Soundly Sarah – Memoirs of Motherhood, Mental Health, and the Magic in the Mess. ♡

Journaling, Mental Health

My self narratives.

01/08/2024 No Comments

A year of beliefs, taken from a year of conversations. All the following came after my words, “I am…

Boring as hell.

Extra.

Terribly socially awkward.

Nerd.

Complicated and not easy.

Doomsponge.

Silly keener.

Not a leader and nor do I find comfort in it.

Entirely too curious.

Doom.

Obtuse.

A cheap bastard.

Being extra AF.

Predictable.

Afflicted with the curse of competency.

Vexed.

Movie dumb.

Pansy Canadian.

The worst.

Being very normal.

Truly terrible.

Not to be trusted with life.

Not very good.

Awkward.

So socially inept.

Dumb.

Oddly excited.

Too doom and gloomy.

Kinda doom reincarnated.

Paranoid AF.

Slightly panicked.

Human.

Fucking vexed.

Intrigued.

Super freaking anxious.

Most proud.

Running solely on caffeine and stubbornness.

Thankful.

Born from the loins of crazy.

Absolutely rattled.

Not prepared.

MOST SUSS.

Not innocent.

Not perfect.

Not without fault.

Two seconds from screaming.

Too predictable.

Crestfallen.

Utterly disenfranchised.

Wrong tho?

Over simplifying the fuck out of everything.

Crazy.

Offended.

A heathen.

Torn.

That way.

A giant confused noob.

Ready to commit violence.

Because I’m scared.

Incapable of making important decisions.

Slightly doubting myself.

Jealous.

Super vocal.

Freaked.

Legitimately terrified.

Gobsmacked.

So enlightened.

Shocked.

Not drunk enough for this.

Stressed.

Exhausted.

An exception to the rule.

So out of shape.

Going to conduct an experiment.

Asking for too much.

Not up to date.

A smarmy asshole.

Wont to do.

Entirely too honest.

Not worth it.

Not worthy.

NOT ALLOWED TO FORGET.

Like, high on life right now.

SO relieved.

Sadly not surprised.

Accepting and embracing this reality.

Without.

Insane.

So excited.

Guilty of.

Really bad.

Here for it.

Wounded.

SO OLD.

For this plan.

Not sure why.

Not allowed.

Much more than what I look like.

Slightly biased.

Stumped.

A silly hopeful optimist.

Curious.

Sleepy AF.

Very people-y, yes.

So fucking happy.

The least fanciest person of all time.

Not going to Google if that is a thing.

So boring.

Crazy owl lady.

Way overthinking this.

Not at all that calculated.

12 years old.

Going to weep with joy.

So god damn tired.

Tired.

Inefficient.

Crispy.

Lame AF.

Reading too much into this.

A terrible person.

Allergic to shopping.

Dumb and hopeful.

Going to be inexplicably joyous.

Dumb when sleepy.

Dreading this with my everything.

Still confused a bit but I always am.

I don’t know how (I am).

Low key embarrassed.

Wading in “I have no idea what I’m doing” waters.

Awe in the stupidity of humanity.

Most blessed.

Lacking cohesion.

Confirmed old.

So mad at myself.

Anxious and nervous.

Always 10 steps behind.

Busy, but often I am equally slacking.

Over it.

There with you.

NOT.

Me.

Mental Health

I see you, inner child.

12/21/2023 No Comments

I’ve been doing the work (as per Nicole LaPera), and have been asked to write letter(s) to my inner child. And so, I begin.

Caretaker Sarah,

I see you there, putting others’ comforts and well-being above your own, because that’s what you did as a kid. You did all you could to be helpful and good, so dad and mom kept loving you, even though it wasn’t you they were angry at – they were mad at each other.

I see you, needing to be needed, giving and giving as a means to help you feel worthy.

I see you, not listening to your own needs out of fear of being selfish or rude.

I see your need for approval from others, and a self-worth that depends on what others think of you.

I see you apologizing when you’re not even at fault.

I see you doing everything to avoid conflict at all costs, wanting to keep the peace you could never find in your childhood, at times to your own detriment.

I see you, struggling through being a constant giver to your children, feeling selfish and hallow by dare considering scaling back your selflessness for the sake of your own sanity, and then hating yourself when doing it.

I see you, I hear you, I love you.

They were mad, but not with you.

Anxiously Attached Sarah,

I see you there, struggling with self-esteem, believing you’re not good enough for someone to stay. This is a fear instilled into you by your mother’s inconsistent parenting, toxic emotional responses, and bipolar tendencies. Your childhood was a time of reeling and on unsteady ground. Where could you stand if you didn’t know where you stood with her?

I see you and your need for constant reassurance.

I see you there, among a lifetime of settling. Anyone that will have you, gets you. And then you get fixated, in love with love.

I see you there, clingy and needy. Terrified of being alone and abandoned, you pull and you need and you need. But then you panic and you push and push – what if they leave you? What if they find someone better?

I see you and your anxiety and jealousy and reading too much into EVERYTHING when your person is not there.

I see you, always afraid you’re going to mess it all up, afraid to speak. Fear driving you to deny your own needs for the sake of keeping the course – a course driven by anxiety, worry, and need.

I see you, I hear you, I love you.

She was sick and unwell, and it had no reflection on you.

*

You are enough, Sarah. You are enough.

Journaling, Mental Health

One way, and then another.

12/07/2023 No Comments

(I wrote this yesterday and promptly forgot to post it. Please know that today was a better day, however.)

I am having a particularly shitty day.

I’m not here to talk about said day though, because we all have shitty days. We all have days we wish possessed a restart button. We all have days we’ve wanted desperately to be over. We all have been there, and it’s a (shitty) fact of life. A shitty day does not make me unique or special, it makes me human.

In hopes of being able to see myself past this day, I am here to write. Not about shitty days, but about an entirely different subject. One that if I put more focus on, could help me better understand how I operate, and could potentially eschew today’s grumblings about shitty days to another day.

Maybe?

I’ve started therapy again for the second time this year. It’s… been a lot.

There are two predominant reasons as to why I was driven back.

Firstly, my self-confidence is staggeringly low these days. I’ve lost a lot of weight since the beginning of March and I’m now at a size I haven’t seen since high school. Looking at my face in the mirror these days is a continual surprise, and I catch angles of my new figure in photos and am shocked. Despite that, my self-image and self-worth remain unchanged, stubbornly and frighteningly so. What I thought would be a reciprocal relationship of losing weight/loving myself – it has not panned out. My painfully deprecating sense of humour, pitiful self-worth, and floundering sense of self, all of it is still very much with me, 80+ pounds lost be damned. I don’t like it. I don’t like that I can’t be complimented without telling someone why they are wrong for doing so. I don’t like that my immediate gut reaction to men who are interested in me (and lately there has been one in particular who’s caught my eye) is to convince them as to why they are wrong for doing so. My self-confidence seems intent on sabotaging my very self, and I have to stop it. If I don’t, it threatens to push people away. It threatens to be my undoing.

Frankly, I refuse. Fuck you, self. I’m better than that, and I need to start believing that.

Secondly, and said succinctly, I don’t know how to be alone. Said more specifically, being alone in the evenings is something I possess a staggeringly terrible capacity to tolerate. In the day time, work takes over my mental faculties. I can easily manage my emotions and needs. But once my kids go to bed in the evening and I am left to my own devices from 7:30-10:45PM, it’s a different story. It’s as if I forget that I have hobbies of my own, and I feel lost without someone to chat with and take up all of that “space”. I grab onto whomever (lately, that someone I mentioned earlier) will fill the void of that time chunk, seeking attention and conversation. Which is not bad, per say, but I don’t know how to fill that space on my own. If I don’t have someone there, it all falls apart. I try to distract myself with video games, books, and TV shows, but it’s only a temporary solution. Merely a Band-Aid for my deep-seated need for continuous companionship in my evenings, and if I lack it, I fall. Hard. Therein come waves of feelings of “less than” which start to bleed into my already shitty self-confidence, further perpetuating a cycle of sadness that I do not want.

That I do not want.

I want to be able to be alone (if need be). I want to not find it scarily open and empty anymore if I don’t have someone there to talk to in the evenings and take up the space.

I want to know how to take up that space on my own.

And if I could love/like/not dislike myself just a bit more in such motions?

I’d like that, too.

A lot.

Journaling, Mental Health

My first memory.

10/15/2023 No Comments

I don’t have one.

I try. God, I try. I dig deep into the back of the dusty corner of my memory, but I know know not what is real or taken from a picture. It all feels too far removed for me to be sure. Strings I pull at, hoping I tug at *the* one which unlocks something of truth… but mere strings they remain.

I spoke with a good friend of mine once about this. Her earliest memory is not a memory, but someting taken from a photo. Outside of that, she doesn’t remember much else of her childhood. Her counselor suggested this could have been due to repression – a tampering down for the sake of trauma.

Knowing my childhood, I wonder the same.

I reach out to my brother and sister, curiously so. Do they remember? If so, what was their first? We don’t talk all that much these days, and this question they may find strange. I persist.

But before I hear back, I stop myself. There has to be *something*. Even if it took place at the age of, say, 12 — you have some recollection of your childhood. Why not try to write it out?

I remember long days spent on the very flat and large rock next to the spring wash, towels laid out with Jess and Rachel. Uno played for hours under a warm sun. Dips into the wash – chilly from the snowy runoff. Hair slowly drying in the sun as the hours crept leisurely along.

I remember rides with Aaron in his go-cart. A mad man he was, pedal floored as he raced around the rocky and wooded neighborhood, reckless for speed and thrill. I’d hold onto that red roll cage for the life of me, terrified I’d spill out onto the dusty roads. I still have a scar on my right knee as evidence of that having eventually happpened.

I remember sitting on Kimberly’s deck, drinking tea with far too much milk in it, pretending to be regal ladies. Trips inside her dark house to see what her mom had on the telly – often Supermarket Sweeps. Kim’s laughter at my learning that phone was in fact not spelled “fone”.

I remember my first crush, Jacob, and sleeping with his professional, wallet sized karate photo under my pillow for nights on end. I worshipped that photo. Jacob had no idea I existed, I was merely the younger sister of his sister’s best friend. Back then, tho, I could have sworn it was love.

I remember my dad whistling as he drove. All of us in the back, covered bed of his truck, on the carpeted built in that was dangerously unsafe but perfectly acceptable by the 90’s standards. On the radio would be his Jazz CDs, and like a bird he’d whistle their every note. His radar on the dash occasionally beeping in tune.

I remember my mom’s big, wooden, roll top desk. She didn’t use it all that much, there sitting against the window, but I found it magical. Afternoons I’d spend at it, pretending to play secretary. I’d bring out her ledger books and pens, acting as if I could balance them (spoiler alert: I could not).

I struggle to evoke memories that directly involve my mom, For those that I do, I remember the fighting. I remember the perpetuation of harm. I remember after the most heated of arguments, leaving the house with my dad and siblings, all of us saying goodbye to mom. Again. She was leaving this time. Really leaving. She’d be going back to Canada. She’d finally have enough.

But she was always still there when we got back.

I don’t know what of these are my first memories. I know not the starting point of my childhood recollection.

Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Perhaps, nearing the age of 40, it’s inconsequential in the scheme of things.

I still have yet to hear back from my siblings.

Maybe they don’t remember, either.

Maybe.

Journaling, Mental Health

Mother.

08/22/2023 No Comments

Are you her?

Have you become her?

A lifetime of trying

All directions opposite

Has it happened?

The frustration

You feel it.

The anger

You recognize it.

The passive aggressiveness

You’ve been named it.

It’s her

It’s you

The bad guy.

You don’t want it, but

You’ve become it.

Achingly so.

You don’t want it.

You want peace.

You need peace.

You crave peace.

Is that a lie?

Are you a lie?

Who are you?

To lay blame

How easy it would be

Trying circumstances

Stressful realities

Lies to cover

A means to survive

Continued existence

To see the next day

For which,

You are her.