The Instapot of Crisis
When things go wrong, I know what to do. I create quick plans and decisive action, moving from first blow to merciless attack at lightning speed. (What I’m not good at is letting things sit; I am the Instapot of crisis, not the Slow Cooker. But those are stories for a different day.)
And so it was once the words had been said: “We’re moving to my parents house and you’re not coming with us.”
I didn’t need to write it down or create a spreadsheet. All the decisions and timelines were made in my head in that instant. I could answer any question thrown at me in a second, announce firm decisions on the spot as if I had carefully considered the topic for days. Emotions firmly shuttered, action mode fully engaged, I knew who would get what, what would go where, and what we would say to who and when. For the first time in more than a decade, I brooked no pleas for flexibility or exceptions and was impervious to the emotional blackmail that had worked so well for so long. I had decided how things would be and, by sheer will and force, that is exactly how they would be.
I felt powerful for the first time in a long time. And yet utterly broken.
Through tears that wouldn’t stop coming (until I executed the plan to go to the doctor and take the pills) I severed myself from almost 20 years of messy love and hope and heartbreak with clean, straight strokes. One decision and interaction at a time. So much easier now that there was no tie to hold us together, nothing to pull on to keep me tethered. So much harder now that I was adrift.
The constant movement kept me afloat for days, weeks, months even. Boxing and sorting and purging and selling, storing away memories as well as feelings, to be dealt with another time. I reduced my life to the smallest version it could possibly exist in; a bed, a computer, and some clothes, taking perverse delight in how far I had managed to reduce myself. I was mighty in my sacrifice, like a caterpillar surrendering to the cocoon. I needed the self-pity I so decisively created as I shrank away from the life I had built, the one I had held onto so tenuously, the one I had imagined but that couldn’t be forced into existence with sheer will and action, as it turns out.
And then it came time to emerge. Paint on walls, flooring to choose, literally covering over every last surface of who I was with who I wanted to be, from ground to ceiling. The things I boxed away starting to return, cautiously, making conscious decisions about what could come in and what was no longer allowed. Saying no to well-meaning gifts and ideas. Owning my emergence as much as my hibernation with each choice that was now entirely my own. No second-guessing, no compromising, no guilt for even considering abundance as an option. MINE.
At some point, the dust, quite literally, settled. Things were in place. Plans had been executed. Silence descended in the space between what was done and what might be.
That, as it turns out, had been the easy part.
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This piece was written as the week 1 assignment for the Writing In The End Times workshop with Renegade Mothering.
