What’s Next?

My whole adult life I been meticulously planning. Planning for what, you ask?

Everything.

I have painstakingly planned and anxiously waited for event after event, always knowing I was 2 steps ahead of myself.

I’ve always known what projects at work I was striving for, how I needed to get them done, what was next. I’ve pinned our finances down to the dollar, always knowing exactly what percentage of our income was being saved. I’ve broke our savings into percentages to account for our miscellaneous financial goals. I’ve planned and replanned our future vacations, our house remodel, and even what our Christmas budget would be 6 months in advance.

I methodically planned out my school schedule throughout college, intertwining it down to the minute with my work and volunteering schedules. At one point during college, I was working 3 jobs including teaching a class and held a coordinator position for an on-campus non-profit. I wasn’t doing it because I was hurting for cash. I spread myself thin because I hated doing nothing.

After I graduated college, I got engaged, was planning a wedding, interning full time, and decided I wanted to get my Masters. Not just an MBA, or Masters of Accountancy which would have sufficed for my career goals, no. I wanted to go full super nerd. I wanted to get my Master’s in Taxation.

In hindsight, I should have ended my internship and pursued this degree before accepting a fulltime position, but what would have been the fun in that?

The last 4 years, as I welcomed substantial life changes like starting a big girl job, moving to a new city by myself, getting married, buying a home, undergoing a major dental reconstruction surgery, getting pregnant and becoming a mother, as well as overcoming the challenges I have faced in postpartum, I have done so while also being a grad student. I only allowed myself 3 months off school after having Ridge before I insisted on getting back to class. A decision that, by all accounts, was a huge mistake. The workload compounded with other stressors to eventually trigger what I now know as stress-induced psychosis symptoms.

Last week, I took my very last final. And yesterday I found out I passed my graduate exam, and I have completed my master’s program.

I am proud of myself.

Rarely do I get to say that and believe it, but this time it’s true. I am so proud. I did this, I worked so hard for this.

For the first time in my adult life, I don’t have a “what’s next” career goal.

I’m done with school. I don’t feel like my position is stagnant, and still have so much learning and challenge in my current role. I am happy with my job.

You’ll be shocked to hear this, as I am shocked to admit it, but I think it’s time to stop spreading myself so thin. Instead of pouring energy into new ventures/projects, what if I poured back into myself?

I’ve spent the last year and a half of motherhood depriving myself of attention, and now that the distraction is gone, what if I attended to myself the way I should have been all along? What if the answer to “whats next?” is ME. I am next.

As a parent, it is 100x easier to do something for your child than it is to do for yourself. As a spouse, its only 50x easier to do something for your significant other than it is to do for yourself. (Sorry Reese, but you know it’s true)

Ridge, and Reese, deserve the absolute best version of me. I want them to have a mom/wife that’s loving, fun, supportive, emotionally stable, and physically able.

Right now, I am those things. But I am not the best I could be at those things.  

Action item number 1 - Get away and force a happy celebration.

I’ve worked my butt off for the past 4 years, I deserve to start this new era with a bang. So this weekend, I’m leaving. I’m driving 45 minutes away, by myself, and just RELAXING. No cleaning, no cooking, no laundry, no work, nothing. I’m going to do what I want to do, for 48 hours.

Whether that involves going to target or eating a burrito in bed and watching teen romcoms, well, that’s none of your business.

I am working on true self-care. Self-care that expands further and deeper than weekly sessions with my therapist or occasional face masks. This self-care is going to be for me, for truly bettering myself, so that I know that I am doing everything in my power to give Ridge, and Reese, the version of me I want them to know. The version of me that I want to know.

Recycling this picture from my college graduation because its fitting

Manifest Psychosis

I’ve been really into the show Manifest

For those who don’t watch it, here is my cliff notes recap with some spoilers so that you sorta understand the rest of this –

“Flight 828 departs from Jamaica in April of 2013, during the routine flight, the plane withstands intense turbulence, but ultimately perseveres through it safely. Upon landing in New York the plane and its occupants are told that 5 and a half years have passed, it is now November 2018, and they have all been presumed dead. The show follows the passengers of 828 and the different ways this anomaly has affected their lives. While they all cope differently, they all now have one thing in common – whatever happened on that plane has connected them forever in a way they can not control. The passengers start having vivid hallucinations, what they refer to as “callings”. The Callings sometimes help them to solve crimes, seek out injustices, connect them to each other or their often-painful pasts. Each Calling is a puzzle of what exactly they must do in order for the hallucination to stop; if they don’t solve them, the calling intensifies, sometimes physically manifesting in/around the passenger(s). “

It’s a good show if you are looking for something to binge.

Anyway, here’s where I come in…

I started watching it while my husband and son were gone for a weekend, and as soon as they got home I started it over because I wanted to watch it with my husband. During episode 1, my husband looked over and jokingly said, “do you just like this because of your psychosis?”. We laughed at what my “callings” really meant.

The first time I heard someone counting down from 7, I propped up in my bed, scanning both the door and windows, waiting for someone to enter. I remember talking to my therapist and her asking “does that number mean anything to you?”… Well, sorta?? It was my husbands baseball number 8 years before I met him, am I supposed to play baseball with Reese? Is that a reach?

I once had a hallucination of my dad coming into my bedroom and releasing dozens of balloons, then abruptly turning away, and shutting the door behind him. I smelled the balloons, that powdery latex smell. I could hear the squeak of the balloons rubbing past each other as they ascended to crowd around the ceiling fan. I got up to go to the bathroom, nearly unphased at the celebration thrust upon me, and when I came back into the bedroom, they were gone. I asked if my dad had been in my room at all, he hadn’t. So what does this one mean? Did I miss someone’s birthday party? Was I supposed to plan a party?

What about the time I saw my living room on fire? It was hot, it crackled, the whole room engulfed in a storm of flames… Did that mean that my décor was tacky and I needed to update the frames on the walls?

It’s funny to joke about, but in all reality, when we first discovered my psychosis, we DID (and I guess, still do..) try to make sense of them. Tried to figure out what they “meant”. I think that’s human nature, to find answers. I think the real sickness would be experiencing psychosis and thinking nothing of it.

Oddly enough, it is so easy to have a “small” hallucination, ground myself out of it, then move on with my day and try to forget it happened. I try to stop myself from doing that - it isn’t healthy or helpful to normalize any of it. I try to always tell Whitney (my bada$$ therapist) or Reese about anything I see or hear, and in turn they ask me grounding questions or connection questions. i.e.) How did the dog react? Did anything seem out of place? How did the voice sound? How did the voice make you feel? What has stressed you out lately? Etc.

While writing this, I tried to think of any one “calling” I was able to effectively connect to a life event and I could not think of one. Sure, sometimes they happened more frequently around times I was stressed, but my stressors were never IN the hallucination.  

Maybe I do relate more to Manifest because their psychosis is a superpower, there is something therapeutic about someone using the thing that drained you as their weapon of choice. Even if its unrealistic, in its own way, it made me feel normal.

Also, telling people you have had a “calling” is WAY more normal sounding than saying “I’m hallucinating” so, I am hanging on to that verbiage.  

All that to say, if I have learned anything in this experience the last year and a half its this -

Its hard, and it sucks, but YOU are not the only one its happening to.

I have found SO much grace from moms, both friends and strangers, who tell me about their struggles. How they related to some part of my story. How they felt less alone, or were able to finally breakthrough to their own truths.

On the days when I feel like I am the crazy one, and crazier for publicizing it, I am so humbly reminded that my true calling is to keep telling my story for all those mommas who feel alone.

“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” Romans 8:28.