New Years Eve: Really? Why?

I am sobbing and I can't pinpoint the reason. I can think of ten reasons why I am crying, not just one.

This is the first major holiday (outside of picnic holidays like Labor Day) with both kids gone. Last New Year's Eve, Jack worked and I was with the kids. The Boy went out with friends and Claire-Adele was with her old boyfriend still. My neighbors invited me to their backyard bonfire, which was fun.

New Year's Eve invites us to look backwards into the last year and forward into the next. So much has happened in this year. So much. The Boy didn't go to school for the first five months and just laid in bed. We shipped him off to Wilderness therapy, and then boarding school. Jack and I were separated during this exceptionally challenging chapter of parenting. I feel like the Sadness character in Inside Out. I just need to let it out and feel bad so I can feel better. I called my dad and texted my friend Melissa on the east coast.

See? It is working. I feel better already.

2019: Highlights and Holidays

In my last post, I said that 2019 was the worst year of the decade. I still stand by that, but there were some good sides to it, or "growth opportunities" as they might say in the therapy books. Here is a short list of what I am grateful for in 2019:

New friends! 
The Girls Scouts have a little song:

Make new friends

Keep the old

One is silver

And the other is gold

I have been very fortunate to have made new friends through this adventure in the Boy going to Wilderness therapy and boarding school. I have three "Sister Mamas" who had sons in the same Wilderness program as the Boy. I am meeting new people through my health club, walking the dog downtown and Al-Anon.

Old friends!
Some of my old friends became even better friends. The best surprise was reconnecting with one of my college sorority sisters through a Facebook group for my son's Wilderness therapy program. Both our boys were in the same Wilderness program a few months apart.

Jigsaw Puzzles & My Dad
I got my Dad a Liberty puzzle for Father's Day, and now he is addicted to them like crack/cocaine, but of course wooden puzzles are not as bad for you as crack/cocaine. My dad used to buy remote control airplanes for a hobby. Now he buys these awesome puzzles instead. The best part--I can do them when I visit him in Ohio. Win-win.

Durango, Kalispell and Whitefish
My idea of a vacation is going into the wild (like Mt. Rainier) or hitting a big city: New York, London, Paris, Chicago. Without Wilderness therapy and boarding school, I would have had no reason to visit small towns like Kalispell or Whitefish, Montana, or Durango, Colorado. Now I have been to all three of these places in flyover country, and they are lovely. I am going to have to start digging into cool small towns to visit.

Our week in Whitefish over Christmas was cold, dark and quiet. After all I have been through this year, I am learning to appreciate the beauty in things that I might otherwise have considered unappealing. When I came back to the city after being in almost silent Montana, I noticed the constant level of low grade racket in my environment. Ditto light pollution. Cold weather meant a white Christmas and six inches of fresh powder on our first day skiing.

View on Christmas Eve from the back of the townhouse we rented.

The Boy
I saw him in Montana last week, and he is doing so much better. So, so, sooooo much better. While I miss him terribly, my gratitude for his better mental health exceeds any amount that I miss him. He was in such an emotionally fragile spot earlier this year, I don't think he would have survived without this level of a major intervention.

Claire-Adele
She is a rock star. She has a government internship this winter and I am giving (lending?) her the briefcase I bought when I ran for School Board. I am not using it. While I love this bag, it is way too formal for me to bring to work. This bag deserves to be out and about instead of sitting in my closet. May it serve her well.

Baking
Seeing the kids meant I got to bake. Hello again, muffins and scones!

Poem

Reading Ali Wong

The only sound I can hear

Is my own laughter

2019: Yoda gift from Ellen

Thank god 2019 is almost over. This has been possibly the worst year of my life. Okay, the worst year of the decade. I had a miserable year in each of the 1990's and 2000's. I am so looking forward to putting this motherfucker to bed and starting over.

Instead of complaining about how bad this year was, I am going to write about some good stuff.

This year, my friend Ellen watched Fox several times while I was out of town visiting the Boy during his treatment. Ellen preceded me with a kid in treatment and invited me to join her at an Al-Anon meeting. She has also listened to me bitch incessantly about my personal life.

Previously when she has watched Fox, I have thanked her by taking her out to dinner and then a show. Once, we went out for sushi and afterwards I introduced to her Ali Wong, star of the Netflix comedy special, Baby Cobra, which is genius.

For my birthday, Ellen got me a gift certificate to Lush. She was cleaning her house, and gave me a $100 gift card to Magus Books, which seems like the place Harry Potter would buy his books if he went to UW. There, I bought a used copy of Audubon's Birds of America, which contains hundreds of drawings of birds and weighs about fifteen pounds. It is awesome. I got her teacups for her birthday and Mother's Day.

In short, Ellen is a rock star and I am kind of lame.

When I came back to my condo after visiting the Boy, she had left a Christmas present for me which is crazy because she was watching my dog and I should be getting her a gift. At first, I thought it might have been a great self-help book, maybe one that we had previously discussed. She invited me to see Eckhart Tolle, so I thought maybe she got me The Power of Now.

Nope. Ellen is Yoda and she got me exactly what I needed.

I needed something that would make me laugh. I opened the gift at 8:00 last night, and I was two-thirds of the way done by 7:00 a.m. I had to stop so I could save some for later.

Holidays

Tonight
I am falling asleep
To the sound
Of my children’s
Laughter.

Introspection Overload

I overdid it this weekend on the introspection. Friday night, I went out to dinner with an Al-Anon friend and then I went to a meeting. Saturday morning, I met with another Al-Anon friend I just met. We talked for five hours and it was soooo nice. Then I had a piano lesson and we talked about my person life and then I had a haircut with my hairdresser-therapist-friend. Sunday morning, I went to another Al-Anon meeting. I had a gift card to a used book store and I bought a giant and amazing copy of an Audubon bird book.

By time I got to the car wash Sunday morning at 11:00, I was crying. What the heck?

It was too much introspection at once, maybe. Each by itself was good. Together, it was like a Memorial Day picnic, followed by a Fourth of July BBQ, with Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner, followed by New Year's Eve cocktails. Oy. I feel for the Boy having to gaze at his navel as much as he does. No wonder Wilderness therapy works--they distract the kids with trying to survive in the woods while navel gazing.

At the Sunday morning Al-Anon, the topic on the table was what have you done this past year?

A year ago last December was the beginning of the end. I went to Texas for work a year ago this week. The Boy had a meltdown while I was out of town, and there was nothing I could do about it. Jack was on his own and I felt helpless reading the angry text messages from the Boy. When I came home, the Boy broke his foot in a soccer game on December 16. After that, he stopped going to school.

Before December 2018, Jack and I had bought the condo. Claire-Adele had gone to college. The Boy was struggling but not sinking. After December 2018, the world fell apart.

This morning, I picked up Kindred by Octavia Butler and started reading where I left off a few months ago. It is a fascinating and beautifully written book about an African-American woman in the 1970's who gets transported back in time to the antebellum south where she is mistaken for a slave. My life doesn't suck as bad as hers. If she can survive, so can I.

I remember the saying, pain in inevitable. Suffering is optional. There was lots of pain points this past year, but there was also some good things. I met a sha(wo)man once who said she prays for all that is true, beautiful and good. I realized that I have the truest and kindest friends*--new and old--anywhere in the world who have helped me through this miserable time.

* This includes my dad.

#selfcare

I just got back from the gym where I met with a personal trainer. We focused on strength training and I felt sooo good. I got out my Mood Meter app on my phone for the first time in years and rated myself somewhere between happy and hopeful. Maybe strength building cures the blues and anxiety. Maybe I am carrying over the buzz from seeing "A Very Die Hard Christmas" last night with my friend Cara. Maybe it was the great phone call with the Boy today. I wouldn't say he was euphoric--that is not the goal. Instead, he was introspective and reflective. He was saying he has been bored lately. Instead of it being a complaint, it was more of an observation, like "That's interesting. Why is that and what am I going to do about it?"

When the Boy was in Wilderness Therapy, the staff at his program tried to get the parents to focus on self care. This was hard for me. I was used to taking care of other people and not so much myself. This self-abnegation came in different forms, from not spending much money on myself to putting my family's needs first. If there was a play for me to see or take care of the kids while Jack worked, then I would take care of the kids. Part of this is just being a parent. I remember when I knew I was ready to be a parent -- when I had more to give than I needed to take. Unfortunately, I interpreted that to mean give almost everything to others and save little for myself.

Yeah, I needed some balance.

I am trying to take advantage of my time as an early and unexpected empty-nester to focus on taking care of myself. I was talking to Cara about my year of physical therapy after I tore my ACL. At the end of 2015, I had just lost a brutal school board election and I had no job. My dad once told me one of the secrets to happiness is to have something to look forward to, whether a vacation or dinner with friends. After the election, I didn't have much to look forward to, not necessarily in a bad way. I was going to have to regroup and figure out a new plan. Then, I got hurt and couldn't walk properly for about seven months. I was never in pain, but physical therapy was uncomfortable. Why wasn't I completely depressed? How did I get out of bed in the morning? Theoretically, I should have been miserable, but I wasn't. Why?

Was it the daily exercise? Was it the delightful company of my physical therapist, Evan? Was it because I was almost writing every day? Was it because I was listening to music every day, reading lots of book? Watching cool stuff on Netflix?

Recently, I had a realization: maybe I wasn't depressed because that was the Year of Self Care. My goal, focus and purpose was clear: I had to heal and recover. I had no choice. Not walking was not an option.

It wasn't all rosy, but there were some upsides. I gained about twenty pounds, but I still was in decent shape. My left knee was injured but in the process of physical therapy, my tetchy right knee got better, too.

My family kicked in and helped around the house more. I wasn't the only one doing laundry, cooking or cleaning. For several months, I couldn't empty the dishwasher. Was I happy because I got out of housework? Or was in because they all had to chip in and take care of me for a change?

I am looking back at my ACL recovery year with the lens of self-care, and hoping to apply it to this year, too. The Boy is gone. He reminds us of the challenges of being in a therapeutic environment. Part of his being gone isn't just that he needs to be in a place to heal, but the rest of the family needs to heal, too. Mental illness is a family system issue, just like alcoholism or workaholism. Everyone plays a part in the dynamic, and we all need to adjust if we are going to get better.