Oxygen Tank Required

By Emily Jo

2018 will forever make me cringe a little.

It’s January. We are leaving our 1950’s red brick abode, complete with Retro pink bathrooms, garden, tidal rivers and after school extraordinarily tasty vegan ice creams. We move into a top floor iconic Wool Store loft apartment, timber handrails, sunsets meant for magazines, zero outdoor access, stainless steel bench-tops, monsoon shower heads, minimal sound proofing, floorboards that don’t prevent wine or urine from seeping through to the diners below. In hindsight, not an ideal family home.

After all, the co-parent and I reasoned, we were spending more and more fun weekends together, enriched by no emotional drama and buoyed by own interesting busy lives. Surely, we can live in the same house, ditch the double rent and commuting. Rose tinted glasses firmly on, committing to living together again, the epic feat of re-coupling after many months of being independent humans.

Sucked in by the glittery glue of the nuclear family, it proved just too hard to resist. Fast forward a few tedious weeks, it becomes very apparent that the glue no matter how fucking glittery, was not adhesive enough to withstand the tedious rebuild of a broken ‘marriage’. Our connection, it became very clear was founded on the love we directed liberally at our offspring.

It didn’t take many therapy sessions with Dr J, handsome in price, hair coverage, height, choice of R.M Williams footwear and wool blend trousers. Although, his higher order organisation skills a little lacking, (I suppressed the urge to tidy his overflowing bookcase, between therapizing insights on more than one occasion). Dr J, with his wry smile, succinctly rehearsed one-line offerings, his educated view on how to re kindle broken relationships, perched on his leather sofa, in his majestic office. He pointed out that it was indeed the human propensity to falter at times in long term relationships, especially when children and work add to the pressures. He made marriage sound so fucking simple. He felt strongly about the benefits of focussing on the positive in the other and spending more time together. The magic bullet. The cure. He made me a little twitchy with frustration. We needed a 10-point plan on how to navigate conflict, not a long list of what we admired in the other. Ugh.

We left late night appointments with Dr J's exorbitantly priced insights, delivered in melodic carefully spaced sentences. I remember being enchanted by his casual sweeping of his floppy fringe away from his handsome face, with long beautifully manicured fingers. As much as I admired his demeanor, my doubts were brewing. He made it all sound so simple. Clearly, he was either having an affair with his secretary or his wife had magically avoided the curse of the Motherhood Identity Crisis and subsequent cake induced frump. It seemed that somewhere along his 30-year career, helping mere mortals on this earthly realm, this philosophical Greek God of a man had absorbed the day dreamy and wildly misguided notion, that marriage simply wasn’t that hard to undertake – couples just needed to speak kindly, focus on the good instead of the niggles and go on outings together. Pfft. I felt he should have paid less attention to his choice in trousers, and more attention to the words on the pages of the many books cluttering his expensive antique hardwood shelf.

On we forge in the clammy QLD February heat, large invoice & advice in hand, adult only outings that didn’t deepen our connection. Tensions as thick as the morning’s porridge, incessant scrolling of Instagram. We both avoided addressing the awkward newly discovered truth– outside of our parenting strategies, our very core values clashed, like the antlers of angry steers in the night. Over the coming weeks terse, hushed conversations ensued. Prosecco in hand, perched on stylish industrial stools, while spring onions were julienned with expensive knives at lightning speed and lamb ragu bubbled away on the stainless-steel gas cooktop. Topics such as the visually disturbing quality of the Noun and Adjective wall chart, no, they could not to be included in the sleek warehouse deco. Blunt conversations always ending in hurt feelings and silent tears shed into expensive wine. Sometimes not so stifled crying. Mostly not stifled at all. I quickly became a more and more hysterical and unreasonable version of Emily, much to my own disappointment and those of my co-habitants.

Life went on for the time being, I was unable to leave just yet due to financial constraints. I worked a casual job, attended Uni lectures on the importance of the Proximal Zone of Development and did school pick-ups. I remember hoping we were perhaps in a giant nightmare, that we would wake up from suddenly, with a startled inhale and a cold shiver, to be returned back to our ‘normal’ happy life.

I became progressively more intolerable to live with, more needy, more naggy and broken. Comforted somewhat by the antics of zesty daytime TV, Frankie and Grace especially. I googled cocktail recipes and together Frankie, Grace and I often enjoyed a double strength mid-afternoon dirty martini. In hindsight, my imminent breakdown was showing its first flush of symptoms.

Along with Netflix, Brené Brown became my guru, her and Tara Brach, their scientific slant on the spiritual mayhem of matters of the heart providing some solace. My girlfriends and some of my man friends (who often sent me just a thumbs emoji up in reply), started to suffer endless Byron Bay bumper sticker quotes and often completely irrelevant tarot card interpterion’s. I do apologise.

I have to admit I was shocked by the rather rude and inconsiderate nature of this particular bout of break-up heartache. In the past, I remembered endings to be painful, but not like this– the feeling of being hit with tidal wave levels of pain. Was grief in old age not simple anymore?

I was coping with life I thought, going through the motions.

Then WHAM, the unravelling of SELF.

All that was required to start the emotional free fall was ONE particularly potent bout of deep thinking. Cattle branded, to this day on my mind as the moment I began to break down (crack open or crumble or fall apart, whatever broken term you resonate with).

All it took was good solid hour of taking a reckless mental stocktake of all the ways I was failing, had failed, or almost failed, all the ways I was invisible, broken, un-lovable - save for my cute bottom in a bikini - this remark meant to cheer me up, but instead I found it offensive. Affirming my broken thoughts that no one loved the sad human inside the flesh. All the while I was deep in pondering my failings, I was hidden discretely under the brim of a floppy hat, under even darker sunglasses, while on a boat headed for Morten Bay, sea spray and gulls swooping. Such is the nature of staring out to sea, the mind gets a rare and dangerous chance to unleash.

Over the coming months, now the flood gates had opened, I discovered grief is quite physically tiring, very draining in fact. Who knew emotional hang-overs were such a thing. The aftermath of a night on the tears fogs the mind, muddles the brain, resulting in pinching headaches, up-set stomachs, only able to digest strong coffee and café issue white chocolate and raspberry muffins, in little nibbles. Even a bitter taste in my dry mouth, as I too added to the only beneficiaries of an episode of tragic life crumbling: the billion-dollar self-help book community. I commence buying them with the fury of a Greek lady ordering olives at Korsa’s Deli Delights, in Isle 7, at the Preston market. Screen shots of deeply meaningful quotes take up more space than pictures of my smiling children, if you read my Safari search history you would find the yoga pose for healing trauma, the definition of Family System Therapy, the relaxing benefits of Passion Flower tea leaves and the song lyrics for Lily Allen’s #1 song hit ‘Fuck You’.

Apparently, simple ‘relationship fail’ heartache, cannot be trusted to not turn into an all-out unravelling. The thoughts that played on my mind on that boat ride evolved, like a possessed Pokémon character, into what felt like a deep Adriatic cave dive, the kind only accessible with a knowledgeable tour guide, through one small rocky crevasse.

The emotional mayhem that followed felt like I had been teleported straight into cavernous deep dark depths. No tour guide with me though, no timing of the moon required. And once you’re in the murky depths you didn’t agree to diving into, you notice the majestic aqua chasm is adorned by Medieval sculptures, most of which are missing one important anatomical feature or another, eerily cloaked in tendrils of slimy deep-sea allege.

In the underwater cave you’re well aware that, should you get lost in the dark rocky tunnels and subsequently run out of oxygen, you will no doubt bob to the surface like a bloated cork, only the surface is the rocky roof of the cave because the tide has risen again. But don’t worry, the fish are grateful for the snack your fresh corpse provides, they don't mind if the heart is a little busted. The smaller fish patiently wait for the sharks to free up your flesh, bite through the wetsuit, avoiding the empty oxygen tank, sharks are intelligent, they know metal isn’t great for maintaining tooth enamel.

BUT, let's slow a little, before you bob up, or lose your diving buddy, or, even before you gasp wide eyed and terrified for the oxygen that no longer exists in the tank strapped on your back. Before the messy watery end, you’re visited by those sea creatures with glowing translucent bodies, spines like Pandora charm bracelets suspended in their clear gooey abdomens. The grotesque creature reminds you of how you feel about your own identity –ugly, hollow and exposed. Its bulging inky eyes staring right into your broken soul. You’re zapped by its luxurious electric tentacles, dangling from its gooey chin below a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth. A shark circles you now, ready to bite, like your constantly nagging inner thoughts of unworthiness.

While deep in the dark watery cave, you begin to hear voices, an underwater choir of sorts, odd you think how did they follow you in here? Who are they even? The un-melodic notes reminding you of a gaggle of drunken hens in a Korean Karaoke bar. Oh, but wait, you do recognise some of the voices. Shame and Guilt are leading the awful choir, Unworthy and Unlovable are doing an atrocious yet very convincing job in providing backing vocals. Together they all lift their high-pitched slurry voices and start to wave their feeble gnarly arms, as you cover your ears and retreat, they swim slowly towards you, like starved swamp creatures rising for air. Soon it’s a deafening warble, a cacophony of all the ways you are in fact a faulty human, all the ways you are not enough, all the ways you’re broken from your childhood, soooo soo broken and unlovable. The End.

** As not to end on such a morbid note, please know over the many months post my deep dive I found my way out of that underwater hell. I have healed. Tremendously. I have a new appreciation of the term ‘break down’ and all the ways one can be properly utilised in the rebuild of the human spirit.

Motivated by the pain revisiting old childhood trauma can bring about and the healing powers of giving your younger self a hug (and really hear her pain **insert uncomfortable EMDR therapy sessions. I’ve learned that life can be softer around the edges, less emotionally whiplashy if you choose it to be. Seeking JOY, dancing in the kitchen, drinking wine in the shower and viewing the world through a lens of curiosity and optimism is equally as valid as delving into deep, deep emotions. The depth of 2018 has faded, akin to a water colour sunset on a West Qld escarpment.

I could not have made it through such a deep dive without my support team, kind strangers and therapist/co-pilot, never wavering in her therapeutic insights, sometimes hard to swallow but always in the name of growth. Here’s to those who held my hand and tolerated my mania, those who laughed and cried with me, those who loved me even in my shabby, unpretty brokenness. And an extra shout out to Mel, the most magnificent therapist ever invented.

If I can get through a complete unravelling, so can anyone.

Emily Jo is a mother of two rambunctious boys, a rusty yet enthusiastic writer, avid observer of mundane happenings and lover of the seaside. Most importantly she firmly believes we ALL have something to offer, if we just reach into our pockets, drawing on our unique rosary of experiences.

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