Will my cup ever overflow?

An exploration of being exhausted, fighting change, and taking care of the human one is.

I am tired.

In processing my self-diagnosis of autism, I am tired. At first, I felt free and liberated. Now, I feel drained and dancing near the edge of something…maybe it is depression or burnout.

I am tired of spending hours a day trying to take care of myself and yet I never feel my cup overflowing. I rarely feel I have extra to give, I seem to only have enough to keep going.

I am having trouble speaking about how I am feeling, I am also having trouble getting words together to write. I message friends who understand, it makes me feel slightly better, and then I feel worse again.

The past year of my life felt like riding on a high. I spent dedicated hours in therapy processing a good amount of trauma, I felt different after all the work I did. I felt like myself, and I thought the life I was building because of it was mine. I thought I had finally figured myself out - how to care for myself, how to listen to myself, how to make space for what I need, even amongst the chaos of early motherhood.

I felt good, I thought I had reach some sort of place. I tried to stay humble and remind myself healing is never done and I would have moments where I did not feel like this in the future.

These reminders did nothing to protect me from the life changing realization that I am autistic.

Because now I look back on all of my life, specifically the last year, and I wonder what is true. How much of what I felt was me and how much of it was what I thought I should experience? Was I truly happy, grounded, and alive, or did I just think that was what one should feel after clearly out chunks of childhood trauma?

Did meditation really change my life? Or was I so convinced it should that I formed an identity around it?

Who am I if I am not who I have been telling myself I have been for the past year, five years, decade, etc?

And in that year, I felt I had more to give, most likely because I stopped processing and lived, even if it was a life of shoulds. Right now, I am processing immensely, I am trying to understand so much, even though I have taken my foot of the gas of making sense of this diagnosis, my brain keeps doing it for me.

There is not more to give and I feel trapped under the weight of that truth.

My husband and I were trying to talk about what I was experiencing the other night and I could not find the words. He kindly asked questions and I started to get overwhelmed, I kept trying to answer him because I felt I owed him that and I ended up shutting down completely.

Is this what has happened my entire life? Were my meltdowns and shutdowns me pushing myself too far? Were these clear signs of discomfort always there? Did I blow right past them?

As I ruminated in shut down, I spiraled around what I do with my day and why it never feels like enough time for me. My husband said in our conversation how much time he gives me and I started to feel shame because I know he is right. And I also know he wasn’t saying I give you so much time, why is it never enough?

That was all me asking why isn’t it enough? What am I doing? Why does this feel reminiscent of early motherhood when all I could do with my alone time was stare at the wall.

The thing about being in a good place for so long, the past year of my life was the most mentally healthy I have ever been, is you want to go back. You want to go back to what feels good, it is human nature.

As much as I know pain and discomfort is part of life, I really do not want to be processing all of this. I much rather go back and live my life as I was even if it was not authentic to who I am in my entirety.

I am scared. I am scared of more change. I am scared of more processing. I am scared of facing the parts of my that come out when I am run down, overwhelmed, and not at my best.

I thought I met myself in this past year, I thought I found who I have been looking for my whole life, a version of me that made sense and that made me feel good about myself. And while I am not certain she was entirely true, I know I have to let her go. I know the call with this new information is to figure out who I am in my fullness, without these ideas I have held about being good, or perfect, or based on what other people are doing with their lives.

I know I cannot go back, I know trying to force myself back would be a big mistake. It is extremely uncomfortable in the unknown. It is extremely difficult to parent right now, and to even exist right now. And I have been making myself suffer because I have been trying to blow past this time of the unknown.

I have been trying to get somewhere. I have been trying hard to figure out what I like, who I am, what I need to be doing with my life. And as my husband kindly pointed out many times, can I just stop doing that? Can I stop striving? Can I stop trying to solve the problem of myself and let myself experience what I am experiencing?

Even if that is a massive, confusing funk where I am exhausted and lonely and angry and sad, usually at the same time.

What happens if I stop trying to push past this experience to the other side?

What if I let myself feel what I am feeling instead of trying to get somewhere?

Why is so uncomfortable to be with what is?

I have spent of my whole life trying to be someone I am not, I have spent a lot of time and energy into making myself fit some sort of mold even though that has always felt uncomfortable to me. It is why I shift careers and interests often. Nothing fits right, but I have never taken the time to figure out what I truly want and need.

I have tried to, but I realize now even when I tried I was still holding other people’s projections of who I should be, how I should be, and how I should use what I am good at to interact with the world.

I am not sure I have ever really let myself inhabit my body. I have learned to listen more and more over the years, but it is almost as if I someone changed the software inside of me so what I experience feels different.

I always have experienced sensory information as a lot, but now it feels it is harder to ignore or pretend things do not bother me. I find it harder to blow past my body’s boundaries.

All good things, and it is also wildly confusing because my brain cannot help but wonder about what I was doing before this point in time. Was that me? How much of it was really me? How much was I trying to fit in? How much was I pretending?

Those are questions that do not have answers to, although I spend a lot of time wondering as if I could solve myself like a math equation.

I know the healing I did in the past year was real, I know facing some of my past challenges helped me to clear out space in my nervous system. I know this moment in time is asking me to do something similar.

Tending to a relationship with myself is exhausting.

Taking care of myself is exhausting.

I saw this clip the other day of someone saying imagine at the start of your life, you were given a human to take care of and you had to keep them alive. It was your job to listen to them, respect them, and take care of them. Then he said, you are that human, but that is not how we view the role of ourselves because we are often waiting for someone else or something else to come save us.

If that hasn’t been my whole damn life.

When I find the partner, the right job, when I have the kid, when I do this, etc., then I will have it all, then I will find the person or experience that can make me make sense to myself.

But it is no one else’s responsibility to care for us as adults. It was our parents responsibility when we were younger and it is our responsibility as parents to help our children grown into people who respect and honor themselves.

I need to figure out how to care for myself, my real self, my unmasked self. I need to remember the person who is going to love me and tend to my needs first is me. I need to respect my human, I need to listen to my human and in turn respect myself.

Maybe then, my cup will overflow.

Emma

Welcome to Being in Motherhood, I’m Emma, a mother, writer, and artist. Through my writing, I explore nurturing a relationship with myself and the present moment as I navigate motherhood.