Create, not Consume

The ongoing battle between all or nothing

In the book Sapiens, the author writes about how industry and technology have progressed humanity so quickly that human emotions haven’t, understandably, been able to keep up the pace evolution-wise. I believe we are living in that manifestation more deeply than ever, and in a weird way, I feel like it’s corresponding very organically with my own life. The 50s are a wild decade of aging for women. Menopause. Parents dying. Children going away. Even without all the outside stimulus of the state of the nation, planet, AI, politics, etc., it would still be a rambunctious era to be alive through. Add to the mix that I have taken myself out of my life. Sequestered myself in this new place with the main goal of writing, learning, and trying to cut myself a break from past trauma and ongoing familial guilt.

Speaking of guilt, I woke up this morning around 1 am, absolutely consumed with it about my son. Rather than taking the route my parents did, which was to deny and deflect, whenever I have an uncomfortable/sad feeling about the mother I was during the child-rearing years, and the mother I’m becoming in my child’s burgeoning adulthood, I try to sit in that feeling. Even if it hurts. I attempt to hold a mirror up and see myself for who I really am in the hopes of being able to forgive her and show her some grace. It’s not always easy.

It is easy for me to have empathy for little girl me. She was an innocent experiencing life at the hands of people and circumstances that were beyond her control. Grown up, I have less pity for. Even if she wasn’t equipped with all the necessary tools to survive parenting, she had a partner who loved and supported her, something her mother never had. And a child who gave her the benefit of the doubt at every turn. I am close to her still, but this new mother is better. She struggles to not let the bad outweigh the good, but being a child of dysfunction, catastrophic thinking will always win the day, no matter how many pieces of behavioral therapy you have in your tool belt. She/me wants to be able to parse the good from the bad without having it always be all or nothing.

Add that I am struggling with an aging parent. One I only saw once a year growing up. One that has taken little interest in my life in a deep way, even if decades of performative gestures on their part make them feel otherwise. I’ve stepped back from trying to help or deal with it in any real way, selfishly letting the burden fall on my sister. I feel tremendous guilt about this, however, I understand that this is a person— without meaning to, as I don’t think they are knowingly evil—has made me feel less than in every interaction we’ve shared since as long as I can remember. Being a catastrophic thinker, even a two-minute phone call can send me circling down the drain for a day or two. Is that my flaw or theirs? Who knows, but in trying to finally take some time to myself to explore who I am creatively as a full-time gig, the experience can be dismantling. When time seemed endless, I was more generous with the days of recovery needed to have a relationship, even if fleeting. Now that I’m here, the specter of aging breathing down my neck, I no longer have time to spare. At 50+, I’ve finally discovered boundaries—no matter how frail—that I’m determined to protect. My child is better at boundaries than I am, thank goodness.

So while the world flames around me, I sit in my suburban sanctuary looking for the light that’s been smothered inside me. Pulling away from the people pleasing that’s been my life’s work. Knowing that I am often a full-on bitch, still, I am trying. Trying to be a better mother who can respect and really see her child’s experience while forgiving herself. Hoping to be a worthwhile and present partner to the most gentle and selfless man I know. Wanting to be a generous sister to the only two people who truly understand my life’s dynamics. I am trying to turn off the noise of consumption and create as a way of life. Something my mother found a way to do despite her shortcomings and contradictions.

I guess what’s I am saying in this garbled monologue on a Tuesday morning is… we are all battling some shit or another. This is my dragon. Welcome to it.