Pauses and Pivots…Part 1
I don’t know about you, but 2022 has been quite a year for our family thus far!
In early 2022, I started a podcast. It’s been something I’ve wanted to do for a while. I was quite proud of myself for following through with it! The idea was to “chronicle” our story and give a more detailed account of our lives and marriage with mental illness. I had it all planned out. I had a schedule, I had seasons and episodes (including bonus episodes) laid out, and a guest list for when I was ready to start interviews. I even launched it with a video. I got through a handful of episodes, and then…
Pause
Between March and early August, we had 2 hospitalizations, a major, unexpected move to prepare for, (more on that in a minute) a child getting ready to graduate high school and leave for college that we were still trying to figure out how to pay for, a summer musical for said child with 16 performances (and even more rehearsals), tons of follow up appointments for Scott (including a new diagnosis), and scrambling to tie up loose ends before leaving the state. I’m the only driver in the household. I’m also working and trying (at times unsuccessfully) to make ends meet. There was absolutely no way I was going to be able to keep that podcast going in the middle of all of that. I had to put it on pause.
Then came the…
Pivot
Back in March, around the time of Scott’s first hospitalization, our family made a major decision based on 3 factors.
1. Our daughter was planning to go to college in NC…the same university that I went to. Out of state tuition is through the roof. We would be able to get NC residency within a year, meaning we’d only have to pay OOS tuition for a year and a half, max.
2. Our rent increased by almost 50%. As the sole breadwinner, already struggling to make ends meet, there was no way we were going to be able to afford that.
3. My 81-year-old mother lives in my hometown in NC, in a 2-story house with 2 spare bedrooms. She was thrilled to fill those rooms! Having time with her in this season of her life was worth the move.
It would be a win for everyone. We would be closer to Jasmyne and other extended family, my mother wouldn’t live alone and would have some extra help, and we wouldn’t have to worry about rent or utilities, which took a great deal of financial pressure off me.
This decision was made back in March. But we wouldn’t be able to move until the end of July/early August, so Jasmyne could be in the summer musical with the local Children’s Theatre. She played the lead in “Sister Act, Jr.”, and she slayed! But it was a huge commitment.
Also in March, Scott had his first hospitalization in over 6 years. And then in May he had another one. I had to miss some work, which resulted in lost income. He went through several medication changes (goodness, at least 5 or 6 since last October!). The good news is that we did find a medication that works, and he finally officially got the diagnosis I’ve been advocating for more than 10 years: schizoaffective disorder/bipolar type. I like to think of it as neither bipolar nor schizophrenia, but both. It’s like putting blue and yellow together and getting green…a whole new thing. It hasn’t changed his treatment plan a ton, but it does help to clarify his symptoms.
Two days before we were supposed to move, Scott got COVID. That set us back several days and put a wrench in our plans to have help. As much as I tried to prepare for this move in the 5 months I knew it was coming, undoing 10 years of living in one place proved to be more challenging than I anticipated. Some things can’t be done till the last few days. We lost those last few days, and help, thanks to COVID. If Jasmyne and I had it (we didn’t test), we never showed any symptoms. This was our family’s first personal experience with COVID since the beginning of the pandemic. I was beginning to think we were immune. Guess not.
Bless Scott’s heart…after a couple days of rest, between him, Jasmyne, me and one of her friends, we finally managed to load up the truck. Scott would move something, cough, sit down to catch his breath, and then move some more, sweating buckets the whole time. End of July, remember? He was a trooper. If we didn’t have Jasmyne’s friend to help, I don’t know what we would’ve done.
I’m embarrassed at the condition we left our apartment for our poor landlord. I had planned to get rid of our King-sized bed and Jasmyne’s double bed, but we needed somewhere to sleep until the day we left. We thought we would just take it with us, but the truck was only 15ft (all I could afford…I reserved it thinking we weren’t taking any large furniture) and it just wouldn’t fit. So, we had to leave them. Between that, and not being able to clean as thoroughly as I would have liked, let’s just say that we’ll never see the deposit from when we first moved in.
In 23 years of marriage, we’ve moved a lot, and sometimes under unpleasant circumstances. But this move? With everything going on, this was by far the most stressful, even with 5 months’ notice.
Finally, we got to NC safe and sound (yay me for driving a moving truck ALL 400 miles with car in tow!). We found some money for Jasmyne to attend school in addition to the financial aid/scholarships she already had (a miracle), and within a week of moving to NC, we moved her into her college dorm.
Grand Pause
Now that we have the move out of the way, and we’ve gotten Jasmyne off to start her new adventure, life has settled down. There’s a quietness in my life that I’ve not experienced in years.
Which brings me to the “grand pause”.
According to the Free Music Dictionary,
A general pause, also known as a fermata, hold, or grand pause, is a symbol used in music that indicates to the musician to rest indefinitely. Exactly how long the rest lasts is up to the musician or the conductor.
For the past 17 years, there has been unrelenting stress in my life that can be summed up in one word: trauma. Trauma all the way around for me, Scott, and Jasmyne. One night in late 2005 changed the entire trajectory of our lives. A flood of repressed memories of abuse and trauma from Scott’s childhood was unleashed that threw our lives into chaos that to this day we’ve not fully recovered from.
For the longest time, I was in survival mode, just trying to make it from crisis to crisis as Scott’s mental health deteriorated under the weight of this burden. I was also trying to get a grip on what I was dealing with. I was in the midst of solo parenting, him leaving twice, not knowing where he was, dealing with my own physical and mental health issues, financial challenges and hardship, and grappling with the magnitude of what I had gotten myself into when I married this man. The relationship we had with his family members dissolved as the result of these allegations, but not without drama. Our time was basically split cycling through crises after crises, with a little bit of recovery in between, but not enough. Wash, rinse, repeat.
It wasn’t all bad. I have an amazing kid despite it all. We lived life to the fullest as much as we could. Still, each day I lived with the uncertainty of my husband’s wellbeing, the future of our marriage, and a constant undercurrent of stress. The closest I can think to describe what my life felt like for a decade and a half is to use the pandemic as an example. It’s beyond description, because the circumstances are so over the top, with no point of reference, no end in sight, and no going back to the way things were before.
Somehow, I even managed to get a Master’s Degree in the middle of all of that. And miracle of miracles, our marriage was restored! However, recovering from brokenness can be every bit as painful as the break itself. There is the beautiful pain of healing, but it’s still pain.
Full disclosure…I never would have been able to do any of this without some amazing help, a ton of prayer, and Divine Intervention.
But…
I’m tired. Tired isn’t even the word. Exhausted. Worn out. Burnt out. Fried. Done.
As Jasmyne reached the end of her childhood, I reached the end of my own personal resources and inner fortitude.
At the beginning of 2022, I thought I was ready to dive into sharing our amazing family story and how we’ve managed to survive all the craziness, for real this time. I had made several attempts over the years, but I thought, “this is it. Finally!”. God used Joseph’s hardships to put him into a position of being able to impact countless lives. Maybe God could do something like that for us too.
And perhaps one day He will. But I don’t think that day is today.
It’s not for lack of trying. I connected with some incredible resources this year and discovered there is a genuine need for our story and our experiences with mental illness and trauma. I learned after 23 years of marriage, I’m not alone in my position as a spouse of someone with a serious mental health issue. I had a couple of opportunities to share some of our story and discovered that overcoming our hardships can somehow inspire and help others.
But with everything that happened this year and looking at the cumulative effect of living for years on end under a huge amount of uncommon stress, I realized something.
I need to rest.
I’ve been given an incredible gift. An amazing opportunity.
The gift of a Grand Pause.
Not in music, but in life. I’ve been given the opportunity to “rest indefinitely” in this season of my life and take a much-needed Sabbatical.
In Part 2, I’ll share what that looks like, and what I’ve learned about the importance of rest. Stay tuned!!