If She Falls, She Won't Die

Anxiety is a slippery slope.  It’s not about the thing you fear, but the anticipation of the thing.  It’s the what if’s, the mights, the maybes.  It’s never what is.  If you let anxiety get the best of you, it can be paralyzing.  But, in truth, what is, is rarely as bad as what you feared it might be.  That’s why people who push through the anxiety invariably find out that they can.  That they did.  And, in the end, it all turned out okay.

I am an anxious mother.  Or rather, a mother who is anxious.  With this anxiety comes the gift of prescience.  I can see all possible catastrophes before they befall my daughter.  Is she about to do a forward flip on the chair and a half?  I see that she’s going to brain herself on the coffee table and I quickly step in between her and its sharp edges.  Is she going to reach for the tray full of onion rings I just pulled out of the oven? I swoop down and snatch the tray away with pot holders before she singes her tender fingers.  Is she going to dance right into that car backing up?  I yank her away from, if not certain death, two broken legs.

Is this hovering or saving my impulsive kid from a trip to the emergency room?  Am I standing in the way of her learning important lessons from life or am I doing my job?  Will she become a rebellious thrill-seeking risk-taker, or will she one day thank me?  I’d like to think that my interventions are well thought-out choices.  That I act with a plan in mind, because I have made larger decisions about how protective I want to be.  But I don’t.  I act on instinct.

Which isn’t to say that I never let her fail, fall down and get dirty.  There has been more than one occasion where she has fallen out of her chair because she’s hanging off the edge or leaning on the back.  In those moments I have stood above her and said unsympathetically, “You see, Sophie?  This is what happens if you don’t sit in your seat an eat.”  And though I am still tempted to brush her teeth each night when she gives them a cursory once-over, instead I warn of the risk of cavities.

I can mitigate disaster, but I know bad stuff is going to happen.  It’s a little bit like belaying her down a mountain.  Gradually giving her more and more rope as she slides away from me.  Each time I let out the rope, I feel my anxiety rise.  But as she successfully makes it another couple of feet, I begin to relax.

This post was inspired by the novel If I Fall, If I Die by Michael Christie, about a boy who's never left the house, due to his mother's agoraphobia, but ventures Outside in order to solve a mystery. Join From Left to Write on January 22nd as we discuss If I Fall, If I Die. As a member, I received a copy of the book for review purposes.

Coming Clean

Oh caffeine. Light of my life. Source of my strength.

How I despise you.

We are through, you and me. I know, in moments of weakness you will tempt me, taking all sorts of seductive forms. Earl Gray. Dark chocolate. La Columbe. You are omnipresent. In my freezer, in the hand of my dinner companion, on every street corner. I cannot escape you.

I have to change so much inside me me, so much around me, to inhabit this new caffeine free self. I have to recognize the cues, the triggers, resist and avoid. I have to substitute old, faithful and comforting behaviors with new, dissatisfying, untrustworthy ones.

I have to learn how to be without you.

I can. I can. And I will.

I hadn’t even realized I was addicted. I do not use that word lightly. My addiction was a serious thing. But like most addicts, I did not think I had a problem.

It is only clear in retrospect:

When taking a drive with my father, my heart fluttered in my chest. I had to cough to resettle it. And then it happened again. I coughed. And again. Cough.

“Something’s weird with my heart.” I told my dad. He looked alarmed. But I had asked a doctor about it, who said it was palpitations. Completely normal. Nothing to worry about. No link to disease. I assured him of this.

Even though, deep down I felt there was nothing normal about having a butterfly where your heart should be.

I was irritable. Impatient. I snapped at everyone I loved. Misinterpreted too much of what they said. Treated bids for connection as intrusions and demands.

And then there was the erosion of sleep. My bedtime crept back later and later. I would lie in bed, wide awake, feeling panicked for a million no good reasons. Fretting over everything that I had to do the next day. The thought of waking filled me with dread. I could forestall the morning by keeping my eyes open. On some nights, I simply felt as though I had forgotten how to fall asleep.

Maybe I am depressed again, I wondered.

I took medicine to remind my body how to turn off. And the next day, would wake up groggy. Because as far as I could push my bedtime, my wake time was immutable. Held in place by the forces of work and school and an irrepressible four-year-old, who sat in bed with a stack of books waiting for her clock to turn from blue to yellow, the signal that she was finally allowed to wake me and end the interminability of her morning alone.

The dread would hit me full force, a blow to my chest, as soon as I wiped the blear from my eyes. It sucked my breath out of me. How was I going to make it through another day feeling this way, lungs filled with lead.

Coffee was the answer. The aroma alone revived me, gave me as sense of possibility.

How imperceptible the fall had been. It started with one cup. Then a larger mug that I was able to justify as still one cup (two). Then I would refill the larger mug twice. Only two cups (four). Then I started brewing more. I could drink the leftovers iced the next day, I rationalized. But pretty soon there were ten cups in the pot in the morning and none left at night. I drank throughout the morning (six). I needed a cup at lunch to keep me going (eight), one at three to pick me up (ten).

I had a rule never to drink past four, so I never linked my caffeine intake with my inability to sleep.

Then the inevitable happened. My immune system ground to a halt. Went on strike. No sleep, no work. I got sick. Everything was infected--my sinuses, my ears, my eyes. And, as is generally the case when I am sick or pregnant, I suddenly was repulsed by coffee.

I left her that morning. I had no plans to stay away, but something miraculous happened. The sense of dread evaporated. Nothing had changed in my life, but my anxiety, which had felt so paralyzing just days before, had suddenly vanished. The change was dramatic. Remarkable. I felt like the person I wanted to be.

And I started sleeping again.

I must have gone through withdrawal, but I was already so miserable, a crushing headache was just another symptom to endure.

Coincidentally, I was working on a chapter about consciousness at the time and came across some information about the evils of excessive caffeine consumption. It was the nail in my coffee-filled coffin: Physical dependence on caffeine begins with regular use of about 350 mg (about 3.5 cups per day). About 20% of the US adult population are in this club. Withdrawal effects at this level of usage include severe headaches, tiredness and irritably.

But there is addicted and really addicted.

Additional adverse effects of caffeine use can occur when use exceeds 600 mg per day (about 3% of the US adult population). At this point, one may experience chronic sleep problems, enduring anxiety and depression and irregular heart beat.

Oh. That’s was me. I was doing this to myself.

I’ve been 30 days clean. Life with Melissa is a lot less bitter.

Extreme Mothering

I really wish I had thought of this title on my own, but I didn’t. Nan (my friend and hero, raising twin boys and now pregnant with her third) called me excitedly one evening, “Turn on 20/20—they’re doing Extreme Mothering!”

What images does that conjure up for you? I was expecting to see raw footage of me in the bathtub, teaching my 15-month-old baby the letters in her name…or surreptitiously nursing her in the isles of Stride Rite…or “wearing” her, as the attachment parenting folks like to say, on a two-mile round-trip walk into town.

Yes, guilty as charged, I am an extreme mother.

My problem is, I still don’t know where the lines of demarcation exists between questionable parenting, good-enough parenting, awesome parenting and extreme parenting. I think, on any given day, depending on what you’re observing (Holding her down and prying her mouth open to brush her teeth—questionable or good enough? Fixing her a perfectly-balanced, low-sugar, chemical-free homemade meal—awesome or extreme?), I probably fall at different points on the continuum; the object being to land somewhere in the middle, 90% of the time. But then there is this punishing little voice. It's the same little voice that used to pop into my head when I taught (and was staying until 6 every evening, preparing lessons), the same when I was caring for my ailing cat (and running home to give him shots of insulin twice/day). The one that says:

You’re not doing enough.

Like, is emptying the dishwasher and letting Sophia putter around in the kitchen drawers negligent or necessary? How much time should I expect her to play on her own…and when am I illegitimately using these free moments to check my friends’ status updates on Facebook? How much should I be labeling everything we see, and when is it okay to leave her alone to think her baby thoughts, or observe her surroundings, or practice our alien language as it trips off her tongue in delicious neologisms (e.g. g –g-gorkley)?

Yes, guilty as charged, I am obsessing again.

But I go to extremes because I don’t know what’s sufficient. What should be my benchmark? A day without bloodshed? Or one that ends with an invented lullaby, Sophia’s small arms thrown around my neck, a quick kiss, and her reverent whispers of “mamadadamamadada” as I lay her in her crib? A day where I know I spent a solid hour pretending to eat plastic cake and fabric toast or one where I spent five minutes eating said meal before rushing out the door to a meeting? And how do I measure how I’m doing? In smiles or tantrums?

I envy my husband’s comfort with his parenting—the deep satisfaction he derives from giving what he can, not fretting over what he can’t. Kevin says that this is because he has confidence in what I’m doing as a mother…I relieve him of this anxiety. I am grateful for his faith in me. It is reassuring. Yet, I wonder: What will it take before I begin to trust my instincts they way he trusts my instincts?