Many mental health disorders are fueled by a general mindset that in the absence of particular textbook traumas in our lives, we ought to be happy. No bashing on happiness here, but I find it disconcerting that we hold ourselves to being happy for the privilege of being, as if that makes sense at all.
Birth itself is a traumatic experience. Luckily we forget it, but we all go through that trauma to start. Can you imagine what kind of PTSD we would have if we were able to remember the day we were born? Evicted from the comfort of darkness and the only home we’ve ever known, squeezing through a tight space and being forced out into the light, our shoulders nearly dislocating. We enter a world that is filled with wonder and a million opportunities to break our hearts.
In the best case, we grow attached to those who love us and we love them back, and one day their heart stops beating and they are gone. We create stories about heaven and god to try to provide comfort, but even believers face the trauma of mortality.
Besides death, though, life is a story of loss. Time plays tricks on the mind, but overall life isn’t that long. And as we grow we must mourn the loss of ourselves over and over. Once 30 we are set in our ways, generally responsible for consistency and not looked to as creators. By 30, our lives, at least the part of our lives where the world was ahead of us, is largely behind us. Our bodies start to remind us that despite telling ourselves we will live well beyond 100 we are fast approaching the middle of the part of our life where we still have mobility and our minds. As our grandparents and parents age and pass, we see those we remember as youthful or at least middle aged now hidden behind wrinkles and grey hair and walking with support of various devices. Aging is no longer the story of our elders. It is the story of us. When did this happen?
Ones 30s are an odd time where we either ignore our mortality until suddenly we are 40, or we fixate on it and try desperately to close all loose ends of building the adult life we thought we wanted as doors start to close. As a woman, at 36, I feel this biologically. The need to procreate is fueled both by the strange desire to have kids and knowing my time to build a family, as least one of my own DNA, is almost up. I have a strange impulse to have 3 children, although it is unlikely at my age with one, but hopefully possible. My husband is happy with one and thinks I’m mad to consider more than two. I have a plan playing in my mind — if I have one more at 37 and still feel strongly about 3, I can have my last at 39 or 40.
10 years ago I would have said I would never have a child at 39 or 40 but I failed to do the math of waiting to have my first child until 34. And with infertility challenges I wasn’t sure I could have a baby, so I tried not to fixate on it too much. And then, with some medication and luck, I had my first. A rather traumatic 74 hour induction (really the last 24 hours was the worst of it), my son was immediately taken from me after birth because he wasn’t breathing. Thirty six hours later he figured it out and we got him back. He lived.
And now he’s growing fast and has somehow gone from a blob to a real human being with thoughts and feelings in two years. I see him, and despite all the trauma of life, despite my general melancholy, despite moments where I look at him and think how fragile he is, how I have brought him into a world where only death is certain and where viruses and climate change and race and wealth inequality make for a world that is uglier than a two year old can grasp, I find these tiny little moments of happiness in my heart. Zaps of light in a world clouded with darkness. I am reminded of my purpose—not a purpose of myself but of building a family. For my child and future children. To try to make their life better than mind, within the little control I have.
Still, the weight of past trauma and future trauma weighs on me. The ideal outcome is that my children outlive me and remain healthy for their lives. I can’t control this, though I can try to protect them, support their mental health, teach them to be wisely cautious while not limiting their opportunities. Giving them room to chase their dreams when dreaming is still on the roadmap. And, I don’t know, the potential trauma weighs on me. Especially in these times. Where every decision is a calculated risk, or at least there is a heightened awareness of this. My son lives in a bubble. He has no friends, or at least none he can play with in person. His mom now works from home so mom and dad are always there to soothe him when he is scared or bored or lonely. It is a nice little bubble, but a deceiving one. I like it because we dangerous as the world is, it feels safe. Small. Controlled.
In my small apartment there is not a home but there are walls and a roof and a front door and that’s our world. We go out for walks on a few familiar routes. We drive to grandma’s house. It’s as if we live in an old tv show with limited settings where all the action happens. I still remember the rest of the heart big world. How less then a year ago I was experiencing a wild manic episode while in London for work, and spent a day after our conference ended wandering the cobblestone streets of the city at night, singing to myself under my breath. I wasn’t in a good place then, mentally. I felt completely out of control and afraid of myself. My mind was in full-on self destructive mode. It was as if with the world so big and life moving so fast, without control of it, I needed to crumble. I’m ashamed by things I thought and occasionally said. I am not that person now. And partially this lockdown has helped me continue drifting back to earth. The shrinking of my world. Focusing on what matters. Giving up on making things constantly different and dramatic and intense to combat the reality of walls closing in. Breathing too deeply in a room slowly losing all of its oxygen. FOMO.
And then there is the quiet. The days which are known in their repetition. No longer even getting out of bed. Just hours of working until the day is through and trying to have energy to play with my son after that and the sleep. These days they slip away. But here they are. The trauma floats outside my door. Potential traumas of all the many things that can go wrong at any moment dance in my view — earthquakes, fires, illnesses, accidents, choking, gun violence, and all that. Immediate threats and future ones. The fall of democracy. The overheating of our planet. All the many things that can and likely will go wrong in my lifetime and my children’s lifetimes. Coronavirus. ACM. The diseases here that are real now. The news stories that make me glad to be able to close our door and lock ourselves inside our humble abode and shelter in place instead of facing the reality of a great big world with so many unknowns.
I know this won’t last forever. In this time I aim to build this family that my body tells me I want. I hope to convince my husband of it too. And to raise children who hopefully aren’t as anxious as I am with even more kindness in their hearts. And I’ll try my best to ignore the trauma of the world, the passing of time. For all of the things out of my control, the many, many things, I must focus on what I can control, and let the rest go in acceptance that there will be horror and there will be tragedy. But I ought not to waste the moments in between failing to live in a comedy with joy, somehow. Simple joys. I hope to find that. To stop living for the passing of time. And to start living within the little time there is left, however long that may be.
life with interest 