#mental-load

#mental-load

"The smartest women with the happiest relationships are the useless women," Dianna Lee begins in her video. "As you can probably tell, I'm a highly capable woman. I'm capable throughout all areas of my life, through my schooling days, to my career, and I attacked my marriage life in exactly the same way. I just executed. I was fast, efficient, and I knew exactly what needed to get done. And in retrospect, it was so wrong."

"If one partner protects their creativity and rest and ambition or joy because the other partner is holding the system together, that joy is being heavily subsidized," she explains. "Not by money, but by someone else's nervous system."

This year, I found myself on the phone with my sister, going through our Christmas to-do lists. As she spoke, I mentally ticked off everything we still had to organize: gifts, events, food, end-of-year school commitments, work deadlines, and the general chaos that seems to arrive every December, whether we're ready or not. I wondered if it was all worth it, especially as we all had to deal with our own mental loads at home:

We've heard it all before: Women do more in the home. They spend more time cooking, cleaning, planning, and caring for children.

This work has many names to me: mental load, emotional labor, logistical labor and, especially, narrative labor (the effort of constantly explaining myself, justifying choices, making life make sense for everyone else). It's the work that says, "I'll just do it; it's quicker." Or, "It's fine, I'll figure it out" Or, "No one else will remember, so I'll make a list."

11:29 A.M. That's the exact time my phone rang on the first day of school. It was the school nurse. My child had been "back to school" after a long summer break for precisely two hours and 29 minutes before he needed me again. He had an ear infection, and his ear was draining fluid. "I'll be right there," I heard my cheery mom voice telling the nurse. Inside, of course, I died a little.

I'm absorbing a lot of criticism and I'm not really allowed to give my own. I'm a sounding board for everyone's emotions but I need to be reserved in my own until I know how you're going to feel about them. I'm pushing forward and supporting you whenever and however I can. I barely even have my own thoughts unless you say it's okay.

'Oh, what's on it, you ask? Well, 'Bear or Bunny Day,' bringing in a stuffed bear or a bunny to cuddle with today - Oh, it has to start with 'B.''