My Mess to Clean Up
How to be the change without losing yourself to the fight
As the election has started to sink and the initial shock has worn off, disbelief seems to be the new normal. I have heard many people talk about rallying, planning, circling the wagons all to fight injustice. All good sentiments. But let me be a cautionary tale about centering your life around a fight. You can absolutely lose yourself in it. To the point that there might not be anything left of you when the fight is over.
When we find ourselves pushing back against injustice after the fallout of an election, or fighting a long drawn out custody battle, or maybe just trying to navigate a typical life filled with kids, a spouse, a career and an ever aging body - we can lose focus on the bigger picture of living. We tell ourselves that all the self-sacrifice is for a good cause. That losing ourselves is a necessary evil. We comfort ourselves by saying it’s temporary, so it’s ok. But we can easily slip into living an all encompassing distracted existence.
It usually starts with the promise of a carrot. That the erosion of the self is payment for the end we desire. And that when it is all over, and the fighting wanes, everything will be better. The carrot holds the hope and promise of a better future, and we assume that the self will remain intact when that day finally comes.
This exact scenario is how I ended up a year out after my epic ten year custody battle with no fucking idea what to do with myself in the aftermath. I completely lost myself in it. Not that it wasn't important. Not that losing myself wasn't a by-product of the process. But on the other side of the fight, I find that my light has been dimmed. That there has been long-lasting damage. Not just from the grief but from the process itself. I have been living off of cortisol spikes and adrenaline for a decade. Constantly fighting fires that seemed more important than me. I lived everyday waiting for the other shoe to drop. And when it did, it proved that my efforts were valid, a correct response to an immediate ongoing threat.
Now over a year later, after the fight has ended by my own very difficult choice of quitting, I can tell you that recovery has been extremely difficult. Tolerating the lowering of cortisol takes vigilance and patience. Repeated attempts to force myself to not fall into patterns that mimic the fight. To not let myself create new fights or decisions that bring in chaos just to fill the void. I have had to retrain myself how to take comfort in quieter days when the world around me is not on fire. To remind myself the other shoe is not dropping and if it does, I will handle it then.
When we are in the fight, this after is all we dream about. The time when things will be settled. Peaceful. Quiet. We fantasize about not having to fight anymore. Yet living it is harder than I ever imagined. The grief I expected and knew would be a challenge but the days filled with nothing but routine are much harder to bear. I wake up every day wondering what battle I will fight only to realize that the only fight left is with myself and my knee jerk reactions to what are now very small problems in comparison. The old killing a fly with a hand grenade reaction. During my ten year battle, quiet usually meant scarier times were ahead. That my ex was circling the wagons for a full on assault. Now with most of my days filled with quiet, I find myself afraid of absolutely nothing. Nothing is coming. The fight is over.
Even harder to integrate into my life without conflict is trying to experience the excitement of any joy. Oftentimes excitement and fear share a lot of the same physical feelings in my body. Having experienced mostly fear for the last ten years, when seeking out how to add joy into my new quiet world now, I find triggers in the unexpected places. Especially the joyful moments I am going after on purpose. Just trying to hold joy in my body causes a full dysregulation effect. Every time excitement surfaces it's like I have to talk myself down off a ledge. I find myself disorganized and unable to focus, I can't sleep, I fear something big and bad is coming.
So when I got the call this past weekend that we would be picking up our first foster puppy, I felt overwhelmed with excitement which mimicked the same old feelings of stress and fear from my custody battle. And as the upcoming Christmas holiday visit with my two older children inches closer day by day, I feel excitement building which feels an awful lot like fear. I am flooded with the images and reminders of all horrible transitions past at the airport I have to drive to to pick them up. I worry about all the drama I might endure as payment just to spend a week with my kids.
I find myself slipping into old patterns as I prepare for the upcoming visit. I must remind myself that the worst has already happened. I try to upload all new information into my brain. That I have an entire year of this new arrangement under my belt and I know for sure that my ex wants to avoid court at all costs. His slate is not as clean as he wants it to be and would not want all of what he has done paraded back through court.
On top of it my ex needs to create a justification for erasing me from their lives and constantly breaking our new agreement so he will not be very present during the time they are here to make it “even”. Nothing we will ever experience could possibly make our situation even. And yet I have to remind myself over and over, the fight is over, come back to the self, find peace in what is left. There is good stuff to be had here but the body needs time to catch up.
I spent a lot of the last year looking around my life for signs that things were improving. I was waiting for some kind of an internal or external shift. Maybe even someone else to come in and clean up the crime scene that was the aftermath of my life in the wake of a very hard decision. Until it hit me one day, it was MY decision. That meant this was my mess to clean up. Fuck! I have to be the change. And if I can’t survive this grief and find a way forward, how will my son ever be able to? What kind of model am I being for him?
This realization as obvious as it might have been to everyone else around me was a tectonic plate shift for me. I was beyond pissed off about it for a few days until I could wrap my brain around it and get over it. Then it was so clear. I finally got it. My choice, my mess.
So what does this discovery mean going forward? It means more facing the quiet. Talking myself off the ledge so I can experience joy and excitement. It means doing what I was already doing but with intention and without the expectation that there was someone coming to save me. To save all of us. Giving up on the old time heals everything idea and accepting that it also requires action. It means finding our way forward as a unit of 3, not 5. Starting out each day reminding myself that the fight is really over. Finding my way back to the self. One foot in front of the other. Just like I have done with every other hard thing I have ever faced in my life.
So how will I enjoy my kids coming home this Christmas? I know I need a plan. Although it’s nothing like battle it is certainly unfamiliar territory for all of us. We are out of the habit of being a family. And in our entire history we have never been a family that was not being bombarded with stress and upheaval.
Being a parent while carrying fear in your heart is like walking around with a forty pound weight you are not allowed to put down. My hope this Christmas is to be able to set down the weight and let the joy in. I have no idea if I am strong enough or if I can even do it. But I am going to try. I am also going to name it, so everyone in the family can also be released from playing a part in an old story we keep attempting to carry out. I am going to include my children in the forging ahead, recruiting them to help me figure out some new traditions and more fun. Recreating traditions just might be our new tradition as we all show up each year differently, not knowing each other as well as we used to.
So the question remains. I know I can be present for the things that require grit, but can I be present in all the good stuff in the absence of chaos and trauma? Can I put the weight down? We shall see. Christmas seems like an obvious time to try.
After falling into the rabbit hole of my own cautionary tale, I can’t help but wonder, is there a way to fight without losing ourselves to begin with? Possibly by reminding ourselves that there is no guarantee of any specific outcome. We need to be very clear with ourselves that the carrot is not real. That if we surrender ourselves entirely to any fight, we are handing over our precious time, the bulk of our lives, and pieces of ourselves to hate and conflict.
There is a balance that must be found in tirelessly waging war against what is inhumane. We must not forget to remain humane to ourselves along the way, Otherwise aren’t we just becoming the subjugators doing the enemy's bidding? There is no winning in an attempt to save others if we deconstruct ourselves in the process.
While we are busy fighting it is very hard to get any clarity on what the stakes are or what batt;es must continue to be fought. Perhaps if I had retained more of myself along the way, I could have made better choices using more strategy. Or there’s a real possibility that I would have ended up in the same spot, being forced to make the same hard decision I ended up making but much sooner, saving us all a lot of grief (and time and money) in the process. I say this not as a regret but as a reminder to avoid it from happening again as I am now standing here staring at all that is in front of us.
In the aftermath of this election, I see all the injustice ahead we will need to contend with. I am reminding myself that when I pick up my sword to fight, there is no reason to pickup that forty pound dumbbell along with it. In order to stay agile and nimble and intact, I must also practice self-care. The fight we are walking into is a marathon not a sprint. And I have no intention of losing myself in the process ever again. In the hard times ahead, I urge us all to fight but to hold enough back so that we remain intact for the end we are fighting for. We must fight on to be the change and we must live on to be the change. Both are equally important.
Stay Strong, Lift Dumbbells