This week, my six year old saved me.

These past weeks have been tough for me, as I’m sure they’ve been for many of you reading. I’m an extrovert, a social butterfly, I love people, I love their energy and I feed off it like an upbeat energy vampire. Don’t worry, though, my therapist described me as a radiator, I take a little drink of people’s energy, mix it with my own and I deflect it back out into the world.

The problem with this, however, and it’s something I just noticed this week after my six year old saved me, is that when everyone’s energy is low, and negative, and laced with fear and sadness, my little bucket of people’s upbeat energy gets filled with sadness and misery.

This is where the danger lies, especially when you don’t notice it at first, until you’re in such a dark place without any hope and no idea of how you even got there in the first place.

Let’s back up.

Adding context – and not trying to sound like a broken record – but in November 2019 we landed back in N.I against our will, it was a forced repatriation as a result of Col being made redundant and while on one hand it was a blessing to still have our apartment here, on the other, it’s been a claustrophobic, daily reminder of everything we lost and now don’t have. While I’m immensely grateful to have a roof over my head, heat, hot water, food on the table, electricity, WiFi and all the other first world comforts I’m surrounded by daily, I have nevermore wished to be in one of our previous homes. A home with more than one toilet, a home with a separate living area from the kitchen, a home with home office space, a home with a yard.

This place has none of those things. The three of us are essentially living on top of each other. Col’s home office takes up half of our dining table which is basically an extension of the kitchen. My two-foot of work-workspace is in my bedroom next to the bed. We queue for the bathroom and we don’t have any outside space, hell, we barely have any inside space. It’s frustrating. It’s claustrophobic, it’s suffocating and overwhelming and if one more person tells me to just appreciate what I have, I’m going to actually scream at them. I do. That doesn’t mean I don’t get to mourn for what I lost, or be frustrated and feel like shit about where I am right now.

Last week, I got dark. I cried a lot, I didn’t wash for days and I just didn’t want to be here anymore. Lewis had a bad day, I had a bad day and Colin told people he was used to working from home so he was fine.

But I wasn’t ‘fine’.

I’m still not ‘fine’.

I’m crisis-schooling my child at home like SO many others across the planet – granted I’m doing so with some fantastic lesson planning and coaching from his teacher, Mrs. B – and I’m doing a decent enough job of it, but the entire dynamic of my relationship with my child has changed and I’m exhausted. I’m suddenly cooking 2-3 meals a day, every day, I’m cleaning every day, multiple times a freakin’ day and trying not to let this shoebox where even the smallest pile of clutter is compounded, dissolve into complete chaos. I’m doing Covid-laundry, which, for a trio of people who stay home all day and don’t do much, is a lot of freakin’ laundry, I can tell you that for nothin’ and I’m simultaneously trying to work and stay upbeat and positive with my social media – which has, I guess expectedly resulted in people assuming I’m fine and doing great.

I can assure y’all, I’m not.

I’m not writing, I’m not even reading – this should have been my first indication that I’m not ok, but I ignored it. I put it down to the fact that I’m slammed doing all the other stuff in the world and just didn’t have time when in fact, I don’t have the mental bandwidth I need to do the things I love most.

Actually, what should have been my first sign? My feet. My adrenal fatigue has kicked up to a constant level of elephant feet. I’m retaining water and my feet as puffy AF. It’s one symptom, but it’s often the most easily noticeable – ’cause your shoes don’t fit. And I put that down to not going out as much so not noticing that my shoes got tight, except I had noticed my swollen feet, I’d just ignored it. Just as I’d ignored my two-week-late due to stress period that finally came and wreaked havoc on my hormones, emotions and not least of all, my abdomen. Just as I’d ignored the fact I wasn’t writing, or reading…

Covid-19 has broken me. It’s broken my routine. It’s broken my boundaries. It’s broken my comfort zone. It’s broken my ‘normal’. It’s broken my solace and Lewis helped me realize that it’s taken away almost all of the things I love most. And I LET it.

And you know what? It’s broken you, too – and that’s ok to admit out loud.

It’s actually probably something you need to stop for a minute and take stock of, acknowledge and process so it doesn’t knock you on your ass like it did to me.

So I’m standing in the kitchen space last week and I’m unstacking the dishwasher for what feels like the eleventy millionth time in the space of an hour and Lewis turns to me, unprompted, and says, ‘Mama, why have you stopped singing?’

I cock my head, wondering if I’ve really heard what I think I heard from Mr. Observant and I ask him to repeat himself. He does. I heard him right and after a moment of thinking on it (’cause I hadn’t really noticed I was doing it so obviously) I try to explain that with daddy working from home and everyone on top of each other I’ve not been listening to my own music as much. I’ve been considerate because ultimately daddy hates my music, he’s working in the communal space, we’re all on top of each other and I’ve been trying to be polite.

The six year old counters with, ‘Well daddy still listens to his music, and you don’t like his music.’

Touché little man, it’s true, and I don’t really have an answer for that other than repeating the fact that I’m endeavouring to make life easier for everyone in the house because the walls are thin, the space is small and even the lowest of music/singing can be heard throughout and I crashed into the realization that this somehow subconsciously turned into me taking a hit for the team and not doing something I love, something that I’ve done every day for almost as long as I’ve been alive. I’ve not been singing at the top of my voice when I shower, or do laundry, or cook in the kitchen, or drive, or when I’m in the grocery store – whereas BC (Before Covid) I most certainly did. If you know me IRL and haven’t yet heard my randomly singing, then I’d say that’s unusual. I’ve even had strangers join in with me in the grocery store (not in Larne, they don’t do that here, they just stare). BC, Col was in work, with a lengthy commute, I blasted my music all day every day and after the first few days of Covid-adjustment I guess I hadn’t given it a second thought that it’s been absent. It’s just the new norm.

But the six year old had given it a second thought.

He turns to me and says, ‘Well I miss your singing mama.’

Tears fill my eyes as he speaks directly to my heart and I ask, ‘you do?’

He says ‘of course I do mama, I love your singing, you’re really good at it and I miss it.’

After the surprise of the statement wore off, I realized that I missed it, too. It occurred to me that to him, it was as much a part of his daily routine as brushing his teeth and I’d unknowingly removed it from him. That made me pause.

This was the same day Liz and Heather both messaged me, repeatedly, they were concerned and worried about my wellbeing and Liz especially, was the very definition of a puppy at your heels. She messaged regularly and our usually playful bant was replaced by sombre concern – when she gets like this, I know something has shifted.

Heather had suggested I take a walk a few times since this lockdown happened, but I hate walking, so I politely told her no thanks, every time. This time, however, I was at breaking point. I stuck my shoes on (forgetting that I was wearing jeans and it’s not smart to go walking in jeans), grabbed my headphones and off I went – much to the even greater concern of my friends.

To be honest, I’d partly been wary about seeing other people outside, I’d read horror stories of peopley interactions in public since this Covid thing but every single person I met as I walked the Larne promenade smiled and said hi, whilst largely adhering to social distancing advice which also made me happy.

And so I stood, on the Larne promenade with the breeze on my not-washed-in-days hair, singing ‘my’ music obnoxiously loudly in the direction of Scotland and let my six year old’s words wash over my Covid-broken heart. What else had I been sticking on the back burner because of this pandemic? What else had I been shelving that made my soul happy? And just how had I gotten to the point of choosing to exercise (I think Liz nearly drove to Larne for an intervention at this revelation, to be honest) in a desperate bid to sort myself out? And, more importantly, how the hell was I going to find my way back?

For as long as I can remember, my family have branded me as ‘selfish’, it’s always been a horrible, dirty term of offense that’s been lobbed at me periodically throughout the years. It’s been engrained in me, Don’t be selfish! Is that selfish? Will that be seen as selfish? Is this going to get me into shit? That is until I met my therapist Ashleigh who taught me that being selfish isn’t only OK, but it’s necessary, and standing singing and crying at Scotland, I realized that it’s been a while since I’ve been in anyway selfish. The old habits of selfish = bad have crept back in and I’ve let myself fall by the way side. I’ve been reading people’s social media, sending messages of support and encouragement, I’ve been buoying people’s spirits and filling my little energy bucket with negativity and sadness and fear without even realizing it and it had overflowed, I’ve been trying to do everything and be everything to as many people as I could and it’s just not working, because my little bucket isn’t getting much positive from people and I’m feeling their hurt way too deeply.

Standing there, I decided that it was going to have to be different for a little while, a day, two, maybe a week, maybe even more until I found myself again and felt ok with being so surrounded by everyone not being ok at the same time – cause for an empath, that is basically hell. And I need to find a way with being ok with this shift of axis.

I realized that I’ve not been selfless in the ways that I love. I’ve been putting Col’s job first, before my own because he makes substantially more money and in my head it’s far more important – he’s got meetings and conference calls and clients and I can do mine at any time, right? Except you kinda need time, and by the time I get any time to work, it’s after Lewis is in bed and I’m knackered. I’ve been feeling guilty about sending Lewis to his room to play for an hour just so I can shower my head and do something other than teach him or hang out with him – which I love, but I need my space, too and I can’t work then cause my head is full of phonics and sums, and what’s for dinner, and changing out the laundry in the machines, or playing 52 ‘thing’ pick up around the house for me to do any writing.

I also realized that I’ve stopped taking naps. It’s not something I do particularly often during the week while Lewis and Col are out, but I do, sometimes. Whether my adrenal fatigue has kicked up, maybe my period is kicking my ass, maybe my adjustments have been a little more intensive, maybe I’m not sleeping as well or maybe I just feel like a bloody nap, but naps have gone from my life during Covid – and I’m not sleeping well. So I vowed to work on that, and have been taking melatonin before bed for these last few days to try and refill my sleep bank.

So how was I going to self protect from Covidtastrophe? I wondered as I stood watching the waves.

The next day, I got up and started to bake for the first time in a while. I made 2 litres of margaritas and stuck them in the fridge to chill while I made chocolate brownies, date crumbles and mini banana bread loaves. I added some foot and face masks (not the Covid ones, the self care ones), a little activity pack for the kids with handmade cards from Lewis and put together some Coronapocalypse survival kits for Lewis’ teacher and a few of my local friends that I dropped at their doorstep while I was out getting bread and milk. I chatted to one, briefly, and ran away from the other so I didn’t sob at her in her driveway.

I dug deep, soul searched by the water (it’s where I do my best work) and found what makes me, me, what fills my little bucket without social interaction – even just for one day and despite the fact that the day exhausted me, I LOVED it and my mood was through the roof. I mostly stepped off social media, I listened to my music (kind of, and only through headphones as Col worked behind me on the dining table), I baked (both with Lewis and without Lewis), I cheered other people up by my random act of delicious kindness, and I felt like I was doing something, anything, in a time where there’s really nothing to do and yet, at the same time, I’m doing more than ever.

Today Col went to our storage unit and brought home a printer, our other printer was declared dead after two weeks and numerous attempts at reviving it and I refused to buy another one when we had one in storage and simultaneously refusing to go get it cause it wasn’t an essential trip, but today he was out for grocery pick up and took a slight detour. He set it up, we printed activity books from Lewis’ yoga teacher, Katie and a couple of colouring pages for me that friends have sent (or created) for me to colour – because I actually really enjoy colouring and I’m excited to get stuck into colouring them when I’m done with this blog.

I’m writing this post today because I feel a bit better in myself, stronger, things are clearer and I’m not drowning, and I know that in a few days/weeks the darkness will creep back in, or maybe it’ll slam into me like an 18 wheeler and I’ll be crippled by anxiety, depression and anger all over again and I’ll need an anchor. This is now me, providing future me, with a kind of anchor and telling her to slow down, show herself grace and be selfish.

1. Breathe. Close your eyes and just take a friggin’ second to fill yourself with air. Repeat.
2. Sleep. You can’t fight if you’re not rested.
3. Drink water – I know you don’t like it, I know you don’t feel any better when you drink it, but everyone says it’s important so if you’ve stopped that, start it again. And no, ice cubes in gin don’t count.
4. Drink less – I know you like gin and margaritas, and thus far you’ve been REALLY good at not drinking much, but addiction is in your genes. If you’re over consuming alcohol, check that shit at the curb, now.
5. Eat more vegetables. Again, I know you like carbs and you just spent 2 days eating nothing BUT carbs, but ‘they’ say veg is good for you. So work on that.
6. Continue to put on your bra and jeans – I know it’s a burden every day, but ‘they’ say it’s good for you mentally, so keep doing that, too.
7. Go for a walk – admit that sometimes Heather is right and you need the sea air on your dry skin and greasy hair and to clear the cobwebs from your mind with music up full pelt. Especially since you can’t just blurt up the coast in the car.
8. Step back from social media. Groups won’t fall apart without you, I decided to continue to post on my reader group this time cause that group fills me with joy and is technically part of my job so it’s important, but if that’s too much, step back there, too.
9. Screen your messages more. This one’s been hard. I hate seeing unopened/unanswered messages in my email/facebook messenger or WhatsApp, but I’ve just had to take a step back and hope that my friends will understand and be there when I’m out the other side of it all. If not, then they weren’t really your friends to begin with.
10. Listen to more music – even if it’s just going to bed an hour earlier and listening to playlists, or live social media streams of bands and artists you love that make you cathartic cry until you’re spent.
11. Do the things you love. Bake, colour, sing loudly and unapologetically, wear your hockey shirt for no reason, watch whatever trashy movie you want to in bed with popcorn & m&m’s you don’t have to share and don’t feel guilty about it. Let Lewis watch tv – it’s not going to make him dumb, and don’t feel pressured to keep him occupied 24-7.

This is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s months, not weeks, and you’re just going to have to take each day at a time and be ok with that. You’re going to have to be fine without your weekly breakfast at the prom, having your life planned out in pretty colours on a whiteboard calendar and you’re just going to have to be ok with the fact that this is a fluid situation. No two days will be the same. Lewis, while he misses his friends, his teachers, his sports and his routine, will be ok. He’s resilient, he’s strong, he’s in tune with himself and he will tell you when he isn’t. He will also hug you when you aren’t, and that’s ok, too.

And while you feel like you’re stuck in some long-term hell for sins unknown, remind yourself to breathe.

Remind yourself that everything is temporary and remind yourself that when you come out the other side you will hug your friends tighter and appreciate even the littlest of things even more than you think you do.

Remind yourself that while it’s hell for you now, it’s coming down the other side of the mountain and back into society that will be hard for many of your introverted friends and they’re going to need you to be strong for them and help them reacclimate.

Remind yourself that you have purpose, even if you don’t know what it is in any given moment.

Remind yourself that you are loved and remind yourself that there’s a six year old in the next room who loves his mama’s singing and misses it enough to tell you.