Chapter 6: The Aftershock

New Jersey was a safe, crash landing. The home belongs to a childhood friend and was built on love: the original property on the land was a birthday gift from her great-grandfather to her great-grandmother in the 1930s.?

I came to the beach house as a girl, never having seen anything like it. It was tiny but well kept, the only modern amenities were running water and electricity. Before the family built a modern home at the front of the property, the entire lawn was a lush green clearing that dead-ended at the Atlantic Ocean.?

Growing up an ocean swimmer, I’d never seen anything more beautiful and intoxicating to my senses.

We came every summer for sun, sand, heat, hot dogs and boys. Some summers we had everything, some we were rained out. But I was always so happy to be at the beach house. When my friend held the old home open for me and my family, I’d never been more grateful.

We settled in and played House, COVID-style. All our dry goods, supplies and freezer stock moved into the house, I cooked, got up with the kids and was in charge of all the things women have been in charge of for millennia, it just took a Pandemic to realize that other hard working women have been doing the hard work of rearing my own children.?

And my husband, who had taken time off from his patients to become a full-time caregiver for me and our children, added more and more of the previously invisible labor to his own plate.

Sure, he always did the dishes.?Now he did the laundry and cleaned the house, he thought of new activities for the kids, each act of care a recommitment to our partnership.

He was the strong man I needed to take care of me. And so he took care of us.

For the first time in my life, I was taken care of. Never sick, always strong, I had never experienced caregiving in my life, and I had thought it was a credit to my person, my being, my internal strength. But when Matt took care of me, I found I loved it as much as I so desperately needed it.?

He loved to make me feel good, he loved to make me better, to show me how to find purpose, meaning and transformation in the trauma I couldn’t yet comprehend.?

Matt would carry us four through the balance of the year, until he, too wilted from the exhaustion of always-on adrenaline, only reemerging whole after I reciprocated the same demonstration of love and devotion.

And so, with a moment’s reflection of my being through his eyes, I realized that the parts I thought made me me, perhaps were no longer so necessary. What happened next was more startling.

• Chemotherapy had affected my senses, first my taste and my smell, decelerating my hunger and waning my interest in food.
• In my ears I heard ringing, not all the time, but enough to know my hearing had also been impaired.?
• My vision, always fine with a low prescription, was more blurry than usual.
• Even sex, my intimate way to share my body with my husband, lost all sensation. Where we once shared pleasure, now I only felt excruciating pain, a routine reminder of all the hurt I desperately wanted healed.?

The richness of my youth that was deeply in bloom just months earlier had so swiftly wilted. And with that, all of my emotions dulled.

When one's senses diminish, like vision, for example, it’s well known that other senses heighten for survival.

Now I was only feeling and I started to feel unlike myself.

With two young children and months of violent, chilling spring weather, I knew I needed help. I’d lost my patience and now I was losing my temper. It felt terrible. I was worried about my daughter’s lack of peer interactions when I’d hear her saying my exact colloquialisms, while playing in her travel crib or to my face, showing me the proof that we adults are responsible for everything children learn, feel and do.?

But I was so sick and tired and run down that I could barely show up, and it was too much for my husband to do it all.

It took me some time, tears, and therapy to call out for help, something I’ve learned more recently -- that asking for help is the adult and responsible thing to do. We reached out to our caregiver who lovingly cared for our daughter in Brooklyn and asked if she’d come stay with us for a while so that I could try to put myself back together.