I've been having a rough few weeks on an internal emotional turmoil level. There are a lot of contributing factors, but for some reason today I just find myself trying not to cry while sitting here at work. I thought maybe if I wrote some things out, it might help. Hard to say.
1. I get the cranky pants
I keep struggling with this whole working and parenting thing. I know 100% that I'm better off working than being a stay at home parent. I'd go insane having to be cooped up in the house all the time. When I was on leave, I'd find reasons to leave the house because it was making me crazy. Even if it was just going to Tim Horton's for hot chocolate, I needed to be outside of my house doing something. On the other hand, I really hate that someone else gets all of her good moments. I get all of these glowing stories from my mother about how she's been amazing all day long, and that she smiles and laughs all the time, but then I get her home and she is a ball of cranky for me and I don't get any of that happy girl that I keep hearing about. It makes me really sad. I hate that someone else is getting all of her good times and I just get what's left over.
2. I can't fix anything
There's been a lot of unhappiness around my house lately. The baby is going through some sort of sleep regression or something where she just won't sleep, and she's cranky and cries all the time. I can't fix it. I can't seem to help her sleep. I can't seem to prevent the hysterical crying that happens as she looks desperately at me for me to fix it, with big fat tears rolling down her cheeks. But I can't fix it. I don't know how. I'm trying everything I can, and nothing seems to be working. That seems to be the story of my life lately. I can't fix it. I can never fix anything. I can't help anyone who needs help, and I feel terrible not being able to. My husband is going through his own rough patch and no matter how much I want to be able to help, there's nothing I can do. I feel useless in my own life. I try to be supportive in the small ways that I can, but I don't think that really matters. I spend so much time anticipating what might stress him out, or make him upset, or bother him, because I know he already has enough stress in his life, and I work non stop to try to circumvent those things. Being late for work is stressful, so I make sure I get up and give myself enough time to take care of getting our daughter to daycare, make his lunch, take care of our dogs, and do a quick sweep of the house to gather anything he might not have remembered to pack in his work bag (I'm usually the reason his phone charger makes it into his bag) so that there are fewer things to stress about. He has had school work, so I make sure to take responsibility for our daughter and not ask for help on nights when he has to work on projects. I take care of meals and dishes so he doesn't have to worry about ever having to cook. I run to the store if we run out of something, I try to keep the house as clean as I possibly can while also having our daughter to look after. He had to work late on a project one night and I took care of the laundry (usually his chore) for him so that he didn't have to worry about not having something to wear the next day or having to come home from class and still deal with that. I try to anticipate everything, to the point where if something goes wrong that I didn't see coming, I feel like it's somehow my fault that I didn't get ahead of it and it has now become a stressful thing for him. I'm not even sure he is aware of or notices the stuff that I make sure I look after so he doesn't have to think about it and have one more annoyance in his life. I have no power to help his situation, but I forever try to make his life a little easier because it's the only way I know to be supportive at this point, I just don't know if it matters. In the end, it doesn't seem to mean anything. And that makes me feel like a failure too.
3. I miss things
I kept swearing that having a kid wasn't going to change how I handled my life, and for the most part, it hasn't. But there are some things that I've struggled with. My husband has had classes 2 nights a week and on Saturday mornings since February. I like that he's going to class, because I like that he's learning new things, but it also sort of hinders some things. His Saturday class lasted until 2:00 p.m. this semester. By the time he got home, Saturday was nearly over. The baby would be napping, so by the time she got up around 3:00 or 4:00, the day was pretty much done. That means I have been doing a lot of sitting around the house on weekends, which I absolutely hate. I like to go out and do stuff. I hate being stuck at home, but I've spent a lot of time stuck at home. Then Sunday would be our usual chore day where it would be laundry and grocery shopping and housework, so Sunday got swallowed up too. Aside from one trip to the zoo last weekend, I haven't really done much on weekends in quite some time. My friends all seem to have lives that are going on without me, and I'm starting to get desperate for socialization. Yesterday my mother-in-law said something about how we should come over and I had a moment of "Ok!" that popped into my head because I just needed to talk to other people, and then I was like "What are you thinking?! That won't be an enjoyable time!". But you get the point. It doesn't help that my husband has been in classes and is in need of a break from a lot of stuff, and I've been stuck at home so now that he's free I'm like "LET'S DO STUFF!" It also doesn't help that I have a baby in sleep regression who is a monster and can't be taken anywhere. We were invited to a birthday gathering for a friend on Friday, and I stupidly thought taking the baby would be no big deal because she's usually pretty decent in social settings, but she was over tired and crabby and we ended up leaving at 9:30 from a party we didn't even get to until after 7:30. But I don't want to get a sitter for stuff like that because I don't get a ton of time with her so I want to be with her, but I'd also like to have some sort of social contact. I don't really get that at work since I live in my cubicle and don't really talk to anyone unless I have to.
4. I feel guilty
My mother sends me text messages during the day about my daughter. That's usually nice, but lately when she's been a total butt for everyone, it's a lot of talk about wanting to hang her from a ceiling fan and I feel guilty. I feel terrible that my kid is being a nightmare and someone else has to deal with her. I feel bad that she can't just be a regular happy baby. I feel guilty that I'm asking someone to look after my monster child because I'm somewhere else. I feel guilty that I'm sort of glad to be somewhere else when I hear about her screaming non-stop, because I don't want to hear her scream either. But at the same time, I want to rush home and go get her and try to comfort her so someone else isn't trying to deal with it.
I don't know if that's everything, but it's all I have the patience to write out right now. Maybe it'll be easier with it living here instead of all in my head.
0 comments:
Post a Comment