Compass Kaput

Did somebody say bananas?

It’s a popular line on my son’s favorite tv show, The FreshBeats Band. Watches it all the time so you can imagine, I’ve memorized all their songs. And it’s driving me bananas. Cue music.

These past months have been frantic to say the least. I haven’t had time to absorb what it means to uproot our lives and move to a new country. I’ve just been treading water. Occasionally drowning and resuscitated repeatedly by my wife, who is way better at handling change than I am.

And who I am is being rewritten every day that I am here. Almost like becoming a whole new person. This is my problem right here. What happens if I don’t like who I’m becoming?

I was perfectly fine with the person that I was. I knew him. I liked him. He made me laugh. He had really good taste in music. But the me now? I’m dancing and going bananas.

I was talking with my wife the other day, trying to explain to her what exactly is going on with me. Because I’m going crazy. And not in the fun way crazy can be. Crazy is coming out of me in ways that are hurtful and mean. And some days, I really, really hate myself for doing these hurtful and mean things. I tell myself, it’s not who I am. And yet. It’s coming out of my mouth. Emotions exploding like a neutron bomb. Scaring everyone and scaring myself most of all.

I told her, I’ve got a case of lizard brain where my grey matter is operating on a reptilian level. Just surviving. Just moving from one task to the next. Everyday, over and over again. The same lonely and brainless tasks. Like Groundhog Day. Except less funny.

I’m getting pretty good at folding clothes. And I can do some minimal cooking so we can stop going through Mcdonald’s Drive-Thru. And no more microwave dinners. Vegetables have been reintroduced into our diet and I no longer fear the oven. Or the stove-top. Or pretty much anything in the kitchen. Fingers intact!

Being a mother is hard. Jesus Christ it’s hard. It’s made me feel really, really stupid. You know how guys hate stopping the car to ask for directions? We hate it. We super duper hate it. We’d rather drive lost for another hour than stop the car and roll down the window. It hurts our pride. It reveals us to be unsure of ourselves. It’s admitting we made a mistake. And everyone in the car is counting on us to get us there. And we have no answers, just a delusional internal compass that has finally gone kaput.

This is my everyday for the last 6 months. And my cup is empty.

But maybe, the good thing with being completely empty, you get to start from scratch.

Hi. It’s the new me.