{"id":285,"date":"2025-12-16T12:01:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T12:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stillmeinhere.com\/?p=285"},"modified":"2025-12-16T16:59:06","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T16:59:06","slug":"im-both-pinky-and-the-brain-and-honestly-that-explains-a-lot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stillmeinhere.com\/?p=285","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019m Both Pinky and the Brain (and Honestly, That Explains a Lot)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Yesterday my brain was loud\u2014not panicked, not spiraling\u2014just constantly running. Spinning. Trying to solve something that didn\u2019t have a clean solution. I felt it in my body before I could fully name it. My ears hurt. My sinuses felt dry and full at the same time. That familiar am-I-getting-sick-or-am-I-just-exhausted<\/em> feeling settled in, and lately I\u2019m starting to believe it\u2019s exhaustion finally demanding to be acknowledged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m tired in a way that sleep doesn\u2019t seem to touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Somewhere in the middle of that mental noise, Pinky and the Brain popped into my head, and it made me laugh. And then it made me pause\u2014because the longer I sat with it, the more accurate it felt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Brain is hyper-intelligent, driven, convinced there\u2019s a right plan and determined to execute it. Pinky appears chaotic and unfocused, but is emotionally intuitive, playful, sincere, and oddly wise. Together they aren\u2019t at war. They\u2019re a system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apparently, I am both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have more snark in my Pinky than I\u2019d like to admit, and I am very much the Brain of this household. That dynamic didn\u2019t start here. It didn\u2019t begin with marriage or parenting or even adulthood. Somewhere in childhood, I learned that being observant, prepared, and emotionally regulated was how you stayed safe. You paid attention. You anticipated. You smoothed things out before they became problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I once saw a line on an Instagram Reel that made me laugh because it felt uncomfortably accurate:
Turns out if you get good grades and pretend to have it all together, they\u2019ll let you raw dog ADHD until motherhood sends you into a full-blown burnout.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s me. And I know I\u2019m not alone in that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I became the planner. The organizer. The navigator. The one who puts things where they function and remembers where everything lives. I\u2019m also the person who is home all day, every day, which naturally made me the point person. This isn\u2019t a story about a checked-out partner. Nick is engaged, attentive, and genuinely wants to help. This is a story about how I built a system that worked because I over-functioned inside it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I didn\u2019t realize was how easily my brain became the external hard drive of this family. Not because anyone else is incapable, and not because of bad intentions, but because it became easier to ask me than to think it through. Over time, the thinking got outsourced. The effort got offloaded. When one person consistently knows, remembers, and anticipates, everyone else naturally leans on that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My brain has excellent leadership skills and absolutely no concept of rest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I see now that I didn\u2019t just become the Brain of the household. I became the hem of the sweater\u2014the part that holds everything together and keeps it from unraveling. I listened for what people needed before they asked. I noticed shifts in tone, mood, and energy. I adjusted. I stitched and restitched so everything could stay intact. And now I\u2019m standing back and realizing how rarely that same attunement comes back toward me in the same way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of this pattern is that I don\u2019t ask for help. Not because help isn\u2019t available, but because I learned early that needing less made life smoother. So I handle things. I take initiative. I do what needs to be done without waiting to be noticed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This morning, that looked like me shoveling the driveway. I didn\u2019t ask the teenagers to help, even though they were home on a delay. I didn\u2019t pause to say, this is too much for me.<\/em> I just started digging, managing a toddler at the same time, telling myself it would be quicker if I did it alone. And when it finally hit me that I needed help, what hurt wasn\u2019t that help would have come\u2014it was realizing how deeply ingrained it is for me not to ask or for them to want<\/em> to help. To see me doing something that isn’t just for me. This is something for everyone in the house. That there was no consideration for how I would do this when everyone was gone and where they needed to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That realization landed on top of something else that was already tender.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What landed hardest recently wasn\u2019t a big fight or a dramatic moment. It was realizing that when I share something vulnerable, it often gets reframed as insecurity or something to fix. When all I needed was for someone to say, I can see how that hurts you.<\/em> Not a solution. Not logic. Just acknowledgment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve realized that I often soften the blow to cushion other people\u2019s feelings\u2014while I\u2019m screaming inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes that softening shows up as sarcasm. It\u2019s armor. It helps me regulate my own discomfort when I don\u2019t feel safe staying open. I can see how it lands, and I take responsibility for that. I\u2019m actively working to change it. What still hurts is how rarely anyone asks what was happening for me when I responded from that place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This isn\u2019t insecurity.
It\u2019s a nervous system asking to be met before it has to protect itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Especially as a stay-at-home parent, even with a supportive partner, the loneliness can be quiet and hard to name. You spend your days managing needs, anticipating emotions, and problem-solving in real time, often without another adult in the room. So when you finally say I need something<\/em>\u2014when you finally allow yourself to be vulnerable or ask for help\u2014and it gets reframed as something you need to work through alone, it hurts deeply. Not because the help isn\u2019t there, but because the moment of being met is missed. And that can reopen wounds you\u2019re actively trying to heal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That kind of pain doesn\u2019t stay abstract. It settles into the body. It shows up as tension that never quite releases, as ears that ache for no obvious reason, as sinuses that feel wrong but not sick enough to justify slowing down. It shows up as exhaustion so deep you start wondering if something is medically wrong, when really you\u2019re just worn thin from carrying more than your share for too long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also don\u2019t always allow myself to fully break down. My three-year-old feels everything I feel. If I cry, she cries. And suddenly I\u2019m comforting her when what I need is to be comforted. I need a place to land. And my heart cracks open again because that place used to be my mother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I want to be clear about this: this isn\u2019t ingratitude. This isn\u2019t unhappiness. I love my family. I find joy. I laugh. I notice beauty. All of these things coexist with grief, exhaustion, and the need to be seen. Strength doesn\u2019t cancel out need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I\u2019m learning is that when feelings don\u2019t get met, they don\u2019t disappear. They leak. Into tone. Into withdrawal. Into sarcasm. Into silence. Into a body that feels like it\u2019s always bracing. Vulnerability met with logic instead of care trains the nervous system to stay alert, even when nothing is actively wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I regulate. I manage. I notice everyone else\u2019s needs, moods, and emotional weather. And now I\u2019m trying something new. I\u2019m learning to pause instead of fix. To listen instead of translating feelings into action steps. To allow discomfort to exist without rushing it toward resolution. Not everything needs to be solved in order to be cared for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not trying to stop being the Brain. I\u2019m trying to loosen my grip on being the only place the thinking, remembering, and emotional regulation are allowed to live. I know I helped create the system that exists in my family now, and I also know that means I have the power to change it. That change won\u2019t be instant. Relearning rarely is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not unhappy all the time, and I\u2019m not constantly overwhelmed. Most days, I function. I show up. I handle life. But sometimes something small gets touched\u2014an old pattern, a missed moment\u2014and it spirals not because the moment is big, but because it lands on something unresolved that\u2019s been carried for a long time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe that\u2019s what Pinky brings to the Brain\u2014not chaos, but humanity. A reminder that presence matters more than perfection. That being seen is sometimes more healing than being fixed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not asking to be solved. I\u2019m learning how to listen to my body, how to honor my needs before they spill over, and how to set some of my armor down without everything unraveling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And honestly\u2026 that explains a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you for being here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday my brain was loud\u2014not panicked, not spiraling\u2014just constantly running. Spinning. Trying to solve something that didn\u2019t have a clean solution. I felt it in my body before I could fully name it. My ears hurt. My sinuses felt dry and full at the same time. That familiar am-I-getting-sick-or-am-I-just-exhausted feeling settled in, and lately I\u2019m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-lately"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillmeinhere.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillmeinhere.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillmeinhere.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillmeinhere.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillmeinhere.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=285"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/stillmeinhere.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":289,"href":"https:\/\/stillmeinhere.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285\/revisions\/289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillmeinhere.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillmeinhere.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillmeinhere.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}