Go To Your Room

The problem with being an adult, (well the biggest problem, because as I see it, there are many, many problems), the biggest problem with being an adult is the lack of time-outs.  You, know....like you used to get when you were little and needed to take a break from whatever it was you were doing? Even more specifically than time outs, at least at my house, was being sent to my room. As an adult I never get sent to my room. I miss that.  Sure, at the time I probably said I hated it.  I know I hated time outs which I had to serve  on a chair in the hall way.  I can still hear the sound of the oven timer being turned to what my Mom or Dad says was only 10 minutes, but which I know deep in my heart was really at least an hour.  It's OK guys.  I still love you.  But being sent to my room? I loved it.  I savored it. I'd give anything to figure out a way to carry that over into adult-land.

I'm sure you're probably saying:"Megan?  Just take a break if you need space.  Go for a walk...or go to your room and sit there if you need to, you are the boss of you, duh".  And I do take breaks during the day...as much as anyone in the world today actually takes a break from all things.  I take breaks to look at Facebook; breaks to text my Dad.  When I go for a walk I will often call and check in with my Mom or Heather.  So really, the only thing I am taking a break from is working, I am still engaging, still connecting....and it just isn't the same.

Maybe that is the difference between grown-up time-outs and the ones I miss.  When I would get sent to my room it was into a place where I was totally detached from everyone and everything. I was too young for a phone and TV was off limits, there was no such thing as computers named Cath who were connected to the entire world at all times.  It was just me.  Typically when I first arrived in my room I was distraught about whatever had sent me there in the first place, so the first thing I had to do was regulate myself.  Get the emotions out and calm down.  Self-soothe. Then I had to forgive myself and the world around me for whatever the violation had been and decide to move on.  Usually moving on meant playing with a kind of toy that required imagination and self-direction, or reading a book that required singular focus and thoughtful consideration.  By the time I was allowed to leave my room it usually felt like an eon had passed, but not because I had been waiting impatiently, but because I had traveled so far on my journey from devastation to redemption.

I think about that when I am having a bad day or when I watch my clients have a bad day....or a week or a month.  I wish for both of us a place to be sent to regroup and heal. A place where we can self-soothe and self-forgive.  A place that is safe and warm and filled with toys and books that provoke interaction with only ourselves. A place with no demands or expectations.  Grown ups don't have the time and space to be sent to their rooms.  There is always another appointment to get to, a kid to pick up, a text message to answer.  There is always the next thing to do and the next place to be and even if we are being assholes we go to the next place and we do the next thing because it isn't appropriate to ask for a time out and it may seem weird to send ourselves home from work to our rooms.

I think it is important though to create a grown-up version of this idea.  To create a space where you disconnect with all other beings.  Where you find something to lose yourself in so that an hour seems like a day.  Where you can come undone and put yourself back together without turning to quick fixes  to soothe your soul or to just pretending there is nothing wrong.  A place to play quietly while somebody else is in charge of the have-tos and musts and things that need fixed and things that need answered.  Take some time today and go to your room. Play some, read some, detach.  Take the Lincoln Logs off the shelf and build a dream house.  Re-group.  Forgive.  Be loved. I'll see you when dinner is ready.