Coping: Do you fake it until you make it?

In the eyes of my mother, being unable to cope was character condemnation of the worst kind. Throughout my 1950's and ‘60s childhood I became aware of people in our family's circle who just didn’t measure up.

Included in this blacklist were my father’s sister June and our immediate neighbour, Rita. Even as a child I perceived my aunt had a pretty awful life with an emotionally distant and errant husband who gave her little money, much less affection, beyond begetting by her six children. She was later diagnosed with a Bipolar disorder and one of my female cousins had the unenviable task of having to take steps to commit her own mother on more than one occasion.

The other woman was our neighbour, whose Portuguese descent manifested in her looks, vivacity and creativity. She was married to an austere Scotsman called Bill. They had one daughter, Margaret, a year or so younger than myself, who clearly did not take after her mother in looks. She was described in those days as being ‘a little slow’ although she attended the local school. We teased her mercilessly as children, something I feel ashamed of now. Somewhere along the line, Rita had had a nervous breakdown and in my mother’s eyes this was moral weakness. This triggered a diatribe of condemnation and judgement, along with a lack of compassion to which myself and my siblings had to bear involuntarily testimony.

Some years later I had a breakdown while my marriage was disintegrating. All my instincts, all the untruths and half-truths told me something was terribly wrong but my husband countered expressions of my concern by telling me I was hysterical and imagining things. This weary dialogue has been played out millions of times between men and their suspicious spouses. The link between being female and being hysterical are irrevocably conjoined by physiology and etymology in male psyches. In the midst of all my crying while trying to grasp a foothold in my newly disjointed world my mother told me in no uncertain terms to pull myself together. How dare I have a breakdown!  No one in our family had ever had mental illness, she told me. Ironically skeletons in the family closet manifest sooner or later and some years later I learnt of an uncle on my mother's side who had languished in a psychiatric hospital for decades, almost ignored by his immediate family who opted to have him kept there rather than ‘let out’.

All my adult life I have ‘coped’ and appeared to others as someone who can deal successfully with the vicissitudes of life. Just how you measure this success I never know. Is the benchmark of coping how others perceive you or the grim warts and all reality?

I have coped with being left with three young children to raise on my own, including a newborn. I had the support of my parents who bought me a car but I had little money and even fewer skills to equip me for the workforce. My coping mechanisms included, while being sleep deprived for months and being dangerously close to being bulimic, lining up at Social Welfare smartly dressed in order to deal with the whole degrading process of having to ask for money. Having an immaculate house and a stack of folded white, fluffy nappies demonstrated my coping skills when the *Plunket nurse called. This wasn’t just about housewifely pride though; the mechanics of household routine and the responsibility for three young children gave some structure to my life and there was some satisfaction to be found folding all those nappies into a nice neat stack.

I remember being so desperately tired, going through grief for both my marriage and my father, who died shortly after my baby's birth. I was dealing with my estranged husband, still seeking his approbation, which of course I never got. When I went to bed at night I truly hoped I wouldn’t wake up. Life was just too much to bear yet I managed somehow to put meals on the table, take the children to their after school activities and even go out and get a job when my youngest child was a couple of months old. To me a job meant I could shed the loaded tag of “Solo Mum”, (and subsequently any random male’s assumption that I was sexually available), and reinvent myself according to my job title. I kept up appearances. I had no truck with falling apart and languishing on a chaise lounge.

Overall I am proud of how I coped as a sole parent. I felt the fear, yet did it anyway; I faked it until I made it; I kept up appearances. Sadly, my mother never quite made it in this sense although she achieved a lot in her life. Losing her own mother at eighteen and later, her first child to meningitis at the age of two and a half years had a profound impact on the demeanour with which she would live the rest of her life. Neither of these situations were ones where you could fake it until you made it. As children, we just knew that conversation about our dead sister was taboo. I believe my mother ‘coped’ by channeling her grief and anger into tyrannical bouts of aggressive and irrational behaviour, (often focused on an individual), which continue to affect us all.

I am still single and wonder if my ‘keeping up appearances’ is the reason I have never met another partner I would truly love to spend the rest of my life with. As far as I know I never evoked from any man a fervent desire to protect and look after me. Did I ever allow any potential partner see my vulnerability? Probably not for I was hell bent on keeping up appearances of normality. Yet the paradox of this persona, the woman who could single-handedly do it all, was that for years Linda Ronstadt’s version of the torch song classic “Someone to Watch Over Me…” was a favourite. It encapsulated all the yearning for love, acceptance and intimacy I craved even while being supposedly ‘strong’. While I still crave those things, if I hear that song now and others of its ilk and era, I just think “How pathetic. Get a life. Pull yourself together, grow some.” Isn’t that what my mother was saying all those years ago?

Still I know my behaviour is unlikely to change. Few outside my own circle would guess that I am unemployed and between benefit payday and the following week there is little, if any, money in my purse. Would anyone ever guess the extent of my finances and that I have nothing to fall back on? I manage to dress well, have a good haircut and pay attention to my grooming. I present well and hopefully I am fooling the world. Likewise in job interviews, where my confidence and presentation have been favourably remarked on, though these are yet to get me a job. I have this internal struggle and dialogue with the self on a daily basis in order to rise above the endless drip, drip, drip of anxiety about my future. Anxiety and lack of motivation settles within me like a stagnant pool. It is a wearying process and it underpins your life while slowly eroding your vitality and confidence.

What still works for me in a very small but significant way, is when I am dressed, my hair and make-up done and I take a look at myself in the mirror. I CAN fool the world I tell myself, as long as I fool myself first, I can face anything. Go get ‘em girl! For to take some action, no matter how small, goes some way to prevent spilling over the edge into depression. Consequently I am still faking it, until I make it. I am busy keeping up appearances and hopefully eventual paid employment will do the rest.

*Child Health nurse