Posted by Elizabeth

I woke up on Monday morning with the dawning realization that I was stuffed.  A week of birthday revelry had taken its toll; having spent the last week literally stuffing myself with too many sweets, too much red meat, and a glut of extroversion, I was feeling the aftershocks.  My schedule the past few months has been stuffed, too, between jetting off to Europe for three weeks and then throwing myself back into life at home full-throttle.  I madly caught up on missed life, spending hours returning emails, phone calls, and sorting mail.  I immediately dove into the long and tedious process of changing my name, created a baby registry, hired a birth doula, and ordered cloth diapers.  I suddenly panicked when I realized that I didn’t have a dresser for the baby, and made it my mission in life to procure this item as quickly as humanly possible.

On Monday morning I flipped through the upcoming months in my day planner and was greeted with giant swaths of clean, white space.  The truth was, if I continued at the pace I had been going, my to-do list would be littered with gratifying check marks in a matter of days.  I fought my immediate impulse to begin filling that blessed open space with the hum of productivity, reasoning that, now that the big things were taken care of, I could sit back, relax, and enjoy these waning baby-free days.  But a sinking feeling took hold when I realized I had no idea what “sitting back and relaxing” would really mean at this juncture.

A year ago I filled my leisure time by tending to my modest backyard garden, watching a movie, taking a walk, writing, or cooking up a feast.  But now?  I barely have energy to cook a simple supper, I rarely snap on the television, writing assignments are a painful exercise in self-discipline, and walks bore me.  I halfheartedly planted my garden this year – something that had given me so much pleasure last summer – and took it as a sign when the tomato plants that had effortlessly thrived last year were quickly decimated.

Without my usual stand-bys to guide me, I feel unmoored from my own life.  I drift aimlessly through my days.  There is a great deal of flipping, browsing, surfing, and skimming going on; my actions are anything but guided and specific.  Not only am I unable to commit to an entire book, I can hardly consign myself to finishing a newspaper article.  The days creep by, and I creep through them.  As my belly gets bigger, I realize that I don’t do anything — physically or mentally — quickly anymore.

I’ve clearly lost interest in the things that used to excite me, but I’m not sure how to fill what feels like precious time before my baby arrives at the end of summer.  In other words, I’m not sure how to relax, and I feel a great deal of pressure to get it right.

Obviously, my solution up to this point has been to drown myself in a sea of activity – a classic defense mechanism.  If I were my client, I’d say to her, (gently, of course) “What is all this activity hiding, Elizabeth?  What are you avoiding?”  The answer, I think, is that I’m becoming someone else – I just don’t know who that person is yet.  At this point we’re casual acquaintances rather than bosom buddies.  We’re still in that slightly awkward “getting to know you” phase.  I can make only broad stroke guesses about the things she likes and doesn’t like; the specifics just aren’t there yet.

Rather than spend the next few months spinning around like a whirling dervish, or forcing myself to embrace the things that no longer fulfill me (at least for now), I think I’d be better off getting to know this emerging me, even if she’s just a temporary, pregnancy-induced visitor.  Perhaps rather than freak out that I’m in the midst of an identity crisis on the cusp of motherhood (undoubtedly the reason I’m facing this crisis in the first place), I should greet this new me with curiosity.  Maybe the questions that should guide my days are the ones I’d ask someone I’m just getting to know:

What sorts of things do you like doing?

What’s your philosophy of life?

What do you feel like doing today?

Here’s what I know thus far:  she likes taking afternoon naps.  She can’t read enough about babies and motherhood.  Yoga is something she spends all day Tuesday looking forward to.  She loves lying on the couch, with her hands pressed against her belly, and feeling her baby kick; she daydreams about her constantly.  Dance classes aren’t fun.  She doesn’t care if she doesn’t see another movie all summer.  She goes to her favorite card store once a week just to browse, and often ends up with a handful of cards.  She loves blueberry scones and doughnuts.  She could care less about how she’s dressed.

She knows she wants to write; she just doesn’t know what exactly.

Have you ever felt like your identity was changing, but you hadn’t yet “met” the person you were becoming?  How have you faced these “identity crises” in the past?  Any ideas on how I should get to know the emerging me?

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