I hate that I missed last week’s newsletter. It was Thanksgiving and the girls had two days off. I’m not using it as an excuse, but when I say I lost two days, I don’t mean it figurately.
That’s something I wish someone told me about becoming a parent. The loss of time. It comes on slowly, this realization. That time is no longer your own. That your life, your desires and ambitions and goals must be squeezed into minutes and hours.
On top of this loss of time, the holidays are tough because you’re forced to socialize. To exhibit a brave, happy face. To stomach questions you’ve been avoiding answering yourself. How are you? What are you doing these days?
You’re in the thick of it, someone said to me recently. That helped. This is the hardest it’ll be, I guess they’re trying to say. It’s what I tell myself, when the past few months, I've been finding it hard to breathe come 4:30 pm.
I recently heard about the Sundown Scaries. Also known as sunset anxiety, it’s a feeling of doom or anxiety that some new parents experience in the evening. It can be characterized by a sense of loss of time and control, and a feeling of sadness or angst. It’s that sinking feeling when the day is ending, and you’re confronted with all the things you didn’t do, yet there’s still a fresh night of unknown work waiting for you.
I remember that feeling. But that newborn phase is over. Now, I realize, trying to identify the choking anxiety that crawls up my spine and keeps my breath caught in my throat, it seems to be back.
During this time, Elizabeth had been at the tail end of her exorcism and I thought once I got through the long weekend, I might be okay. If I could just get them back to school, back on track, I could figure out what's wrong with me.
I got into bed at 8:30 p.m., willing myself to fall asleep before ten so I could be fresh for my 5:30 shift with Elizabeth. I even had a little hope. If I got a good night’s sleep, maybe I could get out a newsletter after they were back at school. At 2:30 a.m., however, I was awoken to crying.