Chekhov
Now that I’m back to work fulltime and los babies still like to rage against the machine from 2 a.m. till about 4:30 a.m. or 5 a.m., I feel that I may tell you that life is insane. Sleep deprivation, as I’ve said, is a torture. Some days, Husband and I just toggle back and forth between depression/anger/depression/anger/depression/anger. It can be a drag. Add on top of that the stress of work, I sometimes end my day with a huge ball of stress energy inside that I really don’t know how to get rid of.
But these words may come across more negative than what I feel in the moment, because somehow, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve developed an emotionally safety valve. I might be Dark and Gloomy for a while, but then I’ll hear a joke or a perspective that lets me not take it seriously and laugh it off. One night this week, Mom was over helping and relayed how babysitting communication ran amuck between she and Husband. As I was already wound up, I wanted to call him right away in order to straighten things out but since she thought I was going to berate him, she grabbed the phone, and we had a tug-of-war from the living room to the bedroom with First Son in between, all three of us yelling till we bumped into a wall. And maybe it was the night before when Mom grabbed my belly and asked “Is this fat?†I held her hands firmly there and made her follow my dance moves and sang “Yes, it’s fat!†First Son looked on in this scene and also got into the mix.
My point is, My God, my home life is like a Chekhov play right now. Like there’s hilarity, there’s misery, no gun – but lots of high drama (although I mentioned to Husband that I think it might really stress-relieving to go to a shooting range and he agreed). I think I now know how to play Chekhov. I could totally do a cart wheel as Arkadina while crying and laughing. I understand Masha now, who I would play as deeply sleep-deprived.