Overstimulation Station (feat. Emma Del Rey of Being in Motherhood)

Two mothers map their evening commutes on the long ride home.

and

Mar 19, 2025

Every night, I board a train at Overstimulation Station. And every night, I disembark with my shirt on inside out and my thick hair piled in a knot on top of my head, my scrunchie buried beneath hair spaghetti that would take at least three talented stylists to untangle.

I’ve learned there are a lot of other mothers at this station, their own trains stopping several times before reaching their final destination: The Last Nerve.

Motherhood is euphoria and discovery; motherhood is also a passenger carrier on a squeaky track, most notably in the evening hours when the sun descends and the uncertainty of night grips the collectively-held breath of every mother with the strength of an infant ripping their hair out.

At the station this evening, I’ve also found Emma, author of Being in Motherhood, scrambling through the sliding doors.

We hug. We laugh. We inhale, exhale, and close our eyes, heads on each other’s shoulders. We find a strange peace in this fluorescent liminal space where two mothers hold their silent needs in mere togetherness.

This connecting train rumbles on while we rest. With a jolt, it stops suddenly, shocks us out of our momentary stillness and we head out into the world toward our separate tracks.

For me, the Purple Line.

For Emma, the Blue Line.

For us both, the messy and magical shared experiences of motherhood.

Purple Line, Stop 1 – The Great Battle Between I Love Apples, Yes I Do and Eyes on Fire

It is a crisp Winter evening in the Pacific Northwest. Blue Foundation is crooning hoa hoa hoa hoa hoaaaaaa in the background. And harmonizing is not my husband, but the shrill voice of a woman stuck inside my baby’s plastic bear walker, battling for the lead role in my living room, belting, “I love apples, yes I do! Apples, manzanas! Let’s say it in Spanish, too! Apples, manzanas!”

I have learned to parrot the apples lady. I have sung this song so many times that I feel I may have actually become the apples lady. And there’s nothing like a screechy children’s toy song playing on top of your cozy adult song that creates such a cacophony of chaos that I cannot discern between the sound of my baby’s rattles and the unnerving rattling in my ears by nightfall.

Blue Line, Stop 1 - Please, Let Me Put a Record On

Five o’clock rolls around and the work day is over. My husband and I shut down our computers and the end of the day routine begins. My son is tired because the day is long and he gave up napping months ago, and he is excited to have both of us at his full disposable. He does not understand his parents are as exhausted as he is, he’s just happy we are there. Beyond our laptops going to sleep upstairs, I know the end of the day is here when my husband turns to me and asks, “Can I please put a record on?”

Without much of a thought on how I have learned this lesson repeatedly, I say, “Of course.” Then he has the nerve to ask me for a vibe. I do my best not to give him a blank stare, but routinely my response is, “I don’t care, you choose.” My husband thinks I am indecisive and I do not like to make decisions, but the truth is I make decisions all day long, a lot of them. By the end of the day, my decision calories are spent and as the kids say, I have no fucks left to give. I am overstimulated and if one more demand is placed upon me, nothing will happen because I have to see the day through.

Purple Line, Stop 2 – The Dog

I am not your typical “Dog Person.” But from the moment I met my husband’s puppy nearly seven years ago, Layla, I fell in love and she became ours. She is a fluffy, white Siberian Husky with bright blue eyes and she seems more human than canine. I taught her new tricks at five years old, my favorite of which is “Bunny,” and on command, she sits and puts her paws up like a rabbit. She is a needy, unusual Husky who is neither an escape artist nor an independent rebel; she is attached to my hip and always underfoot. She’s a docile, mellow creature with a unique personality that I love dearly.

HOWEVER.

When my daughter was born, my dog turned into the Clackity Clack Clack Queen of the Clacking and I no longer have tolerance for Her Majesty’s household monarchy.

WERE THE NAILS ALWAYS THIS CLACKY? WAS THE HAIR ALWAYS THIS FLUFFY? AM I LOSING MY MIND OR IS THIS DOG HOWLING OFF WITH HER HEAD!?

The dog no longer rules the roost, and she’s rioting. She wants to keep her crown. At the expense of my postpartum rage that cannot but help scream, “LAYLA STOP DOING DOG THINGS!!!!!!!” with every clackity clack clack CLACK.

Blue Line, Stop 2 - Tickle Me, Mama

Whether overtiredness or a sheer desire to burn through more energy, the time between work ending and sitting down for my dinner, is my son’s rough play. He enjoys jumping on the couch, shoving pillows into his face, throwing himself onto the couch, and being tickled until he screams, “Stop, stop, stop.”

I love his laugh, I am his mother and what kind of mother cannot stand the sound of her child’s joy? So, I tickle him as a high-pitched squeal emerges from him, sparking panic in my dog even though she is intimate with the sound and so begins a ringing pain in my ear drums. But I keep playing with him, because of joy and his smile.

Purple Line, Stop 3 – Background Noise

I am an anti-television-on-in-the-background person. Since giving birth to my daughter, I’m also an anti-any-noise-at-all person. Sound has been especially overstimulating for me postpartum. I don’t have the scientific background to understand why this particular sense is the one that throws me into overdrive, but it is almost as strong as my crippling fear of spiders.

My baby can scritchy-scrathy on my skin all day long; rip at my hair; climb the rolling hills of my belly. My dog can lay her snout on my lap while I’m eating anything at all. I live for physical touch.

But my ears cannot handle more than baby cries before steam shoots out of them.

Blue Line, Stop 3 - Sadie Mae, Go Away

Once tickle time has begun, then the dog joins in, and she is displeased with the sounds emerging from my child as much as I am but she is brave enough to voice her opinion. The record is playing in the background, almost being drowned out by my child’s screeches, but the dog’s barks overpower them both. Sometimes she barks in sheer protest to make it stop, sometimes she tries to join in on the play. She jumps around, trying to get us to play with her while barking loud enough my ear drums start aching in a new way.

We often joke that our dog is the Joy Police. As soon as anyone has fun in the forms of running, jumping, dancing, or laughing loudly, she is on you. She will bark until she knows you are okay, which means you have to stop doing what you are doing. Only then she will calm down, and disappear upstairs, until she senses a good time being had. She will come back and bark at you again.

Purple Line, Stop 4 – All of the Chewing Creatures

This perhaps parallels my aversion to compounding noise, but my unbridled disgust for food-eating sounds predates pregnancy. I don’t think I experience misophonia entirely but I feel quite close.

I physically cannot watch people eat on television. The chewy, smacky sounds give me a strange combination of anxiety and repulsion. And my chewing-sounds-repulsion has been heightened since giving birth.

I can hear my dog slurping her water from across the house. If my husband eats chips, I have a full body meltdown. I try to chew anything as quietly as possible before I overstimulate myself.

ASMR eating sounds? Find me on a submarine beneath the blue, zooming as far below the surface as possible.

Blue Line, Stop 4 - The Desire for an Adult Conversation

Amidst this chaos, my husband and I do this asinine thing where we try to talk to each other about things that matter. He is often in the kitchen making dinner, while I am trying to entertain our child and make sure the dog does not give herself an aneurysm. In full disclosure, this is my bad habit and sometimes my husband’s. I use this as an opportunity to get things off my chest, creative ideas, frustrations, thoughts I have held inside all day mostly spent with a toddler. I know it is the worst time to have these conversations, but my brain forgets and words tumble out anyway.

Sometimes, again I do this more (in case my husband reads this), my husband will try to tell me cool things he learned recently or random facts about the record somehow still turning on the player. My brain shuts down because there is too much going on, we both know it but we have been starved of adult conversation all day. The only conversations we have with other adults are at work. When we are with our toddler, we are playing out the same scene from Frozen over and over again. We are completely overstimulated by our surroundings but also mentally understimulated.

Purple Line, Stop 5 – Thinking About Dinner

I don’t know what I want for dinner until it’s time for dinner and by that time I’m too tired to think about what I want for dinner, to prepare for dinner, and to cook said dinner all while my baby is in her peak energy hour begging for her dinner and so I simply do not eat dinner unless my husband cooks it which ends up being every night.

Dinner is a task. There are so many tasks. Too many tasks.

I AM AT TASK CAPACITY.

And no squishy spatula, thrown onto the ground with an arm like a collegiate athlete every time it is picked up, can distract my baby enough to be calm while Mommy and Daddy scramble around the kitchen like squirrels stashing acorns before December.

Blue Line, Stop 5 - Complaining, Whining, Crying

The closer it gets to dinner time, the more my son complains, whines, and cries. This is normal toddler behavior, but it is the last straw and stop of the train. I try to listen to and hear his complaints, usually that dinner is not being made fast enough and he is so ‘hun-gee.’ All the while, I am walking around the living space cleaning up toys and dried up playdough off the floor. Because I cannot stand the sight of the mess when my auditory senses are being overwhelmed.

He comes up to me every evening and says, “I sleepy, momma,” and I hold him like the baby I sometimes desperately wish he still was. I try to remind him that sleep is coming soon and dinner will be ready momentarily. This calms him for a moment, and then he repeats himself, and I bite my tongue from repeating myself and sending us into the endless circle of complaints and reassurance. I try distraction instead, but he is clever and nevertheless he persists until dinner is ready and I am a shell of myself counting down the minutes until bedtime.

I walk groggily home from the train station at the end of my line and reappear in front of my home; rose garden in the front yard, planted by my husband, the green thumb, next to the tulips peaking through the soil earlier than expected.

I take a deep breath and I imagine Emma doing the same.

I walk through the threshold of my front door and I see my daughter, smiling with gummy abandon, arms up, waiting for me to stoop down and scoop her onto my chest, forgetting what I was ever complaining about in the first place.

My daughter embraces me with tiny arms and I let go of all the silly, and sometimes serious, things that I won’t remember venting dramatically about decades from now when I reflect on my younger life.

Because all I will remember is this hug of my daughter, and Emma will remember the hug of her son, in the warmly lit light of four walls holding love between them.

Nothing else really matters, does it?

💌

Xo,

Violet Carol and Emma Del Rey

Thank You for Reading 🩵

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Emma is the author of the beautiful Being in Motherhood on Substack. Her words can be found here.

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