Session Five

A Saturday in May.

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SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hi, welcome back to Cedar Sessions. This session is an essay from a Saturday in May. I hope you enjoy. Last weekend we took the girls to the DC zoo. We had decided on a rare family weekend getaway for the long weekend. The two younger set on seeing the giant panda. A steady rain met us about halfway into our hour and 20-minute ride and became quite clear it was not going to let up in the near future. I find that funny about the rain. If you pay attention to it, you know whether you're in for a 20-minute downpour or a morning shower that plans to stay until after lunch. This was the latter. A steady rain. No zoo. The other two, delightfully unencumbered by weather, strongly disagreed, and so while trying to navigate the highway stretch of 495 that bends in an almost perfect 90-degree angle, and hear music meant to sustain my energy for the next 72 hours. The one where I have become the target of the dissatisfaction and hence the blame. Depending on the day, the depth it reaches and my skin shifts. That day I just kept repeating the Scandinavian sentiment of there's no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing. A fan of rain myself, quieting the rage in my head as each mommy let loose. It turned out we did in fact have bad clothing. Or shoes at least. We were halfway through the park when not one, not two, but all three of the girls walked straight through a puddle wearing tennis shoes meant for the weekend. I could feel the rage and discomfort waft off of my oldest before she turned in despair. The younger two ready to start jumping in the next. We found ourselves in the small mammal house where at the end of a small crowd they had formed around one of the glass enclosures. A skunk was running on a remarkably large wheel and had apparently been doing so for some time. People were standing around pointing, laughing, marveling. My body had a notable revulsion in that moment. Or maybe it was recognition. This animal caged, running on a wheel. People captivated by captivity. I was thinking about the skunk this morning on a walk, how we're captivated by our own self-imposed captivity. The things that suck our souls the most are the ones we keep on loop, like the locked groove of a vinyl, keeping the same 1.8 seconds playing over and over until the record becomes so worn down it stops playing. Or of course, someone moves the needle. Running on the treadmill of packed schedules, unreasonable expectations, and all-consuming judgment, just waiting for someone else to move the needle. I was walking with a friend the other day when she started daydreaming out loud, speaking the life that she wanted most in this world with someone else. One that, though very different from what she is currently living, is within the realm of possibility. Just as quickly as she started, she snapped out of the dream and blew it off with an if only. I tend to have occasional bouts of word vomit when someone sees something so clearly and then denies what they're meant to have most in the world. So before I could stop myself, I spewed, if only you would believe you deserve all that you want most. But isn't that true for all of us? I often wonder why we keep on the same running wheel, waiting, hoping, dreaming about someone jamming it so that we might get off. Or worse, the wheel jamming and just sitting there waiting for the zookeeper to remove the block so that we can keep running. Over and over we come to the same threshold, the moment when we can obliterate our own captivity, and somehow we find ourselves back on the wheel. The funny thing about the wheel is that from the other side of the glass, it is physical. An activity to keep the body healthy, prevent obesity in the unnatural habitat, to prevent boredom. The NIH describes wheels as satisfying the biological need of the animals to roam miles, the biological wiring to be free, unrestrained. Like many of my curiosities, I found myself in a rabbit hole. In a study of mice with running wheels, mice with wheels in their environment were more likely to show aggressive traits, something called circling, where they're literally running around in circles, and in some cases, addiction. They say nature mimics itself in all life forms. When I had my children, I was essentially pregnant for four or five years. I had three girls in three and a half years. As each postpartum year hit, it was time for the next. I had always wanted three children, only child syndrome, I guess. Build in the friendships I lacked as a kid, but each time there was something else just before pregnancy. I remember actively thinking, okay, I need to get pregnant to stop the wine. There were years of my adult life where I had a glass or two or more of wine every day. Red wine, of course, for antioxidants. But my pregnancies became the cog in the wheel that would allow me to stop the circling. I hadn't known it then, but I was in fact circling my own drain. I always say my body was remarkably healthiest when I was pregnant. Not because of the alcohol, but because I knew exactly in that time of my life what I was meant to be doing. Bringing life and love into this world that would break patterns. Though I would still cringe at it at the time, my body and soul were vibing back then. I listened to exactly what my body wanted, needed, and I gave it to it without reservation. Leave work early for prenatal yoga? Yep. Ask people to get me something when I was laying on the couch? Yep. Quit my job to stay home with my kids? Yep. I listened and my body and spirit happily coasted. By the time my third child was born, though, the wheel was calling. I knew three children was the number in my cards, and I felt this pull to get back on the wheel. I was homebound and meant to roam. I had to get out. Going back into healthcare in the middle of a global pandemic seemed like the right choice for someone who wanted to start running again. Running away, perhaps. Eight months after my third pregnancy, after my third baby, I woke up and couldn't get out of bed one morning. The physical exhaustion flooded my body in a way that was unrecognizable to me. I exercised, I had a family, I was doing work I was good at. Check all the boxes, and yet my life, me, who I was, was unrecognizable. The wheel hadn't stopped. I just rolled off of it and laid belly up, knowing something was not right. The something was beyond my body. In retrospect, the physician who told me I was just a burned-out mom was right despite my scathing response to him, though not right in the way he thought he was. I had been denying the life I was meant to live for three decades, and my body decided to shut down lest I try to stay on the wheel for the rest of my life. Tucked deep in the caverns of my body were the desires of singing, of writing, of dancing, of connecting to health far deeper than a blood pressure cuff and a dose of chemotherapy. I quickly began rejecting every decision I had made, largely from a career perspective, but in truth in relationship choices as well. As I spiraled deep into the circling and self-deprecating addictive behavior that follows getting off the wheel, I loved to whine to myself that every decision I had made had been because of someone else's path, that I hadn't listened, and here I was unrecognizable. But in a sense, that was the point. To get right there in that moment, unrecognizable to myself, so that I might get off the wheel and start roaming the actual ground, the actual life that waited, to be the one that moved the needle. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the next session.