Out of the Fog
BY ALYSSA NUTILE
Photo Courtesy | Alyssa Nutile
Content Guidance: NICU references, references to PPD and PTSD
I stand in the archway to my living room as my five year old son screams while falling backward from the arm of our couch into the cushions for the twelfth time in a row. My three year old daughter lays on the floor in the middle of our carpet, thoroughly amused by her brother’s noises as she sings along in her own way. I smile at them as I shake my head and pick up a book to read while they entertain themselves.
My smile falters as I settle on the floor next to them, and for a moment, I’m transported to this same room a year ago.
After an hour of the same crashing and jumping and yelling and a choppy chorus of “Mom.” “MOM” “Mom?” “Mom!” from my son and my non-verbal daughter crying either out of frustration or boredom, my nerves would have been thoroughly frayed. The specific sounds hardly would have mattered because the only thing I would have heard was a dull roar between my ears that drowned out every coherent and logical thought I could have had.
I would close my eyes and try to breathe. My forehead would have rested against the heels of my hands as I called to my son to wait just a moment so I could catch my breath.
In those past moments, I knew what was coming. If I couldn’t quiet that cacophony in my head before I had to walk through the archway and into the room with my children, I knew that the only thing coming out of my mouth and seeping from my skin would be barely controlled anger. Even if I kept my voice low and quiet, my hands would shake as I counted to ten every time I had to answer a question or level a response. I’d rock my daughter with my eyes closed as I waved off my son and tried not to grow more frustrated by the sounds every second. I’d wait until the room had calmed just enough so that I could escape to my bedroom safely and sit on the floor, desperate to pull myself together long enough to go be the parent my children deserved.
I would try to remember that everything I felt in those moments are a symptom of the last few difficult years and not a reflection of my feelings toward my children. I would try to remember that at least anger is an emotion which means that I felt something instead of just mind-numbing grief. My emotional system spent so long on “mute,” and it had taken longer than expected to calibrate each different type of feeling as they came back online. Anger, particularly at myself, was the easiest to access and the most damaging to my relationships, but at the time, I hadn’t figured out how to dial it back yet.
This flashback bleeds into another, as memories of dark rooms with orange lighting and ten different kinds of beeps and nurses popping in and out every few moments and waiting but not resting float through my mind. So much waiting while keyed up and anxious and ready for the next blow to land for days on end. Waiting for someone else to come talk to us without warning, because hospitalists don’t work on set schedules. The doctors would and did show up at any moment, dropping life-changing diagnoses about my daughter like they were talking about the weather and disappearing just as quickly, leaving me to process the information amid the constant activity in this NICU wing.
But I am not in either of those places now. Not numb and empty in a dark NICU or burning up with anger in an older version of this very same living room. I roll my shoulders and shake off the uncomfortable memories.
Instead, I remember that six months ago, I walked into my doctor’s office for an appointment that I spent years avoiding. I walked out with some alphabet soup of mental health diagnoses (most of them a courtesy of the difficult pregnancy and NICU stay with my daughter) and a prescription for medication that I had never wanted. But after the shock of the day, a diagnosis and a treatment were the promise that whatever I was — or wasn’t — feeling didn’t have to be permanent and that I didn’t have to stumble blindly through a recovery without a roadmap.
Before I have a chance to lapse into another thought, 45 pounds of blond haired, blue eyed energy barrels into my lap and knocks the wind out of me. He begs to go to a trampoline park this weekend, and I can hardly tell him no, for fear that I’ll become the trampoline instead should I deny him. I push him off of me as he giggles and I move to pick up my squirmy, happy daughter instead.
I prop her in my lap, and she kicks her feet out with a happy shout. She’s three, but she can’t hold herself up or move herself around independently. That hasn’t stopped her from taking in her world and expressing her opinions and radiating her vibrant energy everywhere we go. She throws her head back and almost clips my nose, and I narrowly avoid her by ducking to the side.
I brace for the flood of adrenaline I’ve come to expect with near misses like this. These small shocks to my world used to put me on edge for hours. But not today. Today, I chuckle and say a prayer of gratitude for my quick reflexes.
In moments like this, the recovery I’ve made in the last year feels more present than ever, though it’s taken me months to recognize the change. It feels like the warm spring sun on my skin after the longest gray winter. It feels like a spark of something, not fully grown into a flame, but with the promise of potential nonetheless. It feels like the parting fog, where light burns away the cloud and illuminates every droplet left.
It feels like hope.
Hope that I might feel like a good mother again.
Hope that I might be capable of withstanding every trauma that we’ve endured in the last three years and will endure in the next lifetime.
Hope that I can look at both of my babies and feel joy and promise instead of fear and guilt and that the rifts between us will continue to mend.
Hope that whatever happens, the next chapter is always in front of us, full of possibility and prospect of absolution for everything we leave behind.
Hope that even if I’m not the woman that I used to be, the woman I become can be the better, happier, more whole version of whoever I am. Not broken by the past, but more experienced and nuanced.
I grab my son around his waist and pull him into my lap again to squeeze both of my children tighter. I press a kiss to each of their temples before leaving them to their own devices again. Whatever hope there is for me, I pass on to them too. Today, we are awake and full of life, and I have never felt more at peace.
ALYSSA NUTILE is an artist, writer, mother of two, and advocate living on the shores of Lake Erie in Erie, Pennsylvania. Her daughter Gemma has a debilitating genetic disease, and Alyssa’s work focuses on the emotional, mental, and physical realities of loving, parenting, and advocating for a medically complex child. She’s currently writing a graphic memoir about her pregnancy and first year of life with Gemma. You can see more of her writing and artwork at AlyssaNutile.com and follow our daily life on Instagram @alyssanewt.