Husky mind

Recently, I was rejoicing quietly about the fact that I had been communicating with people in a professional capacity without excessive post-comms rumination. I didn’t do anything directly to attain this freedom, though I thought I might be able to trace its provenence. Regardless, it felt like I’d magically put things in their rightful place, instead of amplifying their importance and peril.

And then my grandma took bad and was taken into hospital, and there was not much for me to do to help. So, what little I could do, I did, peripherally and imperfectly, and then I tore it apart afterwards for every imperfection. The situation itself was, of course, important and perilous. But my part in it…largely uninfluential. I tried my best to help in a situation where people more capable than me were already handling everything, and that was all I could do. But it triggered my self-absorbed belief that if I’m not the MVP I don’t deserve to be playing. So I wasted a bunch of thoughts retroactively optimising my conduct – wishing that I’d been, at the very least, flawless in my execution of said peripheral tasks, so I could escape the fate of being considered, by any objective measure, a net loss.

And then I went to read to kids at my son’s school, and failed to maintain an appropriate level of order. The teacher handed me a pile of books and directed me to a room with the kids, which was not exactly what I’d expected things to look like. Straight off, I made the mistake of being ambiguous about what behaviour would be acceptable, because I hadn’t figured how this whole thing was going to work. So I spent most of the rest of the time trying to convince them to stop playing with toys and listen to stories instead. And then I sat in a tornado of self-criticism for most of the following night, unable to sleep for thoughts of how I should have handled things better, what this said about my parenting, when and how I could redeem myself, how irritating my incompetence must have been… A violent stampede of thoughts, altogether too concerned about myself, unable to simply accept my conclusions and go to sleep.

And I know this is why, generally speaking, I’m better at the things I do than most other people. Because I literally obsess over my flaws, at a rate completely out of proportion with the attention they deserve for normal human functioning. That does result in accelerated progress. But it also results in needless suffering. And, sometimes, it’s not worth it.

It’s why I also have a tendency toward avoidance; avoiding things that don’t matter because my brain will act like they do, and avoiding things that could matter because I’m scared I’ll crumble under their weight. If I’m going to do things, I prefer to have no choice in the matter. I’d volunteered for the school reading, and that was what made my inner critic more vicious, because to be anything less than perfect when I’m inflicting myself on others is a mortal sin.

But I am wondering if the problem is that my brain is built for bigger, tougher problems. Perhaps I’m like a husky without a sledge to pull. So I’m fabricating sledges to give myself something to do.

The only way to test that hypothesis, though, is to hitch me up to something heavy. Voluntarily. Are there any easier hypotheses to test first?

Wordgame: Archeopteryx

My son likes dinosaurs. I like dinosaurs.

My son likes learning words. I like learning words.

Because of this, I’ve learned a lot of dinosaur words. Archeopteryx is one of them. I can’t say I knew what an archeopteryx was before my son was around. I can’t say I didn’t know either, because I know a lot of things that I don’t strictly remember I know until the occasion calls for it.

I definitely did know what a stygimoloch was, because at some point in my adult life I had consciously decided to look up dinosaurs, so I could decide what my favourite dinosaur would be, so that, if anybody happened to ask me, I would have an informed response.

But stygimoloch wasn’t the word I put in my elephant box. Archeopteryx was. I wonder why.

The adventure of tragedy

I can’t stand it when I see children ripped away from their parents, or parents forced to leave their children behind for their safety. At that point in the story I just weep unconsolably now. It never used to be like that – it used to just feel like part of the adventure. Before I was a parent, I didn’t really get what the big deal was, honestly.

And maybe this was a simple maturation process, or a reward of the rite of passage that is parenthood, but I can’t help suspect there is something else at play. Because I have always maintained a rather unhealthy distance from the concept of family. I have looked upon others’ close familial relationships with bemused curiosity and an uncomfortable tinge of envy. I never had a parent that felt like a safe space; like plain and simple sanctuary; like unconditional love. I’d never known that, so I had no concept of what it would be like to lose it. And I hadn’t considered that that’s what those moments in the story represented – the tragic loss of true love.

I’m a good mother. I’m validating and responsive and highly attuned to my son. I am joyful to be blessed with this role, and I know he feels it. I am enthusiastic, I’m quick to admit error, I respect him as the whole person he is and protect him as the precious growing being that he is. I have done my best to earn the honour of being a safe space for him – a sanctuary of unconditional love.

And so I am terrified of messing it all up by doing what humans inevitably do. I’m scared of dying and leaving him behind.

I was watching Aquaman when it hit me that it’s so much more painful to have and to lose that kind of thing, than to never have known it at all. I don’t know why it took Aquaman for that realisation to descend, but there we are. I feel a responsibility, having gained my son’s trust, having nurtured his open heart, having made him vulnerable to me. Because that makes me a potential source of great pain to him, and a lot of the ways I could hurt him are outside of my control.

But the thing is, I didn’t really start living until I felt what it was like to love and lose. To give myself over completely, to trust in someone else, and to have that sanctuary stripped away. So maybe I was right all along. Maybe it is just part of the adventure.