My Mommy Mid-Life Crisis

Rock Bottom Became the Solid Foundation on Which I Rebuilt My Life - J.K. Rowling

NOTE: This was the essay performed at Listen to Your Mother on May 11th

I can call the police… I can always call the police.

I closed my eyes and took long deep cleansing breaths. 5…6…7… It sometimes worked.

Fuck. I can always call the police.

It was late at night in Amherst Massachusetts. My elementary-school-aged kids were peacefully sleeping in our short-term rented summer house. I, however, was awake and desperate. I resisted the urge to wake them and chirp in a sing-song way:

“Kids! Get up! Mommy doesn’t like to be alone at night in the woods in a place where I know nobody. Let’s play Uno!”

That would make me a bad mother – a really bad mother. A crazy mother.

My husband was also peacefully sleeping in our home two-and-a-half hours away in suburban New Jersey. I couldn’t wake him either. It wasn’t an emergency. I simply feared the setting sun since I was in the storm surge of an existential mommy midlife crisis.

That would make me a bad wife. A crazy wife.

I stared out the kitchen window. It was dark outside. Too dark. Too quiet. If I went out into the dense Hampshire county woods and screamed “DO I EXIST?” and no one heard me, did I?

I overthink. Therefore I am.

The anxiety grip tightened around my chest. My heart palpitated. My short term memory shot. Breakfast… what did I have? I can’t remember. I can’t remember yesterday…

Was I actually going crazy?

There was no cable to distract me from my night terrors nor the world wide web; these were the dial-up days before the internet provided plenty of distractions. The only tv had bad reception from a rabbit ear antenna.

 I can call the police.

I imagined it would go like this:

“Hi. This is Caytha… Caytha. No…  Cay….. tha.  With a C. It should be a K. It’s weird. I know… You see, my mom’s name is Carole, and it was very popular — Why am I calling?... Oh… Can you come over and hang with me? Just until I fall asleep. I’ll make you laugh. Promise.”

What was I thinking?

I wrongly thought temporarily trading an intense right leaning capitalistic suburb with an intense left-leaning college town would provide clarity.

Like the mythic hero journeys we studied in film school in my late 20s – in my early 40s I embarked on a quest in search of answers.

“How can I be a good mother, a good wife and good to myself?”

My kids were struggling at school, and I was over-obsessing about the unfair treatment my 9-year-old daughter had received by the coaches of her hyper-competitive club soccer team.

I also just quit what I believed was a perfect, close-to-home job in the internet division at our local paper that was anything but perfect. I hit rock bottom.

Who was I kidding?  I wasn’t a hero. I was an angry, angst-ridden, stay-at-home mom who wondered how – as an ambitious post-feminist – I had gotten there.  

I was raised to believe that women could do anything and have it all: “Bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan.” The impact of motherhood was a dirty secret shared only after childbirth. Whatever choice mothers made seemed like the wrong one: we were deep in the girl-on-girl battlefield of the stay-at-home vs working-mom war.

I was strangled by the privilege of choice because I wanted a meaningful profession and to be a provider, but I also wanted and needed to be there for my kids. The “perfect” work/life balance seemed unattainable. I started to spiral. That’s when the panic attacks started.

As planned, my husband came that weekend. I shortened the trip from four weeks to two and we all returned home.

A doctor prescribed anti-anxiety meds to curb the panic attacks. Within a week, they abated. While running along our tree-lined suburban streets, I smiled and thought with a touch of giddiness,

I’m now a medicated mom. Life is swell.

The following week I started to have clarity. On another run I said to myself in the second person, “you have an MFA in screenwriting. You used to work in the movie business…” A career that seemed a lifetime ago when we lived in Los Angeles.

I committed to screen-write my way out of mommy malaise. I stopped the meds cold turkey. Not recommended. I had intermittent withdrawal tremors, but I also had hope.

Starting over wasn’t easy. It’s nothing like riding a bicycle, but I persevered. It turns out the craziness of motherhood is great preparation for the craziness of the movies business.

Since leaving the woods, I have written feature films, a limited series, short films, and stage plays. It’s said that an overwhelming breakdown can lead to an undeniable breakthrough. I found a way to be a proud movie-making mom.