Back to me
It was a Wednesday and I had to cancel my morning training sessions because I couldn’t stop crying. That’s not what I told people obviously, but that was the actual reason. My Mum had slept with her phone on, next to her bed, in case I needed her in the night.
Of the positives that the adversity of this year has brought with it, the relationship that I now have with Mum is one of the greatest, despite not having seen her in person for two years due to the pandemic. I treasure all the things I’m now realising we have in common - from our loud and spontaneous laugh to our excitement over hard rubbish piles and relishing in our op shop bargains. We share photos of our cats and days (gardening/gym updates), and she’s now the first person I call when I have something to say, even when it’s something good.
I had been crying fairly consistently for several weeks, since my partner and I separated. I spiraled in and out of ‘severe depression and anxiety’, according to the GP, who had prescribed me Lexapro (again) Temazepan and Melatonin, and had a calming, mum-like manner that I found soothing, even over the phone. I basically needed an army of mums, to soothe and reassure and tuck me in and stroke my hair, bring me Rocky Road and readymade meals and make sure I ate them. I needed them to tell me that this was hard, breakups are hard. You’re grieving, you feel like you’re dying and falling apart. You feel like a part of you has gone. That’s normal, and you’re going to be OK. The Mum Army came in the form of several close friends, who did all these things, day in and out for weeks, checking in and bringing food and letting me sob in their arms or on the phone while I bawled that I was never going to stop feeling like this.
Grieving is the worst I think because it’s not just the person and the things about the person that you miss and feel fucked up about, it’s all of the things you had in your head that you’d do with them that hadn’t actually happened yet, and how you were going to continue to grow and be a part of each other’s journeys, and now…not, I guess. I’ve done breakups before and it’s really been OK, as in, I’ve been OK, and I’ve known that I’ll be fine and whilst I’ve been sad, I haven’t needed multiple pseudo mums and medications to keep the CATT team at bay. This was different though. Despite the sometimes-glaring differences and incompatibilities, it wasn’t just another relationship and another *swipes right*; it was safety, security and family that I felt I had lost in the space of a lockdown.
I was a fucking mess, but was somehow determined to get on with it by telling myself both real and imagined tales of post traumatic growth. This could be my opportunity, I parroted internally, as I forced the pieces of my shattered life into a new, shiny mold. I scoured commercial real estate online and made spreadsheets and budgets and lists of gym equipment, which exceeded that budget. I did drawings of gym layouts that made no sense, created a Pinterest of unrealistic inspiration, and contacted an amazing, real-life painter to discuss an epic mural, to go on the imaginary wall in my imaginary gym. I was like a kid trying to eat their fucking play-dough cake and choking on a mouthful of goo and glitter.
It was all too much, too soon, and I flailed wildly from one drastic life decision to another, having frequent meltdowns as I advertised for a roommate one day then looked at one way flights home to Auckland the next. The thought of being HOME, with Mum and the op shops and the local gym and my best friend forever who lived just down the street was like a recurring fantasy. There’d always be ripe bananas in the fruit bowl and someone to talk (cry) to and nothing would be hard and scary and unfamiliar. I’d seamlessly slip back into my old life with people who got me and loved me and would never leave me. Maybe this was what was always meant to happen…but also deep down I knew that it wasn’t.
I felt frozen, incapable of a decision either way, but also terrified of remaining in this fucked up limbo land - a house with empty rooms and things we had bought together when we were a ‘we’. I was surrounded by our plates and our appliances and our shared entertainment accounts (Selling Sunset meets Die Hard). I felt like I was drowning in memories and feelings, no matter how hard I tried to turn things from ‘we’ back to ‘me’. The worst part of it, I felt, was that I had previously been fine being a ‘me’. The ‘we’ had sort of snuck up on me with its assumed holidays, expected family occasions together, and familiar Saturday night dinners. Now I just felt like half a person, and not even really sure what the other half looked like anymore, even if I did find it (her).
On a Sunday morning in September, I took a walk with a friend and her dog, to find a gym. We looked in the windows of the many buildings for lease (Covid) in the neighborhood, and contemplated their suitability for squat racks and a potential home for one very recently single 35-year-old and her cat. We stood across the street from number 1118 Toorak Rd, appreciating its vintage brick work and large, street- facing windows, offering a view in of what had previously been a tattoo studio, prematurely closed by the virus that had consistently fucked the small businesses of 2020-21 into oblivion. At that stage, the ‘maybe I’ll just open a gym’ idea had been thrown out there and lingered with a question mark, almost daring me to take what seemed like an incredibly impossible and ridiculous step. A move like that, even in the potential tail end of the pandemic, would require balls that were far bigger than those possessed by a person who cried daily on the phone to their mum. Even after I had actually inspected the building, with another kind friend who asked the property manager important questions and took measurements while I tried not to look as though I’d spent the morning crying under my (our) weighted blanket and watching Friends with Graham, I was fucking terrified. It all felt too big and scary and horrible, and more than anything I just wanted to curl into a ball and reemerge when all the important decisions had been made for me, ideally by someone who’s current life goal wasn’t to ‘be fine’ by the time they finished every season of Friends (true story).
If there was any one person who helped me believe I could do this, it was Mum. She reminded me of when I moved to Melbourne, almost ten years ago now. I hated it. It was hot and windy at the same time, which was just wrong, beer didn’t come in boxes of twelve, and I couldn’t find my usual tobacco. I arrived in February 2012 with my entire life packed into a green and purple tartan suitcase that cost more than the belongings inside it ($340NZD). I slept on my friend’s floor for a month and cried myself to sleep every night because I missed my mum, my best friend, and everything that was easy and familiar. It was the worst. I told Mum, and I was so uncertain about it for so long and it was probably the hardest decision I’ve had to make ever. And how do you feel now? Pretty much the same, I said. Which means I need to do it.
I have a cat, his name is Graham, and he’ll need to live here too. I told the property manager of 1118 Toorak Rd, and I smiled for the first time in weeks when he told me that wouldn’t be a problem. I’ll have the lease amended for you. We were standing in the middle of the large, high-ceilinged shop front space that was to be my very own gym. I was doing this, I had no idea fucking how, but I was. I wasn’t really back to ‘me’ yet, but I was on my way.
