Friday

Eleven Years



Eleven years ago yesterday, my uncle took his own life. Dates hit me hard because number patterns interest and excite me. After a stressful previous night I woke up with self care on my mind. I've come to the distinct realization that when my mental state is poor, life for my family is worse. People ask me often how I handle five kids. I used to shrug it off. Not anymore. I try really damn hard to be a good mama, and part of my ability to be a good mama means doing the things that keep my soul alive. In an effort to buffer from my stressful night I woke early, showered and shaved, and had some time with my husband. I buckled everyone half dressed and barefoot into the van, we dropped J off, and we headed to the beach. We watched the surfers, found some seashells, and then made our way to the playground. Seated at a picnic table and half reading Brene Brown I watched my eldest daughter swing higher and higher, listening to her raucous giggles. "She's so joyful." I thought to myself. "She really knows how to be in the present moment. She's fearless. I wish I could be more like her."



As for the rest of the day, I'd planned to drink just enough chai tea, watch Lilo and Stitch, and ask Will for a foot massage . That all changed when "Hey Mom, watch this!" turned into a broken elbow and a hospital stay. This darn day, I thought. The stupid 26th. Another bad thing on this day. I know suicide is taboo. We don't like to talk about it. We don't note in the obituary that people decided to die. It's not easy to talk about. For many there is a lot of anger surrounding it. I've heard everything from "How could they?" to "That's so selfish to hurt others instead of working on being happier." Suicide isn't malicious, though. Suicide is driven by fear. Fear that life will never improve. Fear that temporary problems will be permanent. Fear that we are burdens on our friends and families. Fear that we can't handle the hardship coming around the corner. I'm no stranger to fear myself. I deal with anxiety and have from my earliest memories. It isn't difficult or an imaginative stretch for me to understand how people can fear so deeply. Life can be really hard. Especially when we spend the majority of our time wondering what difficult thing will happen next. Up until the last six months I spent more time worrying about events that never came to fruition than I did processing the way I felt about experiences that actually happened. Dealing with our natural human emotions can feel far from natural. In the course of daily life with five kids we experience a multitude of feelings every single day. Many are so, so pleasant. We truly have the best time together. Growing up is terse though. Two, four, five, seven. Big ages. Big brain changes. We're busy moving from one part of the routine to the other and sometimes emotional displays feel like a drag. "I don't have time for this dramatic upset about popsicles" runs through my head multiple times a week. The thing is, it's never actually about popsicles. Kids don't know how to say, "I'm feeling frightened about school today." or "I'm having a hard day and I need extra connection." Most adults I know would have a hard time saying it, too. And perhaps that's because we're so used to stuffing down our emotions. We don't want to feel the bad ones so we don't express and deal with them and then we become unable to feel the great ones, too. We don't get to have it both ways.

We have joked in the past that Cianna is our drama queen. She feels everything very deeply and she shows it. Joy, pain, adoration, the whole nine yards. You never have to worry where you stand with this girl, she'll let you know. Sometimes that results in a lot of messy emotions. At home. At school. In the middle of Aldi. And yes, as patient as I attempt to be there are times I'd really like to fit her emotions in a neat little box and keep them put away until it's more convenient. But I know that she, like me, like us all, needs an outlet for that emotion.. Shortly after her fall she said, "I know I got hurt. But I'm probably going to do that again." Its not that she was fearless. She felt fear. She walked through it and jumped anyway. Show me the kid who can share the big emotions and I'll show you the person who has life figured out better than the rest of us.

No matter our thoughts about what happens when this life ends- and it will end for all of us, some way, some how- this is the life we have on this Earth. How sad it would be to live forever in fear. Sad for us. Sad for our friends and our family. Sad for the world.  I’m here to listen to how people are feeling and tell them how I’m feeling. Life is messy. Let’s be there for each other. Maybe we can convince everyone one by one that the joy is worth the tough stuff and no one has to go through what our family did eleven years ago.