What I Know: We All Have Our Shit

The sad, robotic, literal “whomp whommmp” of the blood pressure reading filled the room.  

Like dogs trained to a whistle, Adam and I turned to face each other, eyes wide. We had been there long enough to know that was a bad sound. It was the sound we heard for the first couple days of my return to the hospital after the birth of Theo when sparkles in my vision sent me to the ER. I was quickly admitted with postpartum preeclampsia and HELLP Syndrome due to massive water retention and stroke level blood pressure readings. We were on Day Four and just that morning I had been relieved of all wires, cords, and medication to see if my body could regulate on it's own.

After a morning of silence, the chime of a high reading meant my body still could not maintain normal blood pressure readings. Frustration and fears rolled through the room at the sound. I asked Adam, bouncing our son, for the numbers.

He looked. Bad, again, and getting higher.

Nurses and a doctor entered the room shortly. They fiddled with the monitors and the doctor considered, out loud, that we may have to start IV medication again.

I crumpled down into tears.

Just that morning another nurse had removed the port that morning, thanks to signs of improving health. It seems so small, but having that dangly sticker off my body was amazing. Having all the wires removed was freeing. When I arrived earlier that week, my veins had been under so much pressure that the mild discomfort that the prick of drawing blood or an IV can cause was very painful. In fact, I had been in pain since I was induced ten days earlier. I was so tired of hurting. The idea of getting poked again, receiving medication again, and starting all over was too much.  

I wanted to protest, whine, and cry.  Instead, I was grabbed by the shoulders by a nurse who kind of gave me "upperclassmen you don't want to meet alone in the high school bathroom" energy. She gave me a little shake. “This sucks, but we all have shit that we have to deal with," she said, her face inches from mine.

Her statement made me want to cry more. I felt ashamed and a little scared. And also, her tone and statement felt kind of mean given my situation, but also just kind of in general? Umm, hello? Where was the compassion and care?

She continued. "You have a healthy baby and a loving husband. Parents who are here and care about you. We all have shit. This is just your shit right now.”  

The next day I stared at the cars flying passed on highway outside my window. I drove that highway all the time, never once thinking about what was happening in the walls of the hospital. Never thinking about the people in those walls whose lives were changing or were dealing with really hard things as I traveled by. Never really thinking about the people who spend weeks in there. Never thinking about how maybe they or their loved ones are also likely aso visiting the nearby Whole Foods or Target, like Adam had been all week. Just a person walking around with caring worry and fear, all while being very sleep deprived, but out there in in the world.

The week I really put pen to paper to make some plans for this project early in the summer was one of those weeks where I was questioning a few things parenting. The kids were dealing with bullies at camp and my little pals "anxiety" and "insecurities" were working overtime, sucking my brain space and keeping a racing current in my heart. It felt so hard.

And, it is. Raising kids and teaching them how to deal with the world is hard, important work deserving of time, energy, brain space, and heart.

But, also that week I had a friend miscarry. Another question some marriage stuff. Another lost an in-law. Another had a mom in the hospital.

One of my favorite podcast hosts, authors, and all around parasocial relationships is with Nora McInerny. Nora hosts the podcast, "Terrible, Thanks for Asking" and wrote a handful of grief books in the wake of the death of her husband in their early thirties. She is funny and sarcastic and relies on all of the same millennial zeitgeist references do drive home a point as I do. I have co-opted a handful of her well used phrases.

One of them being, "there isn't a 'grief olympics.'" Meaning, no one is handing out medals for tough stuff. One hard thing vs. the other hard thing isn't more worthy or weighty than another. Perspective is good; but when things are hard, don't compare. Let your stuff be hard and let someone else's stuff be hard, too.

The other is one that I use almost daily: "Life is just being lifey." I have already used it in this project. It's such a perfect little phrase that I almost gave it its own essay.

You know how it feels like sometimes life is like tires on a car? You have a "house" tire. A "kids" tire. Health. Marriage. Work. Sleep. And so on. Rarely are you cruising on all the tires. Often one-- or more-- are running a little flat. That's life just being lifey.

But no matter if it's a literal or figurative flat tire or actual big grief, it's all shit. We all have it.

Life, for me, felt very much like a living breathing version of "March in the Midwest" the March after Danny died. Some days felt like moving through mud or others were like a crusty, dirty pile of snow still on the sidewalk. Some days I felt like I might get a glimmer of sunshine and temperatures in the seventies, others I might be slipping on black ice, raw with pain. In my mind, I joked that I needed something like a hat or a shirt, something a la the Scarlet Letter (but less sexy), to note my mental state. To let people know of my shit.

I recalled the veils worn by the March sisters in the days after Meg's death in Little Woman. Maybe a name tag, I mused.

"Hello, I am... grieving."

"Hello, I am... ragey."

“Hello, I am... always worried."

"Hello, I am... not sure what you are going to get."

"Hello, I am... actually feeling pretty good and would love to talk about my dead brother if you bring it up in conversation."

But, then I imagine all the hats that we would see out in the world. What would everyone's name tags say? They would be everywhere.

"Hi, my teen is suicidal."

"Hi, my wife left me this morning."

"Hi, IFV failed. Again."

"Hi, my car's tire is flat and it just sucks."

These people are all around us. We all have shit. We just don't have name tags, hats, or veils. This realization has made me consider more so the causes and conditions that make a human react with poor or explained behavior versus the assuming, "Wow, that guy's an asshole/space cadet/idiot/depressing." It's made me want to greet the world and people with more kindness and ease.

Because, yeah. Some of this is just shit. Life is lifey and the tires are going to go flat on occasion. And, it will happen again, too. Here is the permission to call hardships and suffering of all kinds what it is.

But also to find on the other side of that suffering is compassion and care.

Because we all have our shit.