Taken together, the individual zings can feel like a barrage. A full-on assault, really: The Kid gets sick at school and I cancel my day (Netflix; KIDDING) to go collect him. ZING! Flu shots (and the boys’ looks of betrayal) booked. ZING! The Husband is due to travel later this week. ZING! Something weird is going on with my hand and I should probably talk to a doctor about the pain. ZING! Intermittent fasting (IF, which these days feels like it should stand for I F-ingcan’t) has not tightened my waistline. ZING! School and personal dramas (set to coincide with the second season-release of Big Little Lies, perhaps? I SEE YOU, HOLLYWOOD!) keep my blood pressure soaring and my sleep erratic. ZING!

I’m one to get more often lost in the details, in the trees, so that I miss the forest. But these zings are piling up and, with my Lexapro backing off, I am…managing them? Which sometimes looks like…freaking out about them?

And sometimes doesn’t. Sure, my “meditation sessions” usually consist of nine minutes of panic followed by one minute of nearly falling asleep, but there are things to offset the zings. Zongs, if you will. Actually, I won’t. I need to work on that one.

It’s like this: I am being forced to slow down, in a million different little ways.

I literally chop my medication in half rather than pop it mindlessly out of its blister pack.

I analyse the triggers set off by various ongoing dramas, and with the help of wise advice, I identify the shame I still carry around via that fearful little girl inside of me who’s terrified of getting in trouble because of what that will say about her worth. (Yes, I’ve been to therapy. Why do you ask?)

I breathe, deeply. And slowly, so I don’t pass out. It’s called self-regulation, people. And it sometimes even works.

I ask myself why I’m so concerned with what people think of me, or what they post on social media. And when I find out the answer, and realise it’s not a good enough one, I let it go. Repeatedly. And then I get that song stuck in my head.

I identify the anxiety-raisers in my life and I deal with them. Specifically, an example: because I don’t have as many meds coursing through me to modulate the anxiety, I see what the internet does to me and I stay away from it as needed. Sometimes.

And there’s this: I recognise, more than ever, that the world’s need to categorise every little thing into “Good” or “Bad” or “Black” or “White” or “Right” or “Wrong” may work for them (spoiler alert: it’s not working for them; see Facebook comments sections), but lays no claim on me and how I need to function. I see Little Brother, whose growing independence is both wonderful and heartbreaking: “Bye, Mommy. I’ll see you after school.” (AKA, you’re dismissed.) And how TK’s own independence, growing at its own speed, is the same: How he forgets to look at me on his way into the classroom now, or how he leaves me standing alone on the schoolyard because he’s playing lava monster with his friends. How my own friends fill in the gap in the meantime, until he runs over to me, furiously jabbing the red hearts I drew on his wrist–“HUGS! HUGS!”–and it’s all the feelings at the same time, but I can grasp each of them too.

It’s losing relationships and finding some people aren’t to be trusted even as you find that some are, deeply. And that gain and loss often happen at once but can be felt separately. And deeply.

It’s spending my time in each moment, so when the end of the school day comes it doesn’t feel so much like the end of something (though it still does, a little) and more like a return to someone–two of them, actually.

It’s finding out that we’re signing on for two more years here, and feeling both the grief that comes with distance and the deep relief that comes with knowing we’re where we should be, and we get to stay there.

It’s all of the things, at the same time and one at a time, and when they land, it’s feeling them less as wounds and more as gifts, some just taking longer to unwrap than others–but those usually end up being my favourite kind anyway.