Mid-Summer Emotional Meandering

My summer break is eight weeks long. I’ve been thinking of it in 2-week chunks. The first two weeks were camping and the KOA. The second two weeks were our trip to St. Louis and Chicago. These two weeks are home with kids in camps and the final two weeks are Hawaii and home getting our asses ready for a new school year.

Half of my summer break is already over. It feels like it’s happening too fast.

I didn’t mean to be away for another week. We had a great time in Chicago. I intend to write a post about it soon. We got back late Saturday night and spent Sunday recuperating. This week my son has been in camp and my daughter is swimming in the mornings. She goes to away camp on Sunday so we’re getting ready for that.

This is my first week of summer break where I’ll be sleeping in my bed every night. I am very much looking forward that. The start of the summer was a little too action packed for me. I am reveling in just hanging out at home this week.

It helps that my daughter and I are binging 3 Body Problem during the day. I’ve read the whole trilogy (in Spanish) and recently reread the first book. My daughter read the first book and most of the second (in English). We have this week to watch and so we’re going for it. It’s been a lot of fun.

I’m also floundering a bit. I can’t seem to get my bearings. The house is a mess but I can’t seem to motivate myself to clean it up. My to-do list keeps getting longer but I never manage to cross anything off it. I’m struggling and I’m not sure why. But I have some ideas.

My husband is struggling. The summer is always hard for him. I think it’s hard to see other people having breaks that he doesn’t get. And then when he is traveling, he gets a reminder of how happy he is when he’s not at work, only to go back to an avalanche of shit that piled up while he was away, making work that much more unbearable in between trips. I totally get it, and I try to support him by taking over the mornings and afternoons house and childcare duties, which feels like the least I can do when I’m not working.

The news cycle is definitely weighing on me. It’s so grim. It feels so hopeless. I’m not really sure how to think about it all without spiraling, so I just push it out of my mind. But that takes a lot of energy. It’s exhausting. And it makes me feel guilty because it’s my immense privilege that allows me to ignore it. And I shouldn’t.

Today is my birthday. I’m 44. I’m feeling… frustrated with aging. My body doesn’t work the way it used to. And it’s not even that it’s always worked perfectly or anything, but I knew how to navigate it’s specific eccentricities and now it feels like I’m never sure how it’s going to react. I think I might be fully in menopause, but it’s hard to tell with my wonky reproductive system. My lower back hurts most of the time. I put on weight so easily now and I can’t seem to get it off. My body looks and feels different. The skin of my arms has a crepe paper texture. My face is plagued with rosacea that I haven’t figured out how to control. I hate that I care so much about how I look and I want to age gracefully because who cares, really? I’m lucky to not be in a profession where my looks determine my earning power, or even affect it any way and I’m even luckier that my body can still perform the tasks I ask of it. It healed after a major injury – that should be enough! And yet I don’t know how to let go of caring. I was literally googling “how to not care about how I look” last night before I went to sleep. I don’t want to be vain.

I am disappointed that I’m writing this. My summer has been lovely. It really has been so, so fun. My kids are at an age where being with them is not only not that hard, but genuinely fun most of the time. We’ve only had a few isolated moments where I felt overwhelmed with them. There has been rest. There has been relaxation. Amazing memories have been made. I cannot complain. And yet here I am, complaining. I guess I always find a way.

This morning my husband got up early with our daughter to let my sleep in a bit on my birthday. When I fell back asleep I had a horrible dream about being late for something. All my stress dreams are about being late, and specifically, about not being able to get back where I need to be; I’m either lost, or there is some obstacle in my way, or both. I usually only have these dreams during work, but I’ve had several this summer. And lately, there has been an added element of me begging someone else to help me but getting nothing in response. I’ve done some cursory googling about “being late” dreams and not surprisingly they are related to anxiety and feelings of overwhelm. Dreaming about being lost can signal feelings of being left behind or not fitting in, or searching for meaning in one’s life. I mean it all tracks!

I’m sure this is just general decompression, compounded by perimenopause – or actual menopause?! – hormonal swings, mixed together will general ambivalence about aging. It’s taken me a lot of years to understand and accept that I can feel immensely grateful and confused and adrift. Those feelings are not mutually exclusive. No two (or more!) emotions are.

Today I’m getting a 90 minutes massage. And I’m buying myself an ube and young coconut ice cream cake from Mitchell’s. My husband is bringing home Curry Up burritos and my daughter and I are going to try to finish 3 Body Problem. Everyone in my family gave me a card when I work up. It’s going to be a really nice birthday. And I intend on enjoying it, even if my lower back hurts.