom: “change a thought, move a muscle.”

that’s been missing, too.

My weekly workouts have gone from 6 to 3. When my mornings slide and childcare is lacking, all comes crashing down.

So, at the end of the day, I waited with my son on the front porch, sneaker laces tied tight, for my husband to come home after a couple of days in the city on business. When he arrived, we exchanged greetings and I set off for a walk, my phone last seen lit upon my bed upstairs. I realize now that I can’t recall the last time I’d done such a thing. A walk without counting steps? No data, no credit for the effort? A run with the risk of seeing something beautiful without the ability to selfishly snap an image of it to later replicate with my own hand? Could I dare?

I had pent up energy from the underexercise, frustration from the lingering fishy smoke scent of my home—a breathtaking reminder of my failures as a homemaker—and a heavy heart. Shortly after I began my walk, I decided I was going to walk to Norwalk without my phone. Two towns away. My tether behind me, I wanted to see how far I’d go.

here’s what happened.

I walked past the livestock of nearby farms and caught the wind of two young girls on a 4 wheeler joyride before stumbling upon an underused open space, branches from opposite sides all along the path nearly touching. I crouched in, avoiding poison ivy, and peed outside, no outhouse.

I found a brook that I would have only driven over, or stopped for a couple pictures of at most. I sat on the bridge, stared at the reflection of the sky and leafy treetops on the water, radial ripples moving the shapes only slightly. A deer came cautiously near as I listened to babble for an amount of time I’ll never know, without the tether of a phone, a clock, time. I sat, even as commuters rushed home in their cars, my feet dangling over the concrete bridge, folded over the cold metal railings, looking over the curves of the brook and how it faded into the distance.

When I felt a stir within, I began to walk again, acquainting myself intimately for the first time with sights that I regularly see rushing past my peripheral at 35 miles an hour. I came up to the church I’ve only seen from a vinyl seat and was greeted with it backlit by a cotton-candy sky, fluffy pink clouds ablaze against blue fading to purple. I stood there, letting the speeding cars see me in my moment of awe, feeling like the protagonist from a Bradbury novel.

My walk resumed with conviction. Thought repeating: “I won’t feel free until I get to Norwalk.” I didn’t know what was in Norwalk, but I felt the pull get stronger as the night sky darkened, the streetlights newly vibrant. Norwalk felt like freedom, a place outside of the suburban life where I unintentionally fell into becoming a “kept woman,” by loving a man equally ambitious in more marketable ways. “Kept woman” is exactly how it sounds, recalling a modern film I watched once on a plane that closely mirrored the Stepford scenario of yore. Kept, like a delicate china on a shelf, its purpose to be viewed or to serve.

Maybe I would find a ride home in Norwalk, meet someone thrilling yet return home safely. Or I would see beauty that would surpass the gleeful girls, babbling brook, or salacious sunset. My pace quickened, speeding to a run here and there.

As I came upon downtown Westport, I heard sounds—live music? I could hear it out of my left ear, nearly behind me, the residential area. I walked on, coming upon a restaurant with quiet music coming out of its speakers, the smell of peppered steak wafting between laughing patrons under string lights. More steps led to the Saugatuck River, where the instruments became loud once again. Aha! I recalled the outdoor amphitheater behind the Westport library, and walked the path along the river to get near. The instruments beamed and beckoned, I found a bench and laid on it, staring up at silhouetted branches and leaves interlacing the night sky, flickers of fireflies making their presence known, while listening to the singer melodically repeat “thank yous.”

The MC’s voice came on, and it became quickly clear that a song repeating “thank you” is not just a god-given gift of gratitude acknowledgment for a random walking woman, but a farewell from a blues band from Seoul, Korea. They gave an encore, aptly titled “Rich Man Blues,” the only lyric I was able to catch being “my baby is gone.”

That moment could very likely have been the magnetic pull all along. But, it wasn’t Norwalk. By now, Norwalk was just over the river and up that steepest hill. I’d find out once I got there if there was something more to be seen, felt, experienced.

There was no town welcome sign, but I knew Whole Foods was in Norwalk, its parking lot now nearly empty. A single car drove up, parked. The passenger walked to the door, turned around, shrugged, and went back to the car.

“What time is it, if Whole Foods is closed? Everything looks closed.”

I mean, is Whole Foods even really Norwalk? I walked further, up to the AMC theater where we would take my oldest son to see every Marvel movie. That old life. The parking lot was busy with people getting in their cars, surely still feeling the weight of reentering the waking world after suspending disbelief for 90 minutes.

Okay. I’m in Norwalk. Now what? What time is it, what else is open to clue me in?

Across the street, illuminated Golden Arches offered no insight. But just past it, a neon open sign! What is that?

Rock Bottom Flooring and Furnishings

“Oh, that place won’t be open. Someone must have left the sign o—“

I look again.

Rock Bottom Flooring and Furnishings

What else to do, other than laugh aloud, headlights shining in my eyes?

I crossed at the next intersection, and began walking home. At points during this walk, its entirety I later mapped out at 15.5 miles, I would wonder if I’d come across a ride, and considered asking the man behind the wheel of a patrol car I greeted.

But a new thought was now repeating:

“I got myself to Rock Bottom, and now it’s time for me to get myself home.”