a fifo wife {my fifo life: me: split seconds}

‘Have a good holiday’ mum said.I was going to a writing gig I classed it as work, not a holiday, but trying to tell someone that my blog the thing I love to do has become more than a hobby is hard.’I will’ I said walking down the back steps.However unlike previous times of leaving the kids for a course I wasn’t excited. I was ho-hum it was work, and so I got that feeling that my husband did- I think- when he goes. I wasn’t tremendously excited the prospect of being in a hotel room for four days. The glamour that the Qantas club typically represented to me was a gratefulness of a clean seat free wi-fi and a decent coffee. The plane flight merely a mode of transportation.It didn’t represent a holiday.The flight was quick but the travel day long. I arrived in the dark. The people at the hotel front desk friendly but not anything more than they are paid to be. The hotel room clean but dark when I arrived. I sat on the edge of the bed with a sigh looking around the room. It was nice luxurious even, but it was cold and informal.

It was at this point as I sat on the edge of the bed hunched and tired so tired that it hit me. Now I have had thoughts of if I disappeared would people miss me? I have never answered myself, and that’s where it would lay. I have questioned my existence a few times when at my tiredest but I have never said it out loud. Never told my husband never wanted to make a big deal of the stuff in my head I didn’t want the worry from anyone after all everyone asks that once right? Besides I don’t want to be treated different but keeping quiet, we don’t learn that way.

So this trip as I sat on the edge of the bed I discovered it was lonely in here this five-star room, and I was on my own. This thought was followed up with a rushed feeling in my chest of panic. Looking around for my phone I wanted to call the kids but decided not to that I would interrupt them {from what ? abc 2?}. I couldn’t call the husband either because well I couldn’t I have never been able to besides what would I tell him; that I was scared and lonely and yet have just arrived? How stupid was that? My head suddenly got lost in the clean dark quiet room with the noisy thoughts in my head and the racing of my heart.

And for a split second I wanted to ‘leave’. Disappear from the embarrassment I was making of myself my husband and my children. Leave before I made a fool of myself further. I curled up on the bed for a minute trying to calm the thoughts in my head. I thought of every single thing said to me, every ‘mistake’ I was making to my children and ‘every’ disappointment I had inflicted on my family.

I had never thought this way. Never felt this cold or this lonely. The need to leave was overwhelming.

I don’t know what brought me back from the noise in my head. The voices from the corridor, the slam of a door the awareness that I wasn’t alone I just had to go look for it? I don’t know. It felt like hours, but the reality was it was seconds. I got up pulled open the curtains and cried.

I was scared.

And yet I thought later is this what it feels like for those that work outside the home and flying to a mine site. A hotel, a truck stop, a defence base, another hotel, to work, an empty house or vessel. Is this what it feels like for those that are struggling with the isolation. Exhaustion, mental illness, unwellness and depression time and time again.

And is this how it happens; those who have left home seemingly happy, everything to live for and yet get to work and to arrive into that cold dark room. A room that is quiet where their mind plays tricks. And so the only way to stop that feeling of being that pity case that burden that embarrassing weak secret is to do what they feel is best at the time. To leave us.

So what do we do when all this is a necessity?

Awareness, community and self-care. We must break the stigma that this is a weakness that it’s an illness and talk this shit out. We must bring back investing in each other, and most importantly we must take responsibility of our own health, our own mental wellbeing for only we can do that ourselves. You have got to want to fight.

Because the reality is if I hadn’t understood myself. Known how to take care of my anxiety and what ever the fuck that was that night and put on my shoes, walk outside and run the beach to get the endorphins running, my mind my exhausted mind would have played games on me and I would have lost.

Instead, I knew to run exercise breath and get my literal head straight and to start it took just a split second.