Mama’s Menty B
Are you familiar with this term, “menty B”? It’s what the TikTok kids say when they’ve hit a rough patch, mental health-wise. My research indicates that it can mean anything from “I found this business meeting mildly frustrating” to “I have had a complete breakdown and will need to be committed.”
My menty B, which hit during the last weeks of 2022, was in the middle of the spectrum. One afternoon, I started crying and then I found it difficult to stop. And then I kept crying for several days straight.
With effort, I managed to contain things to the point where I could cry in the bathroom, splash water on my face, and do an impression of a normal human in front of my daughter. However, because children are smarter than adults, she wasn’t fooled.
“Mommy, you seem kinda low,” she said to me one day, laying a hand on my forearm like the two of us were old friends who’d known each other for 20 years.
“Do I?” I scrambled for something non-scary to say. I am kinda low and I don’t totally know why is not a great thing to tell a small child who depends on you for everything. “I guess I just miss Daddy while he’s traveling for work.”
As I said it, I realized that was, actually, part of the problem. And then the rest became clear to me as well: I was burned out.
I am burned out, I should say, because although the crying jag seems to have stopped, I’m still pretty low energy and bewildered.
During my career, I’ve written at least 40 blog posts about burnout. I’ve read hundreds of articles and studies on the topic. But when burnout happened to me, it was a total shock.
For one thing, my problem wasn’t just work-related. It’s true that I loaded up on clients during the last few months of the year and that I had a pretty hefty workload as a result. But my real issue was I had to juggle that work around my husband’s work schedule and my daughter’s school schedule. Beyond the logistical difficulties, it turns out that there’s something demoralizing about trying to fit full-time work into the cracks and crannies of a family’s calendar.
I’m not alone in this problem. Since the pandemic, a record number of working parents, especially working moms, found themselves scrambling to figure out childcare and work commitments. Some were forced out of the workforce entirely, while others got stuck treading water. You’ve seen all the statistics, so I’ll spare you those. I’ll just tell you that if my friends are anything to go by, we’re all feeling pretty worn out.
And speaking of feeling, that’s part of why burnout took me by surprise. It didn’t feel like I was expecting. I didn’t have a lot of the classic symptoms of burnout. I wasn’t any more tired than usual. I didn’t feel dissatisfied with my work. I wasn’t eating more or less or experiencing headaches or gastrointestinal upset.
My biggest symptom, besides the crying, was feeling like nothing was ever going to be fun ever again. I’d look at the calendar and see three different schedules with all their deadlines and requirements and I couldn’t remember the last time I had a chance to grab a beer with a friend.
I almost wrote “grab a coffee with a friend” so that you wouldn’t think that my real problem was alcohol dependence. But I’m going to be real with you. I do not want coffee with a friend. I want a beer with a friend. Two beers would be better. Three beers would be just right. I want unscheduled time and the chance to shoot the shit for a couple of hours without worrying about what I should be doing instead. I want to waste some time without calculating the cost.
I also want time to be creative. I love my work and my family and there are creative aspects to both of my jobs. But to write something that’s truly my own, I need time to let my mind wander. You can tell Virginia Woolf didn’t have kids because if she did, she would have said, “A woman must have money, a room of her own, and five goddamn minutes to herself if she is to write fiction.”
It feels especially ungrateful to complain about being overscheduled since on paper, I have everything I’ve ever wanted. I have my daughter, after years of infertility and worrying that I would never have a baby. I have my husband, who is the strangest and kindest person I’ve ever met and therefore a perfect match for me. I have my freelance work, which is challenging and fun and interesting in a million different ways.
But I need to take a breath. I think a lot of us do.
I couldn’t figure out how to take a breath on my own, so I consulted my mental health team—my therapist and my acupuncturist. Separately, both advised me to stop referring to my current situation as “losing my marbles.” Neither seemed concerned that my crying issue would be a permanent problem. (A big relief, since I was already planning cover stories involving allergies, onions, and imaginary, non-vision-threatening eye diseases.)
My acupuncturist pointed out that I had a lot of “should” in my life, e.g., “I should finish this project/send in this paperwork/call this person/answer this message.” Regardless of whether it was true, I felt stuck in my obligations. Choices seemed thin on the ground.
My therapist asked me what I wanted to do—what I felt like doing.
“Honestly,” I said. “I can’t even remember what I like to do for fun.”
Eventually, a thought bubbled up: I’ve been thinking about how much I’d like to try water aerobics someday. I have two bum hips (thanks, congenital hip dysplasia) and water aerobics is one of the exercises my orthopedist recommended back in New York. But I couldn’t think of how to fit an exercise class into my schedule.
“What if you started from a point of trying to make it happen,” my acupuncturist suggested kindly, “instead of trying to find reasons it won’t work?”
Well, this blew my mind, I don’t mind telling you. And as soon as I tried that perspective, I realized that the Tuesday class mostly worked with my husband’s schedule and that my mom could watch my daughter when it didn’t.
And this morning, I went to water aerobics. I wore a swim cap that I borrowed from my sister, my water shoes from when we went to the rocky beaches in New York, and my bathing suit from this summer. For 45 minutes, I jogged and twisted and moved foam weights and noodles.
I didn’t cry at all. When I left, my hips were pain-free for the first time in months.
I’m not saying the menty B is resolved. It could be waiting in my tear ducts, biding its time. But I will say that water is always healing and that doing something different is usually helpful. Any change in perspective is good when you’re feeling stuck.
Here’s hoping that you’re feeling freer in the New Year.
I can so relate. You mentioned eye diseases. I have Sjogren's Disease, an autoimmune disease primarily affecting the eyes and mouth (I write about it on my Substack, so I won't bore you with the details here). I started a small content marketing business once all of my kids (three in under four years, one of the on the spectrum) were tweens. Then, thanks to Sjogren's, my vision went kaplooey. Several years later my vision is just now getting back to being semi-stable, and I can only work a few hours a day before my eyes quit. Somehow, that makes it harder to fit around everybody else's schedules than it was doing it almost full-time. It's hard to make writing a priority when everybody needs something. I've almost quit many times. Then I'll start again until it seems pointless. It's not really burnout, it's accepting that what I love and am good at has to take a backseat because it contributes less to my family than other things I need to be doing.
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