The case for scheduling a sad-sack Saturday

Allowing myself to ugly cry alone at least once a season.

Photo by Alef Morais on Unsplash

One of the many good things about being a parent is it’s harder to fall apart. You have a living breathing gorgeous incentive — an incentive which depends on you to be emotionally regulated and provide three meals a day and clean laundry and drive her to gymnastics and tuck her in with a tickle — to keep life in motion.

One of the many hard things about being a parent is it’s harder to fall apart. When you need to process something or to release an emotion, it’s harder to carve the time and space.

Over the last few years, I’ve stayed home during a handful of school holidays while my hubby and daughter visit family in the South Island. I stay home for practical reasons — two cats to feed, uninterrupted time to work, technically more time to write, and we save on the extra airfare.

But I’ve realised there’s an emotional element too. Over the last few staycations, I’ve spent at least one day on the couch watching Grey’s Anatomy re-runs, crying, staying in my pyjamas and ordering a curry deal — Lamb Rogan Josh medium, plain Naan hot and wrapped in tin foil, Jasmine rice, a can of something sugary, and, if I’m really pushing the boat out, a chocolate mousse in a plastic pottle — to be delivered to my door from the local Indian takeaway. Sometimes I push the two couches together to create my day-bed and blanket myself from the world.

Potato days. That’s the name me and my daughter give days spent on the couch watching a screen.

I could choose to view this choice as rather shameful and wasteful. By myself and on my schedule, I’ve got all this freedom to go on long nature walks, progress my book, catch up with friends, do an extra bootcamp class, read one of my many (overdue) library books. Return my many overdue library books. I could see it as indulgent: who am I to feel sad when my life is so privileged compared to so many?

But I’ve decided to reframe it.

I’ve given it a new name: my scheduled sad-sack Saturday. I give myself full permission to wallow, to marinate in melancholy, to eat the comfort food, and to lounge in my pyjamas. To make it cosy and self-indulgent and, like, proper cry. I’m talking sobbing. I’m talking wailing. I’m talking snot that comes out in torrents.

TMI?

I mean what’s the worst that can happen if you have this crying container once every 12 weeks when you’re alone? You get a headache? You’re a tad dehydrated? You’re not hurting anyone, and I’d argue it’s much healthier than keeping it all bottled in or lashing out.

I’m not sharing it on social media — so I know it’s private and not performative.

Crying and feeling sad is not inherently wrong. We’re not made to be positive and sunny all the time and it’s natural to feel the pain of the world.

There’s something great about doing it alone as well. You don’t have to apologise. You don’t have to worry about being too much (unless you’re a super crier and the windows are open). You can wipe your face on your nightie if you really want to go all in. You don’t have to worry about somebody else taking on your pain or trying to hurry the tears along.

I mean you don’t have to cry alone all the time. In fact, it can be very comforting and appropriate to cry around other people.

But I think there’s a case for crying on your lonesome when you can. Allowing yourself to open up the floodgates temporarily. Trusting that you will not remain stuck in that space.

That being said, I’ve put up some guardrails so this crying sesh doesn’t blow out into a major depression.

These are my guardrails.

• Don’t add alcohol or other substances to the mix.

• Plan something for the day after. Give yourself a reason to get dressed and leave the house and be around people.

• Watch a tear-jerker: I usually find it better to focus on a fictional character’s suffering rather than pick at my own emotional scabs.

• Keep it contained. Bring your focus back onto why you’re doing it (to release something that’s bunged up) rather than allow your brain to go off-piste and bring back every past hurt.

• Take my meds as I would normally. This is about processing; not giving the black dog a free pass.

Talking of dogs, I had something unexpected pull me out of my crying sesh on my Spring sad-sack Saturday.

While half-heartedly watching Gone Girl, I picked up my phone and saw four texts from my neighbour. They’ve got a puppy who’s recently figured out how to jump over their fence. They were stuck in the city watching a show but had noticed, through a phone app, that their dog had got of the house and into the garden.

They were worried he was going to escape and run out into the night.

It was dark out except for the stars. The moon was a waxing crescent.

I put on my pink coat and my scuffed shoes and headed down the driveway.

The kids at the house closest to the road were still playing on the trampoline.

One of the kids, let’s call him Alfie, is an old classmate of my daughter’s who was there for a sleepover. He said “Hi”.

I asked them if they’d noticed a dog run down the driveway. One of the boys said, “Yes, I saw something run across the road to the rugby fields.”

Together with this motley bunch of kids, I crossed the road to the rugby fields and started calling out the dogs’ name. Singing his name to entice him to come to us. This pup is beautiful with eyes I’ve never seen on a dog before. Both a different colour. His right eye a crisp and striking blue. The kind of blue that you’d see on an iceberg.

We called out his name into the dark. One of the kids had her dressing gown on. It felt like an adventure. It felt purposeful. We’re going on a pup hunt.

Their dad joined us with a stronger light, but what we thought was a dog was actually a trick of the light.

After a wander through the boggy rugby fields, my white sneakers getting wetter and muddier, we decided it was too hard a task to try and find the dog on foot. I said I will go home, take my car, and see if I could see the dog with my headlights.

At home, I checked my phone again. Something I should have done before we went on our search.

There was another message from my neighbour, “Don’t worry a friend has got him.”

It turns out, the dog never even jumped the fence, and what the kid saw on the rugby fields under the line of trees was not a dog (or at least not the dog).

But this intermission extracted me from my funk. The cool air, the stars, the shared mission, the adrenalin of worrying about someone else. And, of course, the complete relief that the pup with the iceberg eyes was safe and warm.

As I went to bed that night, I felt myself relaxing and thinking, “That’ll do. I don’t need to be sad anymore. I’ve done my dash for now. My body feels better. Sad-sack Saturday’s closed for the season.”