Aguantar

 Aguantar. I first learned this word in Madrid, my Junior year in college, when I was twenty years old. Despite my plans to somehow live in an apartment during my year abroad, I had agreed to live with a home-stay family. Nela, my Spanish mama, had jet black hair and bedroom eyes with a raspy voice. She smoked a lot. It was 1997 and grunge was still in. My dyed, platinum-blond hair hung like a curtain down my back, I was tall, thin and twenty. I got a lot of attention in the streets. Some days I would put on my size XL overalls to head out into the city. "Odio esos pantalones" she would say to me. "I hate those pants." She had a flare for hyperbole. 

"No lo aguanto," she would say, about many things. "I can't stand it."

To bear it. To endure. Agauntar.

I don't remember when I started to understand that I lived my life like that. Enduring things. Putting my head down and gutting things out. When I started claiming that word as the way to describe my approach to life, I had already been enduring things for a long, long time.

At 11, you have colitis. You can't eat any of these foods or drink milk anymore. You have to deal with all sorts of medical stuff. I will bear it.

At 13, your parents are getting divorced. That feels so sad and hard. Do you want to talk about it? I will bear it.

At 15, you will never have kids. I am shattered. I will bear it.

At 23, your liver has failed. You need a transplant. I will bear it.

For as long as I can remember people have praised me. For being strong. Amazing. Superwoman. I both fed off it and scoffed at it, shrugged it off. What choice do I have, I wondered to myself. 

Somewhere along the line I claimed the identity that I could make almost anything happen, with sheer force of will. I did not feel like I was making many decisions, I felt like I was shrugging and putting my head down, enduring.

When my ex and I got pregnant by surprise the second time around, we were shocked. We sat up one night talking about our options. I am pro-choice to my core and never could have imagined myself having the kind of conversation we had because, after a lifetime of infertility and hoping for babies, I could not imagine a circumstance under which I would not be grateful to be pregnant. We decided to go forward with the pregnancy, both of us truly paralyzed when it came to imagining the actual details of our future. I do not think I told him at the time, the certainty I felt in my heart when we made that decision. The deep knowing that told me "This will break you," I knew it was the right decision and I knew somehow we could not actually do it. And that we would somehow do it. Because aguantar. My muscles and brain grooves were long-established. Head down, teeth clenched, gutting it out. I can't do it and I will do it because what else is there to be done?

I kept doing it. I felt strongly about sending my kids to a co-op nursery school. It felt essential to me, something I was not willing to give up. My ex did not want to do it. So I put my head down and gutted it out, volunteering in two classrooms and working until my health failed and I stopped working for a while. I kept ending up in the hospital, for one reason or another. People around me were worried. I blew the worry off, still hooked into my way of living and achieving. Did I think I was thriving? I can't answer that now because I hardly have any memory of those years of my life. When I think about it now, and when I notice how I feel these days when people say I'm amazing or shake their heads in disbelief when I describe aspects of my life, I think I probably equated being praised and admired for thriving. 

In the weeks leading up to this week I have been in what I would  describe as a dream-like state. Such extreme overwhelm, looking ahead to a schedule and a way of life that I could logically see were not doable, that I started to shut down. Except in me, shutting down is mostly an internal process that on the outside looks like calm. Even blase. I could feel myself falling into old patterns, steeling myself, preparing for battle. I felt the panic and the anxiety sitting near me, waving flags, as I made plans and had conversations about how to somehow work and go to grad school and start my field placement and handle distance-learning with my four kids and somehow also feed them and myself and occasional clean the house and water the trees and mow the lawn and. . . Aguantar. Bear it. That is how we do.

Except after motherhood broke me, I started learning and claiming a new way. The tears come as I get to this part because my Self is so grateful that I am learning. I am a Self. I am not infinite. Enduring is not the way I choose to life my life anymore. I am not willing to discount my body, my health, my serenity, my life. I choose myself. I choose my life. I choose rest. 

But how?

Last weekend I dreamed of tidal waves. I have had scary tidal wave dreams since I was a kid, but rarely. Last week a chip of my molar crumbed off as I chewed on some cold pizza, hustling to get some work down. A couple days later another piece of the same tooth broke off. Hmmm. I am not thriving here. My body is showing me that my well-being is not in tact. 

On Monday we had our first day of distance learning. I went into it with very, very low expectations and still, by 5pm I sat on the porch with my dad and burst into tears. I wept for several minutes, feeling the weight of the world crushing me. I don't see a way out! I can't do this! What do I do? Quit grad school? Find some kind of daycare place to take the kids and somehow figure out how to afford it? Take a leave from work? I can see that all of this is impossible for one person to handle and I can see myself walking forward on this terrible, painful path again. Tears, tears, tears. I need help.

The day before, I woke up early to the crash of thunder and a bright orange sky. As though in a dream, I wandered barefoot out into the rain, gazing wonderingly at the sky. Lightening? I sat down in awe, feeling and enjoying the power of this bizarre weather. I watched a fire start on the hills and hoped it would get put out quickly and easily. Four days later, much of the state of California is on fire. It is devastating and scary and overwhelming. I keep getting the image of swimming in the ocean, getting pushed down by the waves. Just when we get our heads up to catch a breath of fresh air, to somehow grab on to something to hold on to, another wave crashes down on our heads, pummeling us. We are in aguantar mode. Bearing it. Gritting our teeth. Doing all the things each of us do to somehow keep going, when it feels impossible.

My tears helped me. Reaching out to people in my life and being honest about how I'm struggling and what I'm worried about helped me. And most of all, remembering that I must keep choosing to ease up on myself as the key to everything else is helping me. I thrash and fight and tighten and hunch my shoulders, going into battle-mode. Bearing it. Refusing to be broken by it and falling precipitously close to those old grooves where fighting through suffering feels like the only way forward.

No.

I will give myself a break. I will remember I am not infinite. I will ask for help. I will rest. I will look for ways to fill myself up, even when and especially when it feels most impossible. And I will come here to write some words as a reminder to anyone who wants or needs to hear it. When we find ourselves in aguantar-mode, can we see it as an invitation to look for ways to let go somewhere and somehow? I believe we can. I believe that we must.