I am having trouble getting off the couch today. This shouldn't trouble me too much, as I have not had one of these days for quite a while, and there was a time when I did not get off the couch for like a whole year. I have lately been very functional and perhaps have earned a couch day. But I am still caught off guard - there were things I was going to do today. I had a plan.
Couch days are different from deep grief days. On grief days I wander my home, unable to draw a deep breath, tears at the ready, stopping and starting and spinning in circles until at last there is an overflow, after which I breathe, calm myself, and prepare dinner.
On couch days I sit weighed down by blankets and a laptop, unable to will myself up, unwilling to move outside the bubble generated by mind and my laptop, unable to stop the click, click, click of the mouse as I skim across the surface of the internet. The couch is my surfboard, my barge, floating nowhere.
Eventually I sink from sitting to reclining to lying flat down and still trying to type. I want to be swallowed by this couch just so I don't have to... what? Fold the laundry? Make a phone call? Feed myself? I feel anxious and tired and fearful at the prospect of simply standing up and managing my own little home-bound world - something I really enjoy doing most days. I don't know what monster I think will rear up from the sink drank and bite me - my own shady thoughts? the expectations of others? the continual rolling forward of life without the little one I am missing?
It is true: sometimes I do not want to wash the dishes unless the universe promises to give me my baby back. Watch me stamp my feet.
I know someone will read this and think, "oh, she is depressed." I suppose I am, just for today.
But what I tell Brian, on both couch days and grief days, is that it's a bad baby day. Just a bad baby day. I miss the one who died and the other one I might never have. I'm just sad and mad, worried and confused, and it's a little too much for me today, and the couch feels safe. Cozy and enveloping, it casts its spell. It has no expectations of me. It gives me the day off.
I might get up and wash a dish now. I love writing for this reason - it can unweave a spell simply by naming it.
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longing...
"...for the vanished girl her mother searched and visited all lands in turn. Where the girl was she knew not, but she reproached the whole wide world, and in chief the places where she had found the traces of her loss. She roamed the earth over in search of her daughter, by day and by night with torches, from sunrise until sunset, hour by hour. Bitter pain seized Demeter's heart, and she sped like a wild bird over the firm land and yielding sea, seeking her child. But no one would tell her the truth, neither god nor mortal men; and of the birds of omen, none came with true news for her."
- Ovid, Homer, others, me
- Ovid, Homer, others, me
pre-term labor awareness
gifts
3 comments:
oh how delightful, your post is like a little zen story one i wish I could make into my own little mantra, ...to unweave the spell simply by naming it..., ...inside the bubble generated by mind and my laptop....
absolutely perfect, eloquent words for the rituals of our now common days.
Oh my gosh this is so bizarre. I myself am having a string of couch days, and I too call them my bad baby days. Ive been toying with the idea of blogging more and perhaps it might help...pull me out of this rut I find myself in.
I have those days too...and I love my couch for that reason. There are just days that I need time...time to just get away from it all. I tend to avoid things like the mail, laundry, cleaning, etc. I just need the day for myself. I'm glad you do this for yourself when you need it. ((hugs))
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