On My Own

Earlier this month, my husband went away for 11 days to visit his 96-year-old mother, leaving me at home to fend for myself. I didn’t object to his going (though that hasn’t always been the case on other occasions). But it left us both concerned about how I was going to manage without him for nearly two weeks.

My husband helps me with most of my self-care needs. I guess I shouldn’t even call it self-care because he does so much of it. He makes sure I eat regularly, shops for food, and usually prepares dinner. He recognizes when I’m overwhelmed and gives me a hug. He helps me get ready if I have to go out. He does most of the physical chores. (I do the ones involving a computer, like correspondence, bill-paying, and scheduling appointments.) He calls me twice a day to make sure I haven’t fallen and been unable to get up. If I don’t answer the phone, he rushes home on his break to help me. I really don’t know what I would do without him.

For 11 days, though, I was going to have to. We hadn’t been apart this long for years.

Since one of my major self-care problems is forgetting to eat or not having the energy to make myself something to eat, he stocked up with all the things I like that were easy to fix and eat: juice, cola, ginger ale, yogurt, cans of soup, whole wheat bread, bologna and salami, assorted kinds of cheese, applesauce, and those little frozen meals for useless people like me. There were muffins and frozen waffles for breakfast, peanut butter and mac-n-cheese and spaghetti for lunch and dinner, and even jello and pudding for dessert. Everything that needed heating was microwaveable.

I often eat in my study, where there is a little tray table, so we devised a strategy for getting to and from the refrigerators. The time when I trip and fall most often is when I’m carrying several items and lose my balance. He came up with the idea that I should carry my food items in a plastic grocery bag to and from my room. We have hundreds of those bags. And it worked. I didn’t fall once. I don’t know why we didn’t think of that before.

He still called me every day, though of course there was nothing he could do for me if I fell. In fact, he called me much more often than twice a day, just to talk. We found the thing we miss most when we’re away from each other is simply shared conversation.

I developed a little routine to see me through the days. In the morning, I would have breakfast and watch a cooking show till I was awake and alert enough to start my day. Then I would do my work in the mid-morning until lunch. After lunch, more writing. After dinner, music or TV, or more work, if I had an especially pressing assignment. Go to bed early. Lather, rinse, repeat. Repetitive, certainly, but it seemed to work.

So, what did I learn from this exercise? Well, first of all, I found out that 11 days on my own is a doable thing — if we anticipate difficulties and prep for them. That I am able to continue my daily rhythms and keep up with my work, eating, and sleeping. That I experienced no recurrence of my bipolar symptoms even though my usual environment had changed. (I had been worried about depression or anxiety setting in.) That the loss of my husband’s presence wasn’t crippling. That we managed to retain our important connection despite the physical distance between us.

That photo with this post isn’t entirely accurate, though. I didn’t meet my own needs completely on my own. My continuing self-care still required my husband’s help. But once the systems were in place, I managed. On my own.