OleopteneA blog for Mara Collins

Psychology of Punctuation

June 13th, 2008

Ellipses are the opposite of an exclamation point for me, a tentative trailing off…
Right? Annoyance at myself to sound so adolescent girl insecure, asking for approval and validation, so unwilling to assert myself.

I notice I am writing in my own private journals with too many of these trailings off, and suspect that it is psychologically indicative, the way it is when I get too carried away with parentheticals, completely unable to proceed in a linear fashion from one thought to another, instead having branched and nesting ideas.

On the other hand, perhaps the punctuation just indicates a sloppy habit. I can re-write in short, snappy declaratives. I experiment with it here.

The second week of parenting alone is making me a little crazy. It’s the third day of summer vacation. We haven’t yet landed on the right balance of structure and flexibility. I berate myself. It is 1:30 in the afternoon. I haven’t accomplished even one of the things I consider my basic goals for the day. Once the berating starts it bleeds over into a hundred different little things. The berating opens floodgates of not-helpful thinking that include, in AA-speak, comparing my insides to other people’s outsides, defensiveness in one-sided conversations with people not even here to hold up their end of the conversation, impatience with my kids and their needs, unkindness to the body in the mirror, paralysis.

I don’t write this to ask for reassurance. I write trying to halt the snowballing of crazy-thinking. I write because if there is an AA phrase for comparing your insides to other people’s outsides, maybe putting my insides out there helps shift reality to “We all have struggles.” I write this so I’ll have a reminder that there are days when I get up before the kids and have done my writing before they wake up, days when my to-do list trembles at the might of my ability to get stuff accomplished, and days like this, which are the opposite, and more days which are somewhere in between. I write to remind myself that the four boys are all safe and relatively entertained and fed and getting along and that is the only accomplishment that has long-term consequences for me today.

I wish I could offer the berating voice a cup of tea. I imagine addressing it, gently, “Oh, buddy. The feeling of not-being-enough-not-doing-enough, that’s a rough one isn’t it?” Which shocks it into silence because it was so ready to fight, and it stammers “But everyone else seems to be managing… There’s a whole world of people out there who are out of their pajamas before noon, I am sure of it…”

I try to treat this voice with the patience I can summon for the kids on the days when I am on my game as a parent. I listen for the things not being said. I hear the belief that somehow I should be earning and deserving. I recognize the fear of unworthiness. I try to give it an action plan. What are the things that HAVE to happen today? There’s a doctor’s appointment. So get everyone dressed, and don’t forget to ask the boys for help getting ready. And then after? I can ask, very gently, if what it needs is the connection that comes with practicing with the boys. I will carefully avoid practicing out of guilt/the money we spend on instruments and lessons/the fear about the boys doing well at auditions for the local youth orchestra next week. Or does it need the physicality of time on the elliptical? Does it want to take the boys to the library to feed their reading habit? Or does it just need to get together with some friends and have the reality check of connecting with other adults? The voice needs to be reminded that if Raven gets home and the house is not immaculate he won’t love me any less.

I don’t pretend I have it all solved forever and ever. It’s amazing how one little crack in the dam can lead to such overwhelamament, but I will get through the afternoon, I think, which is really all that is required of me this afternoon. Knowing that the not-helpful thinking is slipping in, I will be vigilant about examining the thoughts that are moving me, whether they are the helpful or unhelpful kind. It amazes me that I have gotten a little better at reminding myself of what it is I need to function, earliest journals have reference to an internal gyroscope, that will eventually always help me determine which way is up again. But if punctuation is truly diagnostic? Then I just have to monitor my own writing, I suppose.

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