Can I quit yet? Can I say "enough"? Requesting permission to give up.
Six years ago, I was fired from a job I loved. That role had felt like a calling. I had dedicated years and years and so much of my heart to it. I was devastated.
The next day, I found out I was pregnant. This was in the middle of a global pandemic, riots in my city, and forest fires so bad that I couldn't see the street from our front door through the orange, smokey haze.
But I kept going. That's what we have to do: we are grown ups and life is hard. We just keep signing in with MFA, paying our bills, wiping our own butts, and washing the dishes anyway.
The next level was harder, somehow. It was the throwing cans, punching-holes-in-the-walls, drunken, stoned ranting, paranoid-and-possessive-accusations-and-demands, tears-of-my-two-young-children level. The final boss was figuring out how to escape a crazy person sitting on the hood of my car screaming and foaming at the mouth.
But there wasn't winning, just escaping. No cool cutscenes, just terror and tenuous relief. The eggshells were cleaned very slowly. I was treading water and isolated and overwhelmed but I did not spend every day in bed. I went to work and washed my hair and my kids' hair and folded the laundry because the chores don't care.
And then I spent money I didn't have to move back across the country to be near my mother, who was retiring, to have some help as a single working mom. Finally! I was going to have some relief! I could breathe!
Nope, lol. Something is wrong with mom. Was it a stroke? Is it MS? Is it cancer? No it is ALS. What is ALS?
Oh.
And I get laid off again. But I do get a job, because I have bills and two kids. It pays half what I was making, of course, but it is better than unemployment, plus the grass on the lawn still needs to get cut. So we keep going because we are in our 40s now and health insurance premiums are a tax requirement (I think).
But I do manage to get a Real Divorce, meet a Real Man, and maybe things are going to be ok? We have a beautiful wedding with perfect weather, our life gets a new rhythm. Love is rad. We can do hard things together. Let's have a baby?
Miscarriage 1: October 2025. Miscarriage 2: January 2026.
Miscarriage 3: April 2026 (literally right now).
The floor needs vacuuming and the mail keeps coming, so I guess I will keep going? The tides of life don't care what is happening on my boat. They will send waves over my deck and carry me in whatever direction the tumultuous sea is churning. Wee!
I am not a sailor, I struggle to even make metaphors about the ocean. I can at least swim, though.
I am looking for permission to give up, though, all throughout, because it is hard. I don't want to dust or do taxes while I am grieving and my head and heart are overflowing with uncertainty, fear, and anguish. I don't want to pick up clutter or answer emails when I have bigger worries. But they don't stop. The thousand little paper cuts require as much attention as the larger wounds, all at the same time.
What does it even mean to give up? What does that look like? What happens next? Giving up looks pretty much the same, except instead of being in a boat I'm just naked in the ocean. It isn't really an option.
I feel like I want the suffering and pain to stop, but all the evidence says nope, sorry. Why don't I think or hope to accumulate super strength or look at the bad stuff as an opportunity or a lesson? This could be my origin story for my forthcoming big hero arc. Why does it make me weary instead of transforming me?
I do keep going but of course I do because there is no choice. I can't drain the ocean, or freeze it, or evaporate it. It is very big and I am very small. And I am stuck no matter what.
Where would permission even come from? What would it even do? Is it just "I want my mommy"? Because, like, yeah. I do.
I want to be taken care of. I want someone else to put the dishes away and take the trash to the curb. And pay the bills. And stroke my hair and say, "it is all going to be ok." To take me in their arms and let me sob and blow my snotty sad nose on their shoulder and not even care about the big wet mess. To absorb it all like a sponge, and suck up all my despair.
When I was a kid, that was my mom. But now I am a grown up. And it has to be me. And I don't know how to be a sponge for myself.
I am not alone. But my partner should not be my sponge.
And I have my own kids. And I need to figure out how to be their sponge.
So, who is giving me permission? Does it even matter? I am searching for something I can never have that will never help. Permission to give up does not exist, and even if it did, it wouldn't help.
So what do I do now? I am too tired and sad to wake up every morning and find gratitude and hope. I can go to Target and buy some inspirational pillows and journals to remind me, but that feels like the universe being sarcastic. I can make a commitment to a routine that I can break. I could read my 100th self help book and roll my eyes at the formulaic way the editors ensure they sell enough of them.
Maybe the only thing left to do is just accept that this is good enough. That being tired and overwhelmed is how it is, and that whatever I am able to do is OK. Maybe the permission that I need is from me. Maybe I need my own permission to keep going. Not to give up. Not to be carried.
I give myself permission to be tired and sad and overwhelmed and do what I can when I can. I give myself permission to not be special, or always have answers, or always be happy. I give myself permission to be confused and angry and to make mistakes. I give myself permission to do my best, and to acknowledge my best isn't always the same, or what other people's best looks like.
I give myself permission to kind of suck at life, so that I can keep on living it.