overreaction ovenbird Mental_load in motherhood is like one of those elastic band balls. A task may look small and compact to an outside observer but if you cut into it, it starts flying apart, weakened rubber snapping, the dense strata revealed. For instance: I woke up this morning with the sudden realization that I had no idea where I had put my daughter’s favourite pants and sweatshirt after camp yesterday. I tried to recall the order of operations. She arrived home, I unpacked her bag, I put on a load of wash, I took the dirty containers from her lunch bag, I found her pants and sweater balled up with a wet bathing suit and hung said pants and sweater somewhere to dry. But where? I put her lunch bag on a post outside to air out, but when I brought the lunch bag in last night there were no clothes with it, so I must have put them somewhere else. But my mind was completely blank. I couldn’t find a memory of my actions. And here’s where the elastic band ball starts fraying. It’s not just about lost clothes. Clothes can be replaced. It’s about what the lost clothes will trigger. If the favourite clothes are lost there will be a meltdown and then I will be responsible for co-regulating with my daughter, helping her to process and move through the intense emotions attached to the loss. The meltdown will impact the morning and we’ll be rushing to get ready for camp. I will then have to figure out where to get a new sweater. And it must be the SAME sweater or similar, because it was a gift from her grandmother so it is a meaningful sweater which will intensify the grief. I will need to spend my day looking for the sweater and then dealing with renewed grief if I can’t find it. I thought about this entire chain of events before I’d even set a foot on the floor and my nervous system was shot before the day had even started. I got up. I went outside. I checked the railing where the lunch bag had been. No clothes. I told my daughter I couldn’t find them and watched the dismay begin to gather on her face. I said, “they must be around somewhere. We’ll find them!” to try to delay the inevitable meltdown. I went back outside. I remembered the wind storm that whipped up after dinner. I wondered if the clothes had blown away. I started doing a sweep of the area around the fence and found the pants on the other side. Then I found the sweater bunched up on the rocks. Hallelujah! We were saved. This is what mental load frequently looks like. It’s not just a concrete problem but a concrete problem attached to a whole cascade of repercussions that require both concrete and emotional labour. Nothing feels “small.” Nothing IS small. One inconvenience can lead to a mountain of struggles until everything feels insurmountable. And this is what life looks like every single day. Mental load is largely invisible and it is crushing. This is why the most common fantasy I hear from new mothers is the desire to run away. They want to set it all down. They want to hand someone else the elastic band ball because their wrists are raw and bleeding from the violent snap of rubber against their skin and they can’t bear to pick it up again. But they don’t run. They stay. And when someone says, “You’re overreacting. It’s just a sweater,” they explode. 260826 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Oof, yes. It's really hard not to "overreact" at little things on days when it seems like everything's contingent on something else. (And it must be even harder when there are children in the picture, with their own wants and fears and habits.) 260827 what's it to you? who go blather from