I Am Having a Breakdown

 Dear Monica,

I just read your response after being VERY EXCITED TO GO ALL IN on this topic last week, and I have to admit I’m so exhausted by my life right now that even the idea of spending one more iota acknowledging men, the desire we have for them, and whether that desire is being determined internally or externally makes me want to curl up in a ball and sleep for ten years.

While I hate to change the subject because you called me out in a really important way and I mainly agree with you, I’m gonna do that thing fighters do when they are too tired to do anything other than lie down in the ring and hit the mat with an open palm.

I know you know how hard it is to support a family financially, emotionally, and transportationally. This week, I truly cannot write about anything other than how overwhelmed I am, which I do not typically write about because my greatest fear in life is coming off as a whiny little bitch. Because I feel that complaining is a waste of energy and venting is for people who are inexperienced at being vented at—which is why they feel so shameless about venting. (It is always those with the LEAST to complain about that do the most complaining because having the time and energy to complain is its own kind of privilege.)

When I feel like things are piling up, instead of taking a breath and trying to take it one thing at a time, I become erratically obsessed with trying to carry everything in my hands at once in order to prove to myself that my capacity is big enough to handle it. No, it’s fine. I’m totally fine.

I have been like this my whole life. Once a year, the accumulation breaks me down to pieces and humbles the fuck out of me, and this past weekend was my breaking point.

* * *

As you know, I was widowed eight years ago and have been raising four children on my own ever since. Professionally, this has meant hustling at all times to support my family on one income, which in this climate looks like seventeen freelance jobs. Personally, it has meant showing up for four children as TWO people instead of one. Being an only parent means representing both. It means parenting twice as hard to overcompensate. It means your kids feeling safe, seen, and held at all times, even if only with one arm.

It is hard for me to explain this to other people. I am also aware that, in many ways, I have it easier than friends (you, for example) who have to co-parent in less than ideal circumstances. Still, I do not relate to most single mothers and feel frustrated when people try to relate to me. Like, bitch? You don’t fucking know what it’s like to carry an entire family on your back with zero fucking breaks. But it’s more than just that. Knowing that my children’s father never got the chance to see his children perform onstage as young adults or compete in sports as teenagers means that I cannot—or will not—miss a thing. When I have to choose, for example, between attending a game or a play or a film festival, rooting one child on instead of another, I feel bereft. I hate knowing that one of my children cannot look to the stands and see me there cheering them on. It fucking breaks me.

This has meant attending every performance and every game… setting an impossible standard for myself and my children. While my oldest is basically living on his own now, finishing his senior year of college in DC and supporting himself financially, two of my three daughters (one a competitive athlete, another applying to conservatories while simultaneously shooting student films seemingly every weekend all over Los Angeles) have become so incredibly high maintenance in terms of personal and professional stakes, I feel like their very futures hang in the balance of what I can and cannot commit to.

I always tell my kids, “If you go all in, I will, too,” and well, I ended up with two of the most ambitious teenage daughters imaginable. Daughters who, in a two-parent household, would already be impossible to manage schedule-wise. Daughters who—with a mother who had more time and money to invest in their passions—would have likely already met their goals. But because it’s just me… I have had to say no to things most of their friends’ parents have been able to say yes to.

Beyond that, there is no margin of error or time for illness, which means if I slow down, the entire schedule—which is a well-oiled machine at this point—implodes. So any time someone is like, “Girl, you need to rest,” I want to slap them across the face because I can’t.

SO MANY OF US FUCKING CAN’T.

A couple months ago, when I came down with the diarrhea lettuce disease from hell, I made a diaper out of maxi pads and powered through so my daughter could be on time for her volleyball training an hour away. This has been my life for eight years. When I have the flu, I still wake up at 6:00 am so I can get everyone to school on time. When I’m grieving the loss of someone I love, I’m still rooting my daughter on from the sidelines, behind sunglasses, maybe, mascara-streaked and crazy-looking, but I’m still there. 

Thankfully, one of my kids is comparatively low maintenance. In what little time I have left lately, I spend it with her because if I’m not with one of her sisters I’m with the other, and the extreme guilt I feel leaving one of my girls alone for a two-day tournament every other weekend keeps me up at night when I really need those six hours of sleep. 

Then there’s work. I haven’t had time to write on my Substack, which means I’m losing paid subscribers, which means I am like, “Oh fuck, I better write something GREAT and SOON.” But my weekends—which I used to reserve for catching up with my writing (weekdays are slammed with freelance work)—are now spent in gymnasiums with hundreds of volleyball players. And while I have certainly attempted to work between games, having balls fly at my face and whistles sound every thirteen seconds does not make for a room of one’s own.

To note: I am currently writing this in my notes app on a bench in Marina Del Rey (waiting for my daughter to workshop her college audition monologues) where I have a one-hour window and about 45 minutes of daylight. We won’t be home until 8:30 pm, and I still have to figure out dinner, and because I haven’t had time to go to the store, I’m gonna have to MacGyver something together. Rinse, wash, repeat.

* * *

All of this to say, I wanted so desperately to give my daughters a magical fifteenth birthday (Brunch! New facial piercings! Thrifting in Silverlake!) this past Sunday, but instead slept through my alarm, got out of bed too fast, and threw out my back.

I popped some Ibuprofen and rallied, but somewhere between getting pierced and going thrifting, I felt like I was going to pass out.

“You guys? I think I need to go lie down…” By the time I got home, I was hyperventilating.

And I know it’s all my fault. My standards for myself are completely unattainable but I do not feel that I can lower them. Because I see what resulted from this bone-tired exhaustion, I know it’s worth it to strip myself bare to provide for them. But I am also so, so tired, dude. I am cry-writing this because I don’t know how to keep going. I have become so accustomed to doing it all on my own that asking for help feels like a gateway drug to getting in my car and driving to Mexico never to be seen or heard from again.

And I guess, to circle back to last week’s “Girl on Girl,” this is why I get so fucking angry at men who exploit women’s capacity to love, to parent, to drive the extra miles they say they can’t. Some of us ACTUALLY can’t and somehow find a way to do it anyway. SO MANY OF US actually can’t and do it anyway.

Some of us are the walking dead right now, typing with bones against keys, foreheads against steering wheels at stoplights, smoking cigs as a reminder to exhale. Some of us have no fight left yet we still get up off the mat and willingly climb into the next ring knowing we will be pummeled again.

And, while I hate to admit it, because saying it aloud (or on paper) feels like one long-winded bitch-fest (ugh, gross!), this week that “some of us” is me.

Xo,

Rebecca