Reflections from a Germ-Ridden Sabbatical
It has been a discombobulating couple of months, to say the least. (I’m sure none of you need me to clarify what I’m referring to – but, if you do, I’m honored that you receive this newsletter in your Wi-Fi-impaired private island compound.) Set against a heartbreaking news cycle, writing about life’s mundanities, something that has always come naturally to me, has felt meaningless and even unethical, as though my problems have no space in a world where inhumane atrocities can change one’s life overnight. Meanwhile, said quotidian tribulations have been feeling all-consuming ever since my daughter started preschool and proceeded to bring home not one, not two, but three successive toddler plagues, with an average duration of 10 days. In the past two months, I’ve been vomited on, peed on, napped on, and driven to that special point of sleep deprivation where checking oneself into an insane asylum begins sounding like a trip to Amangiri (more on that later).
And yet, neither our dystopian state of the world, nor my temporary mental decline are an excuse for the fact that you haven’t heard from me in two months (!!) My only relief is knowing that my only paid subscribers happen to be close (and excessively generous) friends who have likely received a psychotic voice note or five over the past weeks, and will therefore forgive me. Since driving one succinct topic to the finish line still feels like a huge mental challenge, here are three loosely tied reflections that I have navigated through over the past two months.
Warning: this post is uncomfortably long and may require a few sittings – and some unwavering loyalty to yours truly – to get through.
On sanity (and lack thereof).
As I slowly ease out of my months of snot and sleep deprivation, it’s interesting to reflect on the number this entire experience did on my mental state. Actually, I don’t know if “interesting” is the right word, but it is definitely necessary if I intend to retain my parental rights.
I’ll spare you my daughter’s virus trajectory, noting only that it involved one ER visit (croup, a violent cough that is more bark than bite), one bout of Hand Foot Mouth disease (the true delicacy of toddler ailments that comes with mouth sores and an ice cream diet) and one unidentified gastro-slash-respiratory virus that stuck around for a glorious ten days, sending me to the depth of the rabbit hole. (Noting that my partner was on the other side of the country for work the entire time, adding an extra layer of angst to the situation.)
The thing with tending to sick kids is that it chips away at you slowly, almost without your knowledge, because all your focus and energy is always on them. To start, there is the complete dissipation of time and schedule, as days turn into nights and you slowly lose track of what day it is and when was the last time you actually left the house . Then, there is the physical degradation, as you spend weeks sleeping in increments and forgoing any sort of “self-care,” as though you once again have a newborn – except that said newborn is also pushing you off your own bed at night and chucking Kid’s Tylenol on you and kicking you in the stomach as you try to stick an aspirator up their nose. Before you know it, day ten rolls around and you are breaking hangers and proclaiming to your family that you are going for a long run and are subject never to return.
Although I’ve always been anxious and neurotic, the way I felt at the very end of the experience was definitely a new low. It’s disturbing to witness yourself go from a person you know and understand to somebody you barely recognize, somebody who is triggered by sound and light and noise and has no ability to self-regulate, who cries alongside her child instead of providing them with a container for their emotions. It is also scary to realize how much I require from the environment to feel good and act my part as a sane family member, rather than a ticking time bomb ready to explode at the slightest trigger. The behavior is so twinged with OCD and control issues that there is almost no wiggle room left for unpredictable circumstances – and yet, when it comes to kids, it is all unpredictable circumstances, which makes it a clear indicator that the work is on me (and my therapist).
My takeaways for the next time? (Because, according to this article, I’m looking at 8-12 “next times” a year!) I’ll leave the “mindfulness and meditation” guidance to the Gwyneths and the Melissas of the world and fast-forward to the only changes I feel capable of executing on, which is prioritizing sleep (i.e. the sanity elixir of the 30-something woman) and shifting my outlook. The latter is something my partner has been pushing me to do for years, and something that feels more imperative in today’s world than ever before. As bad as they may feel in the moment, for the luckiest of us, most shitty situations are only temporary and always come to an end. You will sleep through the night again, you will see people your age again, you will sit in a restaurant with clean hair again. This too shall pass (most likely, to restart again the following week).
On big goals and bullshit excuses.
I used to laugh at the concept of writer’s block, filing it off as but a synonym for procrastination. When asked about “inspiration,” I would respond, “you just need to sit down and write,” a method that I always found the willpower to execute on. And yet, over the past months, I’ve been feeling a debilitating inability to focus on my own writing, be it on this newsletter or other projects I’m working on. I have made every excuse in the book: I’m traveling, I’m moving across the country, my daughter’s starting school, the world is falling apart, I’m nurturing a sick kid And yet, I knew better than anyone else that, for the most part, they were all bullshit. While certain weeks were completely hijacked by life events (accepting a 60-foot container comes to mind), for the most part, there was still plenty of time left to hunker down and make a small dent in the things that matter.
Instead, I occupied it with every other pastime I could find: brushing up on my Middle Eastern history, selling things on Facebook Marketplace, stalking random old acquaintances on Facebook in the interim (a whole weird Gen Y world!), browsing real estate I can’t afford on Zillow, picking out dining chairs, shopping the Net-a-Porter sale, and watching Lessons in Chemistry (weirdly better than the book). I knew I was doing the wrong thing every time I would open a browser page instead of a Word Doc, and yet I would do it anyway, as though a force inside of me was resolved to block any sort of creative product from coming through. Instead, I had become consumed with the domestic and the material to a degree I had never before experienced, one that felt vapid and unfamiliar and inconsistent with who I like to believe myself to be. At the same time, my embarrassment over my lack of creative output and follow-through was deepening with each day.
With my 37th birthday just a day away, I recently re-read a post I wrote exactly a year ago, in which I resolved to succumb to my “season” of being a mother. “Maybe, I need to stop fighting my way upstream and surrender in other areas of my life as well. Maybe, people too have seasons – seasons to ground and seasons to bloom, seasons to focus on family and seasons to grow professionally. I had been trying to pack everything into this one season, rather than just focusing on my daughter before she’s off to preschool, dabbling in smaller projects that satisfy me creatively, and taking my time with the next step – all of which, I would be remiss not to note, are incredible luxuries.”
In a way, it was nice to read this and see that I hadn’t actually veered completely off track, but had instead submerged into something that had started out as intentional, but, like so many good things, had ultimately started to cannibalize itself. In a way, I’m grateful for the experience, for it showed me how much of my personal happiness hinges on the pursuit of bigger goals, how much satisfaction I derive from seeing myself as somebody other than a mother and a partner. With the move and Virusgate firmly behind us, I’m ready for a new season, one that takes me back to that place of mental expansion that I so acutely crave. I’m ready to delete my apps and sacrifice my weekends and ignore my group chats and be tired, really tired, the kind of delicious exhaustion that comes with the sweet aftertaste of accomplishment. I’m ready to stop dabbling and start doing.
On daydreams and Carpe Diem.
Here’s the irony: I spent the tail end of the summer telling everyone that our move to Miami and Sasha starting preschool was the “beginning of my new life” that would enable me to finally take my first solo trip to Europe in years. No matter how many people warned me that preschool comes with an instantaneous germ home invasion, I didn’t listen. Instead, I mapped out my trip to London and Paris and Portugal – a gallop by plane and train and horse that would allow me to get back to my writing and “reconnect with myself” and see old friends and maybe even make new ones. The daydream fell apart in many stages: first, when my partner needed to stay behind in LA for business; then, when my daughter developed extreme separation anxiety and started accompanying me to the bathroom; finally, when, on October 7th the words “hold your babies close” took on new meaning and the world stopped feeling safe yet again.
I say “yet again” because, ever since Covid flash-froze our reality in March 2020, the notion of canceled plans has become more of a norm than an exception. My own list includes a trip to a friend’s wedding in Italy in 2020, a 2021 trip to Colombia with Dave (he got Omicron – remember that one?), my 36th birthday (we all got Covid) and our own tentative 2022 wedding in Saint-Petersburg that I hope to one day bring back into the conversation. And yet, unlike my partner, who refuses to get excited about anything until he steps onto the plane, I’m not giving up on my daydreams anytime soon. While I too am not immune to the occasional twinge of cancellation fatigue, the joy that I experience from the process of planning always outweighs it. It is in the research, the envisioning, the daydreams that I find my happy place, like a superpower that allows me to escape the everyday banalities and transport myself into a more colorful future.
I recently read that the only way to live a happy life is to remove your expectations in order to avoid cross-referencing your reality to some unattainable, Instagram-inspired standard. When it comes to the big things, I agree, for each one of us is dealt our own stack of cards and is not guaranteed everything we want at the exact time we desire, if ever. Still, there is also a certain beauty in daydreaming I refuse to extinguish, particularly when it comes to those smaller, more tangible fantasies that are often somewhat within our control. There is also the idea of manifestation – for everything that hasn’t worked out or fallen through in my life, there are many things that have, and I think my consistent visualization has something to do with it (you can take the girl out of LA but some of it will stick!)
I was talking to a (wise) friend about this, and she said something that hit a chord. “A life without dreams is pointless, but so is living in the future without enjoying the day-to-day.” As much as I love escaping into the pockets of my mind where life is a little bit brighter, I often wonder if I’m blocking myself from enjoying the smaller everyday moments when everything is just good enough. There seems to be this mad rush inside of me to always move towards what’s next, as if life is but a TV show with a highlight reel and not a sequence of fleeting time that I’ll never get back. The only thing that snaps me out of this mindset is my daughter, who is getting older much faster than I’m prepared for her to. Forget European promenades and romantic sunsets – looking at her is the one thing that makes me want to stop the clock and just stay in the present, because tomorrow is bound to look a little bit different. Now, it’s on me to to apply this to other areas of my life and try to find that vital balance – a time to plan, a time to daydream, a time to live.
And there you have it, everything that has been running through my head over the past two months, and everything that I am stepping into my 37th year with. But, before I start, I’m off to drink rum and dance salsa – and you better believe I plan on enjoying every last minute of it.