Emotions and Rationality don’t go hand in hand

I have had a pretty hectic year. Not hard, compared to some, but hard for me. In the last year, okay, thirteen months actually, I've had the following: a suspected miscarriage with forced bed-rest, a husband in a real plane crash, (but, thankfully surviving) , the adjustment of our family to a new addition: little Quinn, and the lack of sleep that comes with that, recently a beloved father-in-law in and out of hospital for four months with numerous illnesses and subsequent complications, and now, a husband who has been made MD to an international company at age thirty four. Like I said, not necessarily the most difficult year imaginable, but still quite hectic.

I run a home on my own. Not hubby’s choice; he would actually love to be involved in most decisions around the house but hasn’t got time to think about those things. He doesn’t know where the geyser mains are, where the tools are kept, or where the toothpicks live. The girls are also largely my department; hubby doesn’t know how to work the pram, the car seat, the feeding chair or the medicine cabinet. He loves them, unequivocally so, but leaves the nitty gritty to me. I try to maintain some semblance of being a writer, when I get half an hour or so. Plus I try to be a good mom and daughter and wife. Occasionally I actually get to be a friend too.  

So what’s my point? Last week, I go to a special alternative doctor-lady to find out why I simply can not get any energy to do what needs to be done, no matter what. She scans me from top to toe and tells me that I am suffering from adrenal exhaustion, (which is an interesting non-scientific determination,) on the physical side. Unfortunately her machine does not take a newborn and a toddler into its account. But on the emotional side, she detects a large amount of stress and frustration. I tell her that must be a mistake. But she says the machine doesn’t lie and what could possibly be making me stressed and frustrated?

Well it used to be the dog, but we moved him to greener pastures.

She spoke to me, in a soothing, pre-school teachery tone, telling me that my role as home-maker is not one to be taken lightly. This I know.She says that just because I don’t contribute financially to the home, I make a huge contribution by giving of myself so freely, (albeit begrudgingly at times.) She then tells me that although I have a brain on my shoulders I need to remember that my children only need me for a short while. But brains atrophy, I hear in the space between my ears. That without me, the home would not function. I doubt that. And then the clincher – that I am not alone.

But sometimes I feel so alone…

Emotions are not rational. That’s why they are called emotions and not rationalisations. I have an awesome infrastructure ready and waiting to help me with the girls and with life in general. So the feeling of loneliness is not a reality. But it is there nonetheless. You see, when you are a mom, and you have one child nursing and the other needing a glass of juice, and you hear them both cry at the same time, but can do nothing as either way one of them will cry, and you look around for an extra pair of hands, but find none; the stab of loneliness will strike. Or when you are awake late at night working on a particularly poignant piece of writing and look to your spouse to read through it once with you, but he is fast asleep because his day has been long and exhausting, there will come a surge of lonesomeness. 

And yes, perhaps a little anger. 

This is too much for me to do alone, I may feel. This is not what I signed up for, I say. This isn’t fair, I mumble. And in that moment I feel angry, stressed and alone.

But then the moment passes – which is my point - and I end the day on a couch with two kiddies cuddled next to me; one fast asleep and the other laughing along with me to an old episode of Friends. We are warm and safe. I feel blessed and happy and content with life and enormous love. Exhausted Hubby comes home after ten pm from visiting his ill father in an out-of-town-hospital, and instead of being cross that the girls are still up, is happy to see us. As we are happy to see him. We feel united. We feel relieved. We feel like a family. The day ends well.

Those precious-jewel-moments make it all, (the anger, loneliness, stress, et al) fade into nothingness. Like I said, emotions aren’t rational. But moments are. Emotions come and go like a tidal surge. By the end of the day I have felt them all. Tomorrow is another day for feeling a whole spectrum of emotions, some of which may surprise me and some will completely flaw me. I’m a mom and a woman. Emotional fluctuation comes with the territory. The machine, dear doctor-type-lady, may not lie, but the machine also cannot see the bigger picture. I, thank God, can.

We need to live for The Moments; the precious-jewel-moments. Those are not like the tide that comes and goes. Those are like the ocean itself: an endless source of awe and life and energy.