Fight or Flight
By Rebecca Smyth
@rebsmyth
“Are we really doing this?!”
Paddy looks at me, then at the sign that reads Belfast International Airport, and back to me again. We wave goodbye to my friend, blessing her for saving us a sunrise taxi fare, and I flash a giddy smile as I meet Paddy’s eyes. Nervous laughter explodes in his chest like popcorn, and my emotionally horizontal husband has never looked more unhinged—in the best way.
The night before his birthday, I had tried to keep it casual as I asked him to iron a shirt and vacuum before my mum arrived to babysit. He did neither of these things. We’ll have lots of time in the morning, he told me.
So once he was asleep, I moved like an MI5 agent, ironing the shirt and packing an overnight bag. While I’m not in the habit of keeping a spider web of secrets from my husband, an extra set of clothing is only one of many things I’ve squirrelled away to make this Big London Sleepover possible—another being cold, hard cash.
Just before 6 a.m., on cue, our youngest comes into bed for milky cuddles, and I whisper over his silky head to Paddy, “Hey, are you awake? Do you want to know where we’re going today?”
When I confess that we’re off to London for 24 hours, he whisper-shouts, “WHAT?!” His shock pierces the morning silence, and it’s the most satisfying sound, like thwacking through an icy puddle.
WHAT? He keeps saying to himself as he runs to the shower.
Already, this is the most fun we’ve had, just the two of us, maybe ever.
***
Ten years ago, on any given weekday at 5 p.m., Reuben, my three-year-old, would have fallen asleep on the way home from daycare. At this stage, it was just him and me. At this stage, Paddy was just the guy I saw grabbing a cup of tea in the canteen at university.
Every evening at the same time, I turned the corner onto my street, hoping there would be a car outside my house—no car in particular. It became a ridiculous game, the closing chapter of my daily commute. I hoped someone, anyone at all, was waiting for me at home. One day there was a car, but it was for my neighbour, and I just about lost my mind.
And yet every evening, there was only an empty space waiting for my raggedy Peugeot 306. I don’t know where this specific brand of hope came from, but it needed to leave.
Sometimes, our little family felt so whole and normal to me; I could hardly believe some families had two parents. And sometimes, at 5 p.m., I felt my loneliness on me like a disease.
I parked up and peeled Reuben out of his car seat. I put a key in the lock, turned on all the lights, and reheated the spaghetti Bolognese. I read The Gruffalo, held Reuben inside my dressing gown until he was asleep, and transferred him to the crib before schlepping soggy towels off the bathroom floor and into the laundry. Then I sat by the fluorescent glow of my laptop working on an assignment for university until my eyes were scratchy.
***
As we board our flight, there is a family in front of us with two little girls wearing matching taxi-yellow backpacks, and I think of our three boys grounded on Northern Irish soil without us. The mum tells another passenger they are going to Legoland, and I look at Paddy, who is chugging a black Americano from Starbucks.
“We could never do that as a whole family,” I say to him, thinking of one boy in particular whose nervous system just wouldn’t cope.
“Never say never,” he says with the saddest smile I’ve ever seen.
“Just to warn you,” I say, moving our minds to the adventure at hand, “Our hotel in London is giving major hostel vibes.”
“I don’t care where we sleep,” he says, “I just care that we’re sleeping in London!”
“No, seriously. Just wait until you see it.”
My confidence wobbles, and I give him a list of all the lovely things I could have booked for the same price as one night in our hostel-hotel; a spa day, for example. Or an Airbnb on a coast closer to home. We could have hardcore napped for twenty-four hours, read back-to-back novels, and taken long silent walks on the beach.
“I really wanted to get on a plane, though,” I say, mostly to myself. He laughs, and I know I don’t have to remind him it was my childhood dream to become a pilot.
He squeezes my hand, “Reb!” (Code for, wise up!) “I love those things too, but this is a whole other level of fun!”
His reassurance quiets my thoughts, but there is one question that just won’t quit: Am I running away?
***
The day we said our vows in front of ten people in a garden, there was a bouncy castle. We jumped and jumped and jumped, the white silk skirt of my dress ballooning around us, and relief catapulted me into the air. We flew to the moon, touched the stars, and counted oceans.
The year was 2020, and I spent months in lockdown waiting for permission to marry my best friend. But really, I waited years. For someone to choose us, to delight in us, to share in everything.
Like other naive newlyweds, we looked at the couples a few years ahead of us and said, "Oh no, we will be different. We won’t fall prey to stereotypes. There is no way our love will go stale, like a leftover slice of bread. This love of ours isn’t perishable."
In some ways though, we entered marriage with eyes wide open. No Hallmark movies here. We knew there were people close to us who didn’t approve of him falling for a single mum, or loving my son as his own. We knew something of the juggle it takes to manage a home and family and finances, how that strain might threaten to pull a marriage so taut it nearly snaps.
We knew all of this, and yet we still felt winded when, not long into our marriage, parenting began to ask more of us than we ever knew possible. We didn’t know you could share in everything, become one person—and still feel alone. Same storm, different boats.
***
In a fight-or-flight crisis, I take flight every single time. I am out of there. I imagine my soul leaving my body like a little translucent ghost girl, floating up and out. She smiles and waves, “Bye guys, LYSM!”
It wasn’t a problem until motherhood needed me to be a safe place for a precious boy struggling in his mind and body. I noticed that in moments that feel too painful to endure, I go numb. I want to be a mum who embodies spark and fortitude, but instead, I’m all shadow and silence. I’m lost, and there are no Google map routes for parenting through trauma.
A children’s counselor has been teaching Paddy and me to do therapeutic play sessions at home, and when she talks about the power of play, how it rewires our brain chemistry and brings us out of our survival brains, I realize how badly I need play as well.
***
Before searching for flights to London, I texted my mum: We need a break, or I’m not sure we’ll survive this. I wondered briefly if I should shield her from our pain, but she is my safe place–the beautiful and brutal life cycle of motherhood.
She encouraged us to go. So, I popped the younger boys in front of Cars 2 and hid in my bedroom, the Skyscanner app open in one hand and an apple in the other, because eating something crunchy is supposed to regulate your nervous system.
You do not have the pay grade for booking flights on a bad day, I scolded myself. But three apples later, the flights were booked.
When my dad heard about my rogue plan, he asked my mum, “Twenty-four hours? What’s the point?”
“For the fun of it,” she replied.
And now, as the engine of our plane roars to life and we vibrate up the runway full of possibility, I feel carbonated, ready to cross oceans.
***
We sit side by side on a London tube, and I feel a stranger’s eyes laser into the side of my head. The tube car is silent except for the squeals of metal on metal.
She’s going to talk to me, I think, staring straight ahead. She is absolutely going to talk to me in this carriage full of silent, cool Londoners.
Finally, I give up and turn to smile at her.
“I’ve just been to see a show!!” she says, combusting. And I notice all at once her purple eyeshadow, cotton-candy pink sequin dress, her Lilo & Stitch trainers. I am immediately sucked in. “I've never been to a West End show!”
Incredulous, she tells me she goes once a month. Today, she saw Next to Normal, a musical about mental health. I name as many shows as I can think of, having just heart-eyed the ads on the escalators, and she has seen them all. “I couldn’t sleep last night, like an excited kid,” she says. Her delight is contagious, like a signed permission slip to go out and play. I’m mortified at the water droplets forming in my eyelashes.
“It’s my husband's first time in London,” I say, “We’re only here for 24 hours, so I don’t think we’ll see a show.” Code for: We have 24 hours alone, and we can’t spend three of those sitting in silence.
At our stop, we jump out together, but she is already a shimmering pink blob in the distance. I strain my neck to follow her, to absorb every last mesmerising ounce of her. Was she my fairy godmother?
“That was sweet,” Paddy says, interrupting my creepy stare, “I love that she gets dressed up and takes herself to a show every month.”
Me too, is all I can say as she disappears. Me too.
***
We exit the underground and at first, Paddy and I are cautious with one another, the way you are with an arm that’s been in a cast—except it’s our hearts that have been broken.
But by the time our watches and trainers have clocked 20,000 steps, we are connected again—to one another and life itself. I cry at a group of mothers and daughters singing and skipping through Covent Garden on their way to see Matilda. Paddy uses his camera for something other than work. I admire the style and confidence of the man in a trench coat wearing hoof-shaped boots. We order cocktails that look like Hogwarts potions and go crazy over the magic of it all. I search for the woman at the bar who asked me to find her when we were finished with our table, and because she didn’t believe I’d come, her friends pull me into a group hug. We choose the longest route to the internet-viral apple crumble, and maybe I’m dehydrated, but it is a firework display of flavours in my mouth. It takes half a day to get around Borough Market because I must know the history of every vendor. Paddy ticks Buckingham Palace off his bucket list. I sit down on nearby steps to watch, and I feel deep in my bones that we’re going to be okay.
We have been in fight or flight for so long, trapped in our survival brains, we haven’t been able to feel any of this—curiosity, wonder, openness—the hallmarks of being alive. Maybe this trip wasn’t an elaborate escape plan but a practice in play—a rebellion and battle cry in the face of all the reasons we shouldn't. Maybe play, especially when it makes no sense, is a middle finger to hard circumstances, a flag raised for our family.
We can’t hop on a plane every weekend, but we can hop in the car and go for an ocean swim. We can pull out the old watercolour paints, make a music video with the kids, or say yes to jumping on the trampoline—for the fun of it.
Guest essay written by Rebecca Smyth. Reb is a Northern Irish storyteller, believer and mum of three. After becoming a mother at eighteen, and at a time of feeling lost, she found her words. She says writing is her way of seeing God in her life and she hopes that maybe, through her stories, you might see him in yours too. She is happiest on a slow Saturday morning with her boys or writing alone in the car—where most of this essay was written. You can read more of her writing on Substack at Thin Places.