Me, Myself, and I: The Struggle to Take a Solo Weekend Trip
(Click below for the audio file.)
“So mom, what are you actually going to do this weekend?”
My kids, my husband, and quite honestly my self were confused about why I would be going away by myself for the weekend with nothing planned.
Even now as I write this I can feel a complete sense of bewilderment, putting myself back into that time. My brain is shaking its head, my eyes are doing that eye-rolling motion and my mouth is grimacing. Not unlike the look on my face when I see my 13 year old sprawled out on the kitchen floor. Who does that?! Fine when she was a baby or toddler—but at 13, when she more or less has a sense of what’s “clean”! Yuck!
So just like my daughter answers when I ask, “why are you sprawled out on the floor like that?!” And she responds—“I dunno, I just wanted to…” I responded to my family (and my brain)—“I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do this weekend.” And then I hesitantly added, “but I do feel like God is calling me to go away and so I’m listening.” It was also my way of telling my family and God, “hey if this all goes south for some reason this weekend, this is on You, God, not me!”
I mean really, at the time, it seemed totally crazy to just feel inclined to go away like that! We were already at a hotel! I would just be going to an Air bnb only 30 minutes away! Why would I go from one “vacation” spot to another?!
But when I take a deep breath, and my current self revisits what my past self was experiencing at the time, in retrospect it did make “sense”…
It was the 2nd weekend of September. We had been living in a hotel in Honolulu, since the middle of July with an additional month left to go. Hotel living at first felt like a vacation, but then became just glorified temporary lodging. For about 8 weeks, the four of us were living in a two room suite, waiting to close on our condo. This was the summer of the infamous pandemic, 2020. So in addition to moving from a beloved home in Germany after 4 years, and moving to a place that was 12 time zones away, it was also the extra stress of navigating all this during a pandemic.
And now as I write this instead of the bewilderment of deciding to go away that weekend, I feel a sense of bewilderment that somehow I made it through all that! And with the kids having done relatively well, and my marriage still intact! Sheesh!
Hindsight is as they often say, 20/20, but at the time, the truth is as I was somehow trying to tell my family of my weekend plans, I was also silently moderating the confusing internal dialogue of “why was I going away?”
Then a certain sense of “knowing the purpose” of the trip came about two days before I was to drive to the Air bnb.
It was a Wednesday morning after I dropped the kids off at their first day of in-person school. I had come back to our hotel room, went to the bathroom, and then with an ice-coffee in hand went out to the lanai.
I closed the full length window doors behind me and plopped into the comfortable enough sun bleached tan chair.
After a shift here and there to get comfortable, I felt my entire body kind of sink into the frame of the chair. My body acted like melted wax on the not yet heated part of the candle.
It felt like the slow motion image of a woman falling into the fluffiest comforter on a mattress commercial. But unlike the woman in the commercial who probably anticipated the softest landing, I had no idea that the metal chair on that lanai would bring me the same release of tension until I sat down.
And suddenly I felt into what I needed to do on my weekend away. Although I couldn’t yet articulate exactly the purpose I could feel its urgency beckoning me.
My brain went quiet and time stood still as everything around me went into a blur. And I realized a stillness in my being that I hadn’t experienced since before lockdown due to COVID regulations, about 7 months prior.
There were no children to monitor even from the corner of my eye or attention of my heart. On the other side of the lanai windows was a room devoid of movement.
I started reflecting on the reality that for 7 months, I was either with my children in the house, or outside. And if I was by myself, I was on a walk. But I hadn’t actually been in my house (or currently in our temporary lodging) by myself with no responsibilities, except to myself, for those many months.
As I pondered this welcomed-but-didn’t-know-I-needed-it, current if only temporary reality, I felt the energy of all that I had exerted come into my purview. I continued to just sit and be still.
For all those weeks we had been at the hotel, siting on the lanai was a reprieve. I would take in the beauty around me as a visual escape from the moving challenges I was facing. But in that moment my eyes just glazed over what was in view.
I likened what I was experiencing to an appliance that was always plugged in. Even when my Instant Pot’s on-light is off and isn’t in “use”, there’s still electricity being drawn from the socket into it. And in that moment when I had plopped into the lanai chair, it was like when I pulled the cord from the socket and the appliance completely shut off.
Like that unplugged appliance, my body was the stillest I can ever remember. But I was still quite conscious and aware as these thoughts washed over my head, and went through my brain sending messages to my body allowing my nervous system to calm, and my muscles to fully relax.
I felt like I was in a time warp and suddenly catching up with myself. Indeed COVID changed how time felt. Although there were many humorous memes somehow explaining how time molded to an entity that seemed beyond our understanding, it wasn’t until this moment that I felt the impact of one of the biggest shifts in modern history that the world had gone through.
I felt what I had gone through…I felt what all moms had gone through…
I don’t know really how long I was in this what felt like existential stillness, but I came out of that almost trance like zoning out with a feeling of clarity for the purpose of my weekend away. I now clearly understood what my coach meant by “rest”. (More about that conversation here.)
It was a rest, not only from the doing that moving entails- but more importantly from the “being”. Being stressed, being anxious, being overwhelmed, being frustrated, being sad, being confused, being crazed. All of the things I, and I’m sure many others, could feel but didn’t want to name because then that made the realities of COVID worse.
With this new layer of inner knowing of what the reason for going away was, my brain started resisting less. But this decision was still generally very new territory for me.
I realized that this weekend away would also be the first time I’d be away since my son was born 12 years prior. Sure I had gone away with friends or to see family by myself, but this was the first time the destination also included just being by myself.
I decided to call it: “the me, myself, and I weekend.” Even my brain admitted that title had a fun sound to it.
But as I got closer to my time of departure, discomfort seem to kind of hang out around me like an annoying fly. Or like an uncomfortable conversation that I knew I’d have to have, but didn’t know how or when, or what exactly the dialogue or outcome would be. I also felt the uneasiness from my kids and husband who were also still unsure about what would be next.
But indeed, that quiet inner voice kept me going truly like the North Star.
And like that night sky with the shining North Star, I felt like I was just taking steps on the way to my destination. I felt determined but I also felt emotionless. I was trusting, but I didn’t know what I was trusting of.
I decided that with all this “unknowing”, what I did “know” was that I needed to pack a bag. And because I had no idea what one does to actually “rest”, I packed an additional bag with extra stuff, incase I had to also “do something”. The hiking shoes, the snorkel gear, the two different journals, and the 6 books for “just in case”.
I reallllly needed to bring the stuff because I didn’t actually have any plans. And when one doesn’t have any plans, and when one is asked by the children and husband: “so what are you going to do?” And that woman doesn’t really have much of clue—that woman brings stuff for just in case. Especially—when this same woman is usually bringing the stuff for all the family members- and so when there is suddenly just ONE person to bring stuff for—it somehow feels off kilter. And so to balance the stuff scale, the mother- I mean woman brings extra stuff.
If you haven’t already sensed, when one goes on this type of weekend away, like I was daring to- it’s actually quite unnerving, especially for the first time.
See this extra stuff I just mentioned helped me to fill the space of, “the I-need-to-be-doing something.” Even with all the self pep-talk, the idea of just “being” and not “doing” still felt uncomfortable and really almost unfathomable.
Deciding to bring the extra stuff was actually just like deciding not to give away my old favorite wool multicolored sweater. It had accidentally been put in the dryer and would juuuust not go over my head anymore. And just like I knew that sweater needed to go into the give-away pile—but instead I put it back in the drawer, at least “for now”, the stuff that really was not needed for my weekend away also came along.
It is often just easier to put the doesn’t-fit-anymore sweater into the drawer, instead of making a decision about letting it go. And so, it was also easier for me to just bring the extra stuff, instead of thinking about not having something to do for the weekend.
To be honest, at this point I was also taking my frustration of this discomfort out on the clothes and just stuffed them in the bag—“fine, fine, fine. Everything’s fine,” my brain kept saying, even though I was definitely “not fine.”
Begrudgingly I continued the steps needed to get to my destination-dropped the kids at my husband’s office, said my goodbye’s and figured out the best route to the Air bnb.
I still didn’t know what was next, but at least at this point I felt good that I had made the decision to follow my inner voice, and committed to the plan…