Burnout

In April, I mostly felt like shit - not to put too fine a point on it. I'd had a moderate-to-severe headache on a daily basis for about a month, which wouldn't shift despite new glasses, a new pillow, herbal teas, earlier bedtimes, yoga, and drinking enough water to float a small battleship. I was popping more painkillers than I felt comfortable with just to stay functional.

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised - I had a lot on my mind. We were applying for a mortgage, and it had taken close to five months to get to a stage where we could actually submit the application to the underwriters. I'd kind of accepted that the whole thing wasn't going to come off, and we were going to keep living in our crumbling, single-glazed beige shoebox for astronomical rent (you get used to taps and towel rails coming off in your hand and the arctic wind through the lounge, but the window that could be pushed outwards like a cat flap was a bit of a problem, and the electrician doing a safety inspection was rather startled by the plug socket that lit up orange and spat sparks). Except suddenly it was starting to look like we might actually be buying a house, and I started looking at our library of books, mountains of baby toys and antique farmhouse table in a sort of dazed panic, wondering how on earth we were ever going to move it all.

Then there was the wedding. We had postponed it twice and then eventually cancelled when our venue called us to say they were no longer sure whether they would be able to honour our booking and wouldn't find out until a few weeks before the wedding date. We decided not to take the gamble. Now that the COVID madness looked to be drawing to a close in this country, the gears were grinding into motion again as we looked at starting from scratch. Our current plan is a quick legal ceremony with immediate family (possibly with me wearing my tie-dye dungarees if we are able to get a date before I can finish having my dress tailored) and then a handfasting next May, followed by as many very casual receptions as it takes to celebrate with all our friends and family depending on how many people we are allowed to gather together at any given time. 

This time I'm trying to do things in a stress-free way - no seating plans, no chasing people who don't respond to invitations, no printed invitations in fact. No make-up artist, no fancy caterer, no favours - just a nice pub with a Pagan bent and an interesting supply of local ales, and a meaningful ceremony followed by laughter and song and merrymaking into the night.

Except I was stressing about my no-stress wedding, because a good chunk of the extended family didn't know I'm Pagan, or at least Pagan-adjacent, and at least one of those people really, really doesn't do religion or spirituality of any kind and could almost certainly be counted on to say something that will make me feel three inches tall and stupid to boot. And I couldn't just not invite this person, for a variety of reasons, so I was trying to forge ahead without worrying about it and let their issues be their own, but that was easier said than done. (It came out all right in the end!)

Lastly there's parenting. This is generally not too bad, except we've rarely had an unbroken night's sleep in two and a half years and counting (this seems to be improving lately - hooray!) and apart from the occasional weekend when Topaz babysits for an afternoon, that's also roughly the amount of time since Dai and I were alone together. My personal time, now that Dai was on call again and couldn't do regular childcare stints, consisted of an hour a week when a family friend took the Spud to the park and I desperately tried to make the house less gross. Lately I'd managed to use that time to do yoga and meditation instead, which helps somewhat - the house can take its chances - but overall I think I was just... burning out.

My mind was full of questions and worries - about the environment, my family, our finances, some downright stupid but extraordinarily persistent ones about what to buy or to not buy. It was also close to the birthday of a dear friend who had taken her own life, and I found myself sitting awake at 2am thinking about how she always wore blue or turquoise or teal, or wondering whether it would have changed anything if I'd phoned on the Sunday instead of putting it off till Monday... So yeah, I hadn't been sleeping well.

In May we had a ten-day holiday booked. It would have been our honeymoon, but since we hadn't managed to get married yet I was calling it the Unhoneymoon. I decided to use that time as a kind of retreat - I'd figure out how to set up an autoreply on my personal emails, put my phone on aeroplane mode and ACTUALLY DISCONNECT and have a rest. No mortgage brokers. No solicitors. No estate agents. 

I was going to be present. I was going to play with my kid instead of trying to clean house around him. I was going to eat well and keep drinking lots of water. I'd even pack my yoga mat. I was going to go to sleep on time and not stay up late reading blogs and Kindle samples and browsing eBay for those beautiful rainbow skirts I never should have got rid of (I'd noticed my technology use shooting up again the last couple of months). I was going to retreat, reset, and get rid of this damned headache.

(The other solution I found was writing down all the weird niggles and worries that tumble round my head at night. It was like sweeping my brain clean! And that's how this post was born.)

A Head Full of Dragons

So last night I had a migraine. I guess I must have been slightly delirious, because I genuinely came to believe, at some point around three in the morning, that there were two dragons in my head, and they were fighting. (One was red, by the way, and one was green - I'm not sure if that matters.) I was quite resigned to the fact that I would have to ask my fiance to take an axe to my skull to let the dragons out. In fact I was hoping he'd just wake up and get on with it.

By four am I thought he'd done it, and I can vividly remember putting my hands to my head to feel around the split in my skull. It was a bizarre night. 

In the name of Bad Art, I wrote this poem (if you can call it that) today. Since I wrote my last post, I've really been trying to be more creative - I painted a little bee and butterfly secretly on walls around the house for my son to find, and one of my good friends who lives far away had the genius idea of setting up an online D&D group. We had our first Zoom call today - I think it's going to be great.

So this poem(thing). I've been reading Amanda Palmer's The Art of Asking, and apart from the fact I'm now in love with Amanda Palmer (always liked her music but found her a bit narcissistic. I've changed my mind. She's warm and lovely and wild and wise), I've felt inspired to try to be a bit more open with the things I write and think and do and make (which is also in keeping with my year of authenticity). Please bear in mind it's been some years since I wrote poetry, and I wasn't ever a very talented poet in the first place. However this is the realest thing I've written in a long time, I sort of liked it, and I wanted you to see it (me?).

I'm going to feel very embarrassed after I post this.

I'm in the kitchen in the dark

And there are dragons in my head

And I can't stop them fighting

And it's crowded in my bed

And I can't hear above the noise

And the pills I took don't work

And the Wi-Fi won't connect

(At least not the way I'd hoped.)

And the planet's catching fire

While we're busy on the 'Gram

And I can spin a yarn

But I've never built a brand

And the dragons in my head

Are still awake at four am

And yes I saved some time

But I couldn't save a friend

And I can't save my baby

If the sea levels keep rising

And it's someone else's problem

(But we're living on an island.)