dim february

February was a low month for me - physically, emotionally. I know what deep, enveloping depression feels like, and this wasn't that; it was lackluster, apathetic, just... dim. Sometimes I would just it in a chair and stare, not sure what to do with myself, lacking the energy to do the things I knew needed doing. I felt sad sometimes, and discontent and bored a lot of the time. I hadn't felt a lingering depression in years, but still, I knew it was temporary. Stirred by the weather: the low-hanging, flat clouds; the cold, damp air; the absence of sunshine. I should have been more consistent in taking my vitamins! I know how it affects me. 

 

What saved me, as winter came to an end and spring teased us again and again with little glimpses of what she had in store for us, were nature walks. Walking in late winter is underrated; yes, it's cold, but not the numbing, prickly cold of mid-Winter. When you pump your legs to clamor uphill, jump to and fro on fallen logs, and jump over twisted roots, your blood gets pumping and you feel as though it is 20 degrees warmer than it is! So even if your walk begins quite nippy, eventually you will carry with you your very own space heater. Sweet incentive to keep going.

 

Another incentive for me are these landscapes. Hills! Beautiful hills. These scraggly branches and muted colors have their own place in this world of beauty. I love a winter palette. Dusty gray canvas, hazy blue where the light spills, wine shadows along the hillsides. And the textures: feathery dried flowers and fluff-topped grasses and curling bark.

With the sunshine will come new breath and life and purpose.
Until then, I'm holding onto the promise that everything is a season.

our valentine's dinner

So... I forgot about Valentine's day. 

We spent the night at my parents' for Superbowl snacks (that's what I attend for). While everyone else watched the game in the man cave, my sisters and I watched three episodes of Love is Blind which took a total of six hours because we like to pause it every five minutes to psychoanalyze the characters cast members. I ended up going to bed at 3:30 in the morning and getting about three hours of sleep between that time and eight in the morning, when the baby decided it was time to get up for the day despite both of us getting a horrible night's sleep.

I woke up with heavy eyes and a fuzzy brain, but somehow scrounged up the energy to enjoy an almost four-mile walk with my mom before heading home that afternoon. Apparently that's all I had the energy for, because for the last three days my kids have done nothing but watch TV. Oh, how I wish I was exaggerating!

Okay, they have gotten a significant reading done, and they did play some math games on Prodigy, but Netflix and Disney Plus have really been pulling through as excellent babysitters. Homeschooling, what's that? (Between the lack of sleep and having a sick baby for four days, I am spent. I haven't had a week like this in a while, the kind where I just lie in bed watching TV while my kids watch TV. I'm choosing to not feel guilty about it. Tomorrow will be better.)

Back to Monday. I didn't realize it was Valentine's day until my mom and I came back from our walk and I saw that my dad had left out boxes of chocolate on the counter for us all! My parents always get the kids boxes of chocolate, but I was especially grateful for it this year because I failed to deliver. I told my kids the truth: I stayed up too late, was too tired, totally forgot about Valentine's day, and we would have our own special day tomorrow night. They were satisfied.

The next afternoon, I was trying to figure out how to acquire candy to leave by their dinner plates, but I just couldn't justify an unneeded Instacart delivery for cavity-inducing treats, especially after they'd eaten about 20 mini Reece's in the last 24 hours. I remember we had a bag of heart-shaped pasta I happened to buy a couple weeks before, as well as some strawberries and chocolate chips. What is more fun than receiving a holiday treat when you're a kid? Making your own!

I boiled the pretty pasta and made some Alfredo sauce, which I made fancy by adding a couple of drops of red food coloring, and heated up some jarred marinara for the weirdos who prefer it. The kids were so surprised to see pink swirly pasta sauce and festive pasta! Mom. Win. (I mean. I don't want to toot a horn here. But I should forget about holidays more often.)

 

You can't see the color of the Alfredo sauce, but it totally had pink swirls and was actually really pretty!

I told them that after dinner, I had a couple more surprises planned. Not anything super special, but just something I think they'd like. Then I busted out the fresh strawberries and melted chocolate chips, and we made our own chocolate-covered strawberries! The quintessential Valentine's dessert. I also had them make their own chocolate-filled croissants. Super easy - just pop open a tube of croissants and place a few chocolate chips between each layer as you roll it up. So simple, and so fun for the kiddos. 

We ate our treats while we watched A Charlie Brown Valentine. We ended up having so much fun. I really lucked out with all the food I had on hand - strawberries, chocolate, croissants, and that heart-shaped pasta. I don't normally keep croissant rolls on hand, or heart-shaped pasta, for that matter. Between luck and quick thinking, I am reminded that we don't need cheesy, cheap toys (like the unicorn stuffies I bought them last year... of which they reminded me and asked if I would be gifting them something similar) or tons of candy to celebrate a fun day. Don't get me wrong, I still plan on absolutely stuffing their Easter basket with cheap toys and candy. Balance, and all that.

reestablish what is beautiful

What a gift - crisp, bright days when the watery winter sunlight feels warm upon our faces and lightens our steps. Yesterday we took a walk to the park down the street and enjoyed as much of this shift in the weather as we could before it snows again in the middle of the night. Tomorrow we'll wake up to a thin covering of snow, but that is much better than overcast skies and mushy, muddy grass and sludge piled along the roadside.

I haven't felt okay lately, and I needed this so badly. My brain chemicals seem to be working perilously against me. Between functioning as normal and feeling happy, I have moments when I feel apathetic and sad for no real reason, and intrusive thoughts have been mocking me every hour. I know it's temporary, probably a combination of gray, deep winter, and a lack of sleep. Life is finicky. Good and hard, joy and sorrow, constant reminders of humanity and mortality. Feeling sad when there's nothing to be sad about. I need a reprieve from my mind. 

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about authenticity, social media, and comparison. I joined Facebook in 2008 when I was 20, and then River was born in 2009. In a way, I've experienced the whole of parenthood and adult life connected to the internet, which is in a way, quite performative. Do we as a society know how to live without the constant sharing of thoughts, opinions, and experiences? Social media has helped me to feel less alone during different seasons of my life. I used it to feel supported, to keep up with faraway friends, to share about our lives, but most of my relationships on the internet barely reach below the surface.

Our true friends see all of us - the highlights and the hard days. The wins and the bad habits. But we aren't sharing much about our bad habits, hard days, disobedient kids, poor financial decisions, burnout, anger outbursts, marriage counseling, and parenting failures on social media. Of course not - why would we? Those things aren't for everyone to see. Only the people we trust. So we share the new homes, the vacations, the neatly dressed children, the milestone anniversaries. Sometimes it's like putting on a happy face as you walk into church, minutes after fighting with your husband and yelling at the kids to hurry up and stop kicking each other.

This is where it becomes unhealthy. What we are left with is seeing everyone else's great, while we are struggling. Even if we cognitively know social media is a highlight reel, and we know everyone has relationship problems and money struggles and backtalking kids and lazy days, we aren't witnessing it. Because the bulk of our many relationships takes place online. Because we are constantly "in touch with" people we've met once or twice, even though without social media we would probably never talk to them again, yet now we know their kids graduated valedictorian and they bought a brand new car. It makes the sting of living paycheck-to-paycheck that much more painful; the way you're fighting for your neurodiverse child's education that much harder.

Why must we share at all? I guess that is what I'm struggling with, personally.
The motive, the purpose.

We only have so much mental capacity and emotional energy for the people in our lives. Our relationships must be limited; we cannot give the depths of ourselves to hundreds of people, or fully appreciate and lovingly tend to the depths of many in that measure. What's left is the shallow, the highlights, the carefully selected wins. Nothing of the hard and the messy that makes life layered and real and beautiful and raw. 

If anything is the poster child for toxic positivity, it's this. Silent, unassuming, but it can become so unhealthy. It's the lie that life is only worth sharing with others when it's a nice and tidy package. I have contributed to it as well.

 

In many ways, social media has saved me. It surely has its time and place in people's lives. It's because of social media that I ever discovered I have ADHD. I have felt cared for, supported, and less alone at times because of different communities I have found on social media. I even met one of my dearest friends through social media! I don't believe anyone is wrong for utilizing it. I only wish to address what can make it unhealthy. As with everything, there are seasons. I don't think I will shut the door on social media completely. Perhaps I need to work on myself, my relationships in the here and now, to quiet my mind and slow down. 

I used to think I didn't compare myself to people on social media, but only recently did I realize I do. I may not envy big houses and tropical vacations, but I envy what I see as beautiful, aesthetic, quiet lifestyles. Homesteads and crafting mamas who make their children's clothing by hand and greet the day by gathering eggs from their backyard chickens every morning. Mothers who parent instinctively and always gently, make healthy homecooked meals, have endless energy for hiking trips (even with newborn babies!), definitely never yell, and whose toddlers definitely never throw temper tantrums. Those are the kinds of things I was finding myself envying. (I know I've got some stuff to work on.)

True love is wanting the best for someone. True selflessness. It's not a matter of jealousy and not wanting goodness for others - it's the lack of layers. The lack of all the different nuances of life. The lack of truth, by the omission of what is uncomfortable.

And I was so lost in my phone, distracting myself from the imperfect with everyone else's version of perfect. I would pick it up in the quiet moments, instead of just letting the quiet moments be and expand and create their own goodness. (Must my mind always be overstimulated?) I felt the need to share every interesting thought or funny occurrence or sweet moment. And for what? Engagement, approval, make-believe relationship building with the collective hundreds.

I'm reading The Fellowship of the Ring, and this quote that Tolkien wrote gave me chills when I compared it to my relationship with social media at its most unhealthy when I gave it up during the summer: 

"And yet, it would be a relief in a way to not be bothered with it anymore. It has been so growing on my mind lately. Sometimes I have felt it was like an eye looking at me. And I am always wanting to put it on and disappear, don't you know; or wondering if it was safe, and pulling it out to make sure. I tried locking it up, but I found I couldn't rest without it in my pocket. I don't know why. And I don't seem to be able to make up my mind."

I want to reestablish what is beautiful to me. I want my thoughts to be clear and unencumbered by what is share-worthy. I want to walk into a messy room and instead of wondering why other mothers seem to be able to keep a clean house, I want to see the evidence of life and my children flourishing in all of their hobbies and interests. I want what is simple and prosaic to bring me peace and gratefulness for what I have - the sink full of dishes, a rug that needs vacuuming, the breeze blowing the curtain at an open window.

I want to allow the time for things to brew slowly, I want to steep in the relationships that I am living, not experiencing through a screen. I want to write more letters. I want to talk to my best friend on the phone more often. I want to fully engage in the moments happening around me - in the dusty sunlight of my home, the giggles of my baby, the petals of the wilted flowers falling to the table. I want to see it all.

Real life. Good and hard. Real and raw and beautiful.