I bought my ticket for adulthood when I was sixteen years old. In the mere months between a terrified “Oh shit, I'm pregnant,” and a (still terrified,) joyous “Hello little man, I'm your Mommy,” I began a mental list that would rule my behavior for the span of his entire childhood. Regardless of how childish or frightened I felt, I must behave like an adult. I screwed up, a lot, but I was doing the best I could to learn how to adult, as a child on my own with a child of my own.
Some rules still make sense. I'll never drink and drive because I am somebody's mother. I will not be promiscuous because I am somebody's mother. No matter what people think of me, my character is worth more than my reputation. I always have to have a job. Other rules weren't as sensible as I thought they were then. “I'll stop writing fiction and give up my guitar lessons because I can't make a living at those things, and as somebody's mother, they are a waste of my time. Anything that reeks of just because I want it, is automatically against the rules. “ I failed at some of the Rules. I would occasionally sneak off to the theatre when cosmic forces aligned - my son was at his father's house, I had a day off, a little money to spare- a trinity that didn't happen often when there was a show on. I could not stop writing stories, I tried, but I could hide it from other people. And so, I did that. There were rules that affected my smallest choices. One of which was my choice in ink color. I refused to use anything but black or blue ink, adult colors, responsible colors. I wasn't creative. I'd chosen to be an adult, instead. My choice in office supplies reflected my “Adult Personality.” I became an office supply snob. Notebook paper had to be a certain quality. If a planner cover was too colorful, back on the shelf it went. Black or blue pens. Colorful ink, though pretty in a pack, was reserved for children and artists and I was neither. The Damn Bad Thing happened on my son's seventeenth birthday. Out of all the things I thought I had needed to learn to properly adult, out of all the late night study sessions to teach myself or my child some essential skill, trauma was not on my radar. I did not know the terminology when trauma affected my life. I had to learn to deal with symptoms of mental illness without knowing that they were symptoms. I do not have a good memory under the best of circumstances. I was not living in the same zip code as the best of circumstances. I was chest deep in Project Normalcy. Simply waiting for my future with a mind that was truly shocked by every single sunrise, would not work. I had work to do, for myself and my son. I needed our life to return to some kind of normal, and I knew that it wouldn't just happen on its own. Hope is actively involving myself with Tomorrow. But, Tomorrow did not exist for me. I watched every sunset as if it were my last. The phrase I have learned since (shout out to the library books) is “sense of foreshortened future.” All I knew was that, no matter how hard I tried, I could not believe in tomorrow. I found that I was unable to physically write down anything that hinted at the expectation beyond the twenty-four hours I was living in. Each attempt to fill out my precious, essential planner, caused horrible physical reactions. I now know that the term for those godawful sensations is “panic attacks.” I knew that was crazy. I knew I was crazy. I could not work around my brain. I had to work with it. I did not quite understand the word “manipulation,” but that's exactly what I did to my own broken mind. The Former Office Supply Snob went out and picked up a cheap, garbage planner. Then I purchased a big pack of gel pens in various colors. I don't simply mean multi-colored. I mean neon, and metallic, and glitter. When I needed to remember “Pay Light Bill on the 15th” or when I needed to remember “Meet Carol for coffee at 1:30 on Thursday,” my lungs began shutting down at the thought of writing it down, of planning for a future that could never occur. “Hey,” I told myself, gently, “I know I'll be dead by then. I know that only today exists. Shhh. That's why I'm writing it in pink glitter and bubble letters. I'm just playing. I'm not taking this tomorrow thing seriously.” And when the 15th of the month arrived (surprise!), I paid my light bill. I met my friend for coffee, on time, and she never knew that a metallic silver gel pen made it happen. It took time, everything does, but I wrote my way back into sanity with freaking glitter pens.
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