Pain, people-pleasing, and Mother's Day

Westport writer, mother and aunty Becky Manawatu is hoping to accept this Mother's Day that she hasn't been able to do half of what she has wanted to do for her kids - or herself, or anyone else - for some time.

This Mother’s Day I’ll start my day reading Karlo Mila’s poem, 'How to Break a Curse' from her Goddess Muscle collection. That won’t make the day very special to be fair, because I have been reading it almost every day since I passed out on my hallway floor and was taken to hospital by ambulance. A tough position to be in as a busy mum and aunty.

A little over two years ago, my periods started to become very heavy and painful. Ibuprofen was as good as spitting on a fire to put it out. I would be incapacitated for a few days, the pain coming at me like post-labour contractions, those nasty buggers that have no up and down wave-like crescendo. It would just squeeze and squeeze and squeeze and burn and burn until maybe I fell asleep, or it gave up. I decided it was probably normal, maybe next month it wouldn’t be so gruelling, and then the next month would come along and it would be as gruelling, and then some.

I remember sitting across from a woman in a café on Cuba Street, and she was talking to me and I was trying to listen, but I was sweating, I wanted to lie down on the floor of the café. I could hardly hear what she was saying, and I just sat there, nodding, automatically responding, sure I would pass out, almost hoping to, for some relief. I went back to my hotel and lay on the floor – the hard surface eased the pain in my back.

'How to break a Curse' starts with a simple reminder, you shouldn’t expect others to cure you. Later it encourages you to do that yourself, to find your own power, send that power through your body.

An ultrasound revealed a single, and relatively small fibroid might be partly to blame. I wanted it to be a large fibroid, I felt gaslit by my own body. Why was it telling me I was hosting something startlingly large, tentacled, toothed, toxic, spiked and venomous?

"Not large," the doctor said.

"But…" I said.

"The size does not necessarily corelate to the pain it can cause."

I needed it to be the largest fibroid the doctor had ever seen, I needed them to be urgently worried it might consume me, because it was consuming me. Wasn’t it?

Meanwhile of course, I was failing to work, I was trying to be a good mum and aunty. Felt like I was failing.

One night before a trip to Auckland we went to my parents-in-laws, and we put on YouTube and took turns picking songs. My mother-in-law and my daughter and I danced on the table to Creedence Clearwater, Boney M, Eddie Lovette, Tina Turner, we were having a humdinger of a night. Between dances I sat on the couch. I felt it, the sudden flood. I was scared to stand up, but I couldn’t stay where I was. I reluctantly stood and retreated from the fun.

By the morning, I was dizzy and weak. I could barely move or think. If I went to the hospital, we might miss our flight. Our trip to the zoo!

I decided to be a good mum, not go to hospital, and we made our flight.

I moved slowly about the zoo. My skin was so white and I felt like a ghost. The low energy created a euphoria, almost like I’d been day-drinking. I floated around the zoo with my kids, giggling at the funny things the animals do, like having sex in front of toddlers and just being meerkats. We laughed at a monkey pooing from a tightrope. I watched a red panda doing nothing for ages like I was on ecstasy. Back in the hotel I fell asleep before the sun went down, a soft laughter found its way into my sleep – my family.

There were more and more days of me listening to them from behind closed eyes, wanting to get up and be with them, but not wanting to at all. Perpetually retreating from the fun.

One day I was walking on the beach – a place I usually felt alive – and I was warned of what was to come by an onslaught of soft, deep yawns. I yawned down the beach, literally dragging my feet and for the first time I was truly worried. My inner light was burning so weak, it felt like only a whisper would blow it out. I went home and took my iron pill with orange juice and ate some Marmite on toast.

The evening before Waitangi Day we went to see our friends. I drank a beer, but it was sort of chewy. I forced down a second to be a good bitch and tried to drink a third before I gave up on trying to have fun. At home, I went to bed feeling uncomfortable. At 2am on Waitangi Day I woke to sudden nausea. I crawled onto the bedroom floor and lay in the fetal position. Then I was going to be sick. I went to the toilet. In the toilet I felt dizzy, my heart was going for it, using more oomph than I’d had in months, I thought it was gonna explode, the room brightened to a starry white. I’m going to die, I thought. I tried to get to the bedroom. I stumbled through the hallway door. The starry white flashed once more before I blacked out. I dreamed I was vomiting. I woke, belly down on the floor of my hallway, outside my daughter’s door and the door of my nieces’ room. My cheek in a small pile of vomit. I didn’t know how long I’d lost consciousness for. Probably only seconds. I had nothing in me to get up. I was afraid to try. I called out.

Ambulance medics arrived and I apologised to everyone, the medics, my almost three-year-old niece who woke, came to the lounge and stared at me.

At Buller Hospital they found my hemoglobin was under half of what it should be.

The doctor used a cliché to tell me what I knew: "You’ve been running on fumes."

Aren't we all, I thought. Instead, I said, "I take my iron tablets." I was afraid this was my own fault.

"Those iron tablets wouldn’t even touch the side," she said.

While in hospital the pain picked up and the bleeding too. A nurse gave me morphine, to stop me crawling around my bed like I was giving birth, and to get me through a few more hours before the ambulance would take me to Greymouth hospital.

My hemoglobin had dropped a significant amount in the short time between Westport and Greymouth. I felt sick again. The emergency department nurse gave me anti-nausea medication, intravenously, and I started to cry. I don’t know if it was relief, or the nurses – their kindness embarrassed me.

They started a transfusion, the first of two units of blood. I was checked every five minutes  – temperature, blood pressure – I basically slept through it all. I slept and slept. I was moved to the ward. I got a second unit of blood. I slept through the day, and then through the night, and through most of the next day.

I woke once when my food was brought to me on a tray. The tray made me think of Mother’s Day and the occasional birthday. Even though the kai was a bit dry and bland, it was delivered, I didn’t have to clean up. I ate every bite.

I needed a small surgery and I have another scheduled for next month.

With the issue on its way to being sorted, I've been able to look at the way I'd been living the past couple of years. I have let things go, retreated from fun. I haven’t made pancakes for my daughter when she has friends over because I'd rather sleep. I've lived a wandering slumber, weighted by a tiny benign growth. I've let go, but not willingly, and that lack of conscious choice, not being an active participant in the letting go, reminds me of sitting at a café table in Wellington, listening, not listening, pleasing to avoid speaking up, simply wanting to lie on the floor and cry, but not even doing that, not even doing that until my body just said, you might not be ready to say what you need, but here's a fall you won't forget fast.

There are several reasons I am drawn to Mila's poem; it is not only about breaking curses, it's about being alive. I was a walking ghost, using more energy for apologising than I'd ever give to healing, holding myself upright in cafes, when my body was telling me to, as Mila’s poem says, just 'come home'.

I don’t always read Mila's poem from beginning to end. It is a long poem; it takes up six pages of the collection. I flick to bits like it’s a self-help book. The poem is a reminder that there are things outside for us, rain, clay, rivers, mountains, the beach. But also, return home. It's fine to retreat, to the bedroom, to kai, to prayers.

The poem sees its readers, taking care, being stunned by their own mauri.

This Mother’s Day I will accept that I haven’t been able to do half of what I have wanted to do for my own kids, or myself, or anyone else for some time.

This Mother’s Day, in preparation for the next surgery, I’ll start the day reading Mila's poem, which will make it just another day really. Another day to tend to my mauri - hopefully unapologetically.

And to my mum, your copy of Goddess Muscle is on its way xo.

Becky Manawatu is the author of Auē (Makaro Press, 2019).