Hi friends, happy December! In other words, ‘tis the season to be jolly. While I do love Christmas—I have fond memories of it growing up—it also leaves me feeling exhausted and overwhelmed about spending money on gifts, and how much, for people who may or may not appreciate it, and how, instead of being comforted by cups of hot chocolate and coffee and warm fleece blankets, I’m being bombarded with Black Friday ads and pop ups and reminders about this and that, and the realization that the year is coming to an end and I have even less time to complete my goals.
So every year after Christmas, I’d tell my husband, “We should really go somewhere…warm for the holidays.” And yet, we never do. Until this week. We took a trip to Seaside, Oregon for three days, and during these three days, I did a lot of thinking, thoughts that I was planning on keeping to myself, like a diary. But then I thought, maybe I’m not the only one feeling this way. Read on to find out what I mean.
Your (online) friend,
-Hoang
We were sitting in the lobby of a posh, new hotel called The Saltline located in Seaside, Oregon, when I asked my husband, “When did you first notice that feeling?”
‘That feeling’ is our euphemism for seasonal depression, also known as SAD—Seasonal Affective Disorder. We’re so familiar with it, and yet we don’t want to say it out loud. It’s a combination of “low” feelings ranging from being irritable, a lack of motivation to do things, feelings of inadequacy, and just a general “blah-ness.”
You’d think that living in the Pacific Northwest, we’d be used to it by now. But it still hits us hard during the winter months. While my husband’s version is more of a consistent flatlining, mine is more of a roller coaster of ups and downs. Some days, I feel great! I’m so inspired. I have so many ideas that I want to execute. (One day in October, I even sat down with what I thought was a solid publishing schedule for this newsletter…only to abandon it later—the feeling of “what’s the point? Everybody else is better than me anyway.”)
“Probably in my late twenties,” my husband replied. Around the time we had our first kid, then.
I told him that I didn’t know when my feelings became evident, only that I knew it was there.
It was our last day at Seaside, and the kids were lounging upstairs in our hotel room. Surrounded by modern furniture and décor and a warm fireplace, we did a lot of soul searching.
“I knew you weren’t sleeping last night,” he’d said earlier at breakfast. When I nodded, he added, “I wasn’t sleeping either. So I did a lot of thinking.”
***
Thinking is all we’ve been doing for the past few years. That’s because for the past few years, we’ve been seesawing back and forth between a big decision—should we move out of Portland, and if so, when?
Last month, I wrote about how I sort of ‘fell in love’ with my city again. Reading back on that post, I feel like a fraud, because I made it sound like I was going to give Portland another chance—even though in many ways, I felt like it failed me. Job opportunities here are just okay. Homelessness is a huge issue. There’s a particular sentiment (perhaps a belief system?) pervasive in my family on both sides that neither my husband nor I could shake—it’s the feeling of not wanting more, of being okay with low or no ambition.
I realize this makes me sound somewhat bitter and spiteful, but ambition is what I have. It’s what drives me to be a different kind of mother to my kids than what I had growing up. It’s what drives me to ask ‘why’ questions as a kid. Why do adults do so-and-so things? Because it makes no sense to me, as a kid and an adult.
Perhaps what brought my husband and I together in the first place is the fact that we both, for a lack of a better word, came from ‘low income’ neighborhoods. But while he moved around a lot as a kid, I stayed in one spot for the first ten years of my life, a small village of no more than 5,000 people where everyone knew each other’s business, which I thought was very boring. Thus, as an adult, I wanted to have flexibility, spontaneity and adventure while my husband wanted stability and solid housing. It’s one of the things we argue about the most (not money, surprisingly).
As our conversation by the fireplace continued, another unpleasant thought came up—the feeling that we’ve been trying to do all of this ourselves in this parenting journey. “We shouldn’t have to,” I said through choked sobs.
They say it takes a village to raise a child, and it’s absolutely true.
Now, you may be wondering: why not hire a babysitter? Ask family/friends for help? The answer is, for many years we could not afford a regular babysitter, so we relied on my mom, the only person in our families who were willing and able to help…until she got cancer during the pandemic, which put an end to that.
Again, I don’t mean to sound bitter. I am so, so lucky to have a remote job where I can balance this work-life balance thing, and even more so, a husband who’s willing to share equal responsibilities with me. I can’t imagine how single parents do it.
***
Making friends as an adult is hard. Even harder when you’re an introvert. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve reached out to old colleagues and friends from high school only to be met with radio silence. This may not be a Portland-only phenomenon, but living in this gray, gloomy city where most of your old friends don’t have kids or get married until their late thirties when you’ve been married for over a decade and have kids in elementary school makes it difficult to find people on the same journey as us. The rise in technology has brought many of us together, but it’s also driven us apart, because nowadays, it’s much, much easier to ghost people. (“Oh, sorry, I didn’t see your message…. oh, it was three months ago? Whoops. Sorry.”)
But back to the ambition thing. We don’t want our kids to do the same thing as us. We want them to aim higher, and to reach it. I was struck by what my husband said a while back, which was, “The people who have done well in my family are the ones who’ve moved far, far away.” I realized he was right.
Which brings me back to the moving conversation. Back to the hotel.
During our time at The Saltline (a fantastic by-the-sea hotel that I highly recommend if you ever come to Seaside), it was very low occupancy, so we had the entire indoor pool and hot tub to ourselves. So my husband took it upon himself to teach three of us—my kids and me—how to swim.
I never learned how to swim. When I was twelve, I almost drowned hanging out at a local pool when I waded too far down and had to figure out how to tread back up that I developed a fear of drowning because nobody noticed I was by myself. But really, it was more of a fear of being out of control.
So there we were, in the pool room. It took a lot of screaming and crying before my kids got used to the water, and then it was my turn. I stood by the 5 foot end of the pool while my husband was already in, telling me to jump.
I’m barely five foot tall, so I knew that if I jumped normally I would be submerged underwater, just like that one time when I was twelve. Fear flashed across my eyes.
“Uhh…,” I hesitated.
“Come on,” he said, extending his hand. “I’ll catch you.”
I trust my husband. I knew he would catch me, but still, the idea of being submerged underwater, of having water flow into my ears, was very uncomfortable.
So I slowly slid down, and he caught me, and that was that.
A few minutes later, as I was floating on my stomach with his help, he suddenly said, “Spread your arms out, like a butterfly.”
“Umm, no,” I said immediately. Spreading my arms out meant that I would have to let go of his shoulders, which I couldn’t do, because I sure as hell can’t float by myself just yet.
I don’t remember what happened next. I think I blocked out this particular moment in my memory as a coping mechanism. Let’s just say I’m still here, so I didn’t drown.
I looked over at my kids, having a ball chatting with one another, and how used to the pool they’d gotten. It was a big improvement from thirty minutes prior, when both of them were screaming, terrified because their dad wanted them to practice jumping into the pool.
I thought, well, I have a lot of work to do. I also thought, a lot of times we are scared to jump in to big things because we have a fear of the unknown. Unless you’re a natural risk taker, which we are not. For me, especially, moving out of Portland and starting fresh elsewhere meant that we would be leaving behind a place where previous generations have settled their roots and worked hard to maintain that balance. Then again, I believe that familiarity breeds contempt, and sometimes we just have to let go of that familiarity. At least, I do, in favor of discovering new people, new places and new experiences.
Later that night, as we sat eating our dinner at an excellent seafood restaurant, I had an epiphany. Could this possibly be…not a problem, but a privilege? The idea of moving somewhere and starting over? Most of the time, people move for reasons that aren’t 100% in their control—a family member gets sick, they’re going to college, they got a new job, etc.
But our situation is a bit different, because for the first time in our lives, the decision of whether or not to move is entirely in our hands. And it feels a little bit scary to have that much control.
Once I began to see it as a privilege rather than a problem, I felt more invigorated, more enlightened. The trip was a chance to get out of town (as my husband quipped, “I feel so much better already”) and provided quality family time and it also helped us develop a tentative plan. I can’t say what this plan is, at least not yet, because putting it in writing makes it seem too permanent. There’s a small chance that we’ll change our minds, but for now I’m content in knowing that progress is being made.
Now, if only I could jump into the pool by myself. That will take a little bit longer.
Have you ever made a big move elsewhere, gone somewhere you knew very little about? If so, how did you make such a big life decision as this? Or are you thinking about it? Please let me know in the comments.
It takes courage to write and to publish, especially when what we write is personal, as it often can be on Substack, so kudos to you for continuing to do it, Hoang, despite the voices in your head that say it doesn't matter or others are better, etc. We all have them--I know I do. The metaphor in comparing learning to swim later in life with decisions about moving is apt. The fear is so strong that even trusting others you love to "catch you" doesn't always work. But still, to keep going despite the fear is really the story of living. There is always fear, and, unless you're simply one of those people who thrives on it (I'm certainly not), you have to find a way to keep going despite it. The worst that can happen is you change your mind about something later. But worse than that is often the regret you feel about NOT having tried something because you were too afraid. I look forward to reading about how your and your husband's future plans develop.