Emotional hide-and-seek

I went to my first therapy session yesterday. I decided to see a counselor sometime after my 40th birthday. Partly, to deal with feelings of anger and being overwhelmed and partly to see if I can find a way to get happy again. I don't mean I am miserable. I am just not actively happy. I think that my old coping mechanisms - those of a single, childless person with a good income - just aren't effective for the challenges of being a parent with little time alone, finite resources and lots of stress. Plus, few coping mechanisms are adequate when your infant is sick.

The session was refreshing and has got me thinking about my obsession with mess. I know this may sound funny but I have this strong conviction that if I could get the house totally clean, just once, I would have my life on track again. Okay, okay. I know this isn't true but somewhere along the line I have formed this equation of mess with powerlessness and that is where I have got stuck. I have every emotion under the sun about the mess at our house and work hard at it when I get a rare moment to myself. Then I resent everyone (read: Josh) for not doing more of it to "take this cup" from me.

Now, the weird thing is that I feel far less emotion about Wren's heart condition or potential need for open-heart surgery. People who hear about his CHD sympathize about how hard it must to live with the uncertainty. Honestly, thesedays I almost forget it. No, I don't forget it but its just a fact with no emotion attached to it. This changes a few days before an echo when I feel afraid but most days I am just coasting.

One of the things to come up during my first therapy session is the idea that we can transfer big emotions and issues into safe arenas, dress them up in a way that is manageable. Since I was never a neat-freak before motherhood the therapist suggested that I may have strong feelings about other things that are being worked out between the vacuum cleaner and the dustbunnies.

So, the good news is that I may not be a compulsive home cleaner driven to despair by cereal underfoot forever. The bad news is that hiring a cleaner may not bring me equanimity. Still, if cleanliness is my drug of the moment I don't think this is the time for me to go cold turkey so I shall persist in following the clean-home=happiness equation until proven otherwise.