Thoughts on being lonely and other things

I'm not sure what it is about the changing of the seasons that seems to trigger things in me.  It's not like a seasonal depression thing, really, but just a sense of restlessness and typically an impending dread of dealing with upcoming holidays and the drama they bring.  Plus, as much as I love fall, life changes a lot when school starts again.  My oldest daughter and husband are back in college classes, and my husband goes back to work, so his job coupled with his college classes often mean he brings a lot of work home, or spends evenings and weekends doing homework.  It means I have to find ways to occupy my time without him participating.  Where we might usually spend a weekend going shopping, or taking our daughter to the zoo, I now have hours and hours to fill without a partner.  I can take my daughter to the zoo alone, if I want, but it loses something when we don't share the experience as a family.  So, we run errands, and we spend time at the library, and we go to the park, but she's not much for conversation and sometimes I just miss having someone to chat with.  I've channeled my energy in the evening into creating some gifts for people who are having babies or have recently had babies, and that takes up my time and keeps me occupied, but it doesn't solve for my lack of conversation.  Sometimes I wish I had someone I could just meet up with for lunch or coffee, who didn't mind that I'd have a toddler in tow, so I could just....talk.  I don't even have anything important that I want to talk about, I just want to chat with people.  So, maybe that's what fall triggers for me.  A sense of loneliness.  It allows me to be too much in my own head, and that's hard.  It's particularly hard at the moment, since the only person I really get to socialize with is my husband, and he's absent.  It just highlights the fact that my support system has crumbled.


 I think it just makes me think about other people who are absent, and how sad it makes me, and....often....how terrible it makes me feel.  Probably because this sort of thing happens over and over and over, so it feels like I'm the problem.  And maybe I am the problem.  But I try not to be the problem.  And I try to understand what it is about me that does this to people, so I can attempt to change it.  But, I don't always understand, and there will always been lingering "What did I do that was so terrible?" questions in my head that are hard to manage because there aren't always answers to that question, because people just disappear.  And maybe that's another thing that all of this loneliness is triggering, it makes me notice more quickly when people start to pull away.  Then I get more sad.


But, I'm still there when people need it, even if they are holding me at a distance.  I haven't closed doors, I'm just not expecting people to walk back through them.  It's an ongoing battle I have with my self esteem, and my sense of self worth, but I'm still there.  If people want me to be.  That's about all I can do anymore.


So, it drives me to be here, writing this.  I know some people might think this format isn't the best way to deal with my feelings, but I think it's the best format for me.  It's sometimes just something I have to get out of my head so I have space for other things.  So, I get it out of my head and I move on.  I read something a friend posted a few days ago about why she writes, and she said "I am a (somewhat) well-adjusted member of society because I write.  Writing saves me from myself".  I think that's what I do here.  I'm saving me from myself by writing it all out and in some ways it keeps me balanced.  It keeps me from dwelling on the darkness that can creep into my head when I'm left to my own devices for too long.  And I need that.

Read More

A little bit of credit

When I first set out on the whole parenthood journey, there were a lot of people who were significantly less than supportive.  There were people, some very close to me, who said I wouldn't be very good at it.  There were people who said they never "saw me as a mom".  There were people who asked me if I was sure I was cut out for this.  That was hard.  That put a lot of doubt into my head.  It shook my confidence to the point where I actually didn't think I could be a good parent, because no one around me thought I could.  That's the weird thing about people.  When a person has faith in you, it's like you can do anything, but the second you feel like no one is in your corner, everything feels pointless.


Then, after my daughter was born, after I had been told while in labor that I "probably couldn't do it" ("it" being labor and delivery), I found myself in a panic at the idea of being allowed to go home with a baby that I clearly had no business taking care of because even while in the midst of birthing her, people still didn't think I could do it.  I panicked that I'd be sent home to care for her without the help of people who know so much more than I do about babies.  I was afraid to leave the hospital, because I thought that once I was on my own, I'd fulfill everyone's prophecy about me.


That's when something kind of amazing happened.  I did just fine.  I took care of her, kept her alive, seemed to know what she needed and when she needed it.  I got her through sickness, and through GERD, and through teething.  I snuggled her when she cried.  I played with her when she was alert.  I did all of the things that were expected of me, and I did them well.  It took me a long time to bond with her, but once things clicked, that was that.  It all worked.  I proved the naysayers wrong.


Then, we got to the point where my daughter was older, and despite the fact that she was thriving, people wanted to weigh in again on my abilities.  This time it was less about someone thinking I could do the basics of loving her and keeping her alive.  This time the thing that came into question was again about me, and about who I was, and whether I was a good enough example for my daughter.  The question of whether my daughter deserved better was brought up several times by people, and it cut deep every time.  It was so hard to hear that people thought that the person I am was somehow going to damage my daughter because I was going to set a bad example for her.  It was demoralizing to feel like you were finally doing something right in your life just to hear that others thought simply by being yourself, you were going to destroy your kid in some way.  I cried over that.  I cried a lot.  I ugly cried.  It was a weight that sucked all of the oxygen out of a room.


I took a hard look at things after that, though, and realized that those people don't matter.  When I look at my daughter, she is bright, she's funny, she's intelligent, she's well adjusted, she's curious, she's social, she's loving and sweet.  If people think that I didn't have anything to do with any of that based on the example I set for her, then they're dead wrong.  A lot of those qualities are just in her nature, but they continue to grow and flourish due to my encouragement and the example I set for her to continue to be this way.  I set examples for her to solve problems for herself.  I set examples for her on how to interact with the people she loves.  My whole life is an example for my daughter, and so far I haven't done so badly.  So for people to comment on how she deserves a better example really just goes to show that they do not know my daughter at all, and deep down they probably also don't know me.  They don't know that I always put my best foot forward for those that I love, and that I desire nothing more in this world than to see my daughter have a childhood that looks the polar opposite of the one I had.  Those people who wanted to talk about me as a parent haven't actually watched me as a parent.  They've drawn their conclusions based on who I am away from my child, or who they think I am based on social media, and not who I truly am when I raise my daughter.  And honestly, that's their mistake, not mine. 


When I take inventory of how things have gone to this point, and how I've handled this life I've sort of fallen into, and I let a note of conceit fall into my thoughts and opinions, I can allow myself to say I'm a damn good mother.  I don't do everything right, but I certainly have more right than wrong under my belt.  I am not perfect, but my daughter is thriving, happy, and vibrant.  So can anyone ask more than that of a child as young as mine is?  My older daughter is also thriving, challenging herself, living a life that she once couldn't have imagined living.  Her boyfriend recently said that our family is what he uses as an example of what a family should be, and he hopes to have one as great as ours some day.  That's high praise.  Far more valid than the people who have criticized from the outside, since he's basically living at our house and sees every day life.  So, yes, I'm a good mom, and maybe I need to say that out loud more often because it's true.  I'll always make mistakes.  I'll always worry over whether I'm doing the right things.  But on the whole, I'm always working to be the best parent I could possibly be, and anyone who thinks that's not a good enough example well......I guess that's their problem.

Read More

It's an ok life

This morning while driving to work I heard a song on the radio from a Broadway show, and the song itself was directly related to the show's subject matter, but every once in a while you hit a cluster of lyrics that you relate to and you think "Well, that's for me today".  Early on in the song, the lyrics were:


And if my life's not perfect,
If I'm anxious, bored, or sad,
Well, today may be less shitty--
With whole chunks of not so bad!

And I wouldn't change a thing about it;
No, I wouldn't want to change a thing.
In a world that's unreliable,
These are rocks on which to cling.
Nothing's great and nothing's new--
But "nothing" has its worth.


I liked these lyrics.  I liked them because it's a reminder that even if things aren't exciting all the time, and even if "nothing" is going on, that's ok.  Life might never be perfect, but there are big chunks of "not so bad" every day that you can be grateful for.  That's nice.  That's comforting.  Because we all have bad days, but when you shake it out as a whole, the entirety of life is a lot of "not so bad".

Read More

Time to reflect

I went on vacation recently, which was nice because I really needed to get away from day to day life and re-center myself.  It's hard to appreciate the day to day a lot of the time, because you get caught up in the million demands of your average life, and often it seems as if the day is over just as soon as you feel like you've gotten your feet under you.  Vacation helps me turn off the noise of every day life.  It takes away those nagging responsibilities like cooking, laundry, dishes, grocery shopping etc. for a little while and just lets me be present in a place and enjoy it.  It's nice, and I need it every now and again.


Stepping away from life gives you space to think.  Space to breathe.  Space to sort yourself out.  This particular trip left me thinking about the last year of my life.  It's odd to think about "this last year" in the middle of August, right?  But, here we are, doing just that.  In many ways, the end of last summer was a precipice my life was teetering on, and when September hit, everything started tumbling in all directions.  My husband quit his job shortly after this time last year, and this year he starts a new one that is exactly what he wants to be doing, and he's excited about the work he's doing for the first time in as long as I can remember.  The journey for him to get from walking out on his job to where he is now was a series of events that all just sort of fell into place to lay this path for him, and while I was terrified of what would become of our lives when he walked away from his steady job, I can see now that it was the thing that had to happen to lead to where we are now, which is a much more positive place for our whole family to be.  While I initially was really angry and worried about how his decision played out, for the first time ever, I did the thing that was entirely out of character for me.  I let go.  I didn't try to control the situation.  I assumed that everything would work out in the end, and I let the chips fall where they needed to fall.  I stopped worrying about the next 10 steps down the road and just thought about the short term steps in front of me, and something miraculous happened.  Everything was ok.  Everything did work out.  Everything happened the way it needed to happen.  And, I learned that sometimes it's ok to let go a little.  I probably won't do this as often as I should, but now I know that if there's a voice in the back of my mind saying "It'll be fine", I should listen to it.


The Murphy's Law of my life, however, is that everything can't be going smoothly on all fronts at the same time.  I think it's some sort of curse.  Now that my home life is evening out, my extended family life is in a state of turmoil most of the time, and my friends at this point prove to be non-existent.  I suppose that's not entirely true.  The friends I depended on, the ones I cared about and opened up to, the ones I let see my rusted edges, those are all gone.  There are still friendships out there, many still small and in the early stages getting to know one another, but it doesn't replace the feeling that there were people you could depend on whenever you needed someone.  At least not yet.  Maybe not ever.  It's hard to say.  But, I suppose if I look back at the past year, maybe that idea that I could depend on people when I needed someone was really an illusion.  Between the people who simply disappeared, the people who have said that my daughter deserves a better example than I provide, the people who have backed away slowly, the people who literally refuse to attend anything if my daughter is present, and the people who find me to be somehow too much......did I really have anyone that I could honestly depend on?  When you look at the track record, I think maybe not.  But it felt that way, at least for a time, and sometimes it's the feeling that I miss most.  Now, instead of spending a couple of weekends a month with friends, I spend all of my weekends with my family.  It's enjoyable, though sometimes lonely.  Sometimes you just want to see people who make you laugh, who want to talk about their lives, or politics, or the motherfriggin' Olympics because the Olympics are awesome.  The family time is nice, though.  It's not a substitute for catching up with people you don't see every day, but at least we all enjoy each other's company, and none of us have to feel like we're forcing someone to spend time with us. 


I think maybe that's the lesson I'm supposed to learn here, though.  That there will likely never be other people you can truly depend on.  That you need to rely on yourself entirely, and friendships are best kept at a surface level where no one has to get attached to one another, that way it doesn't matter if those people disappear.  And I think I am learning that, slowly.  I may always envy people who have these beautiful friendships with people who have seen them at their best and worst.  My sister has several of those, and it's sometimes hard to watch and realize that can't be my life, but I think my life is just made to be different.  I'm made differently.  I'm not the person people keep around for years, and I need to be ok with that.  I'm starting to.


The upside to things is that because life at home is going smoothly, I enjoy the time spent with my family.  I enjoy my daughters.  I enjoy the life we continue to build within the four walls of our home.  I enjoy who both of my girls are becoming, and the way their lives are changing.  I enjoy my husband's newfound happiness, and the way our lives are growing together.  There are a lot of good things.  I just hope those good things keep growing, multiplying, and becoming better.

Read More

An Update

It's been a while.  There have been a few times when I've sat down and wanted to work through my thoughts here, but lately writing has felt like a chore.  Life didn't stop moving forward, but my brain hasn't been able to stop and organize my thoughts in any sort of meaningful way for a while, so I would open the screen and immediately feel exhausted at the thought of filling it up, so I'd close it again and walk away.


I think part of the reason for this is that I've been working through emotional roadblocks here for basically the last two years, and I'm at a point where I just can't be bothered to do that anymore.  Nothing has changed.  Friends still don't talk to me.  Family continues to be a train wreck.  My weekends are still spent at home with little social interaction.  I still sometimes crave the freedom to be completely myself without having to hear about what I need to change to please others.  But, I can't be bothered to think too much on any of that anymore.  Nothing is going to change any of it, so the fretting and sadness over everything just feels pointless.  This is what my life looks like, and I honestly need to just accept and deal with that.  So, I guess maybe I have.  At least in some small way.  At the very least, I don't give it as much space in my head anymore.  I may crave what I see other people have in terms of personal relationships, but I think maybe that's just not the life the universe intended for me to have, and I need to stop trying to force it.  So, I have.  And it's ok.  I can think about other things.


As for life, it goes on.  My husband got a full time teaching job, which is amazing.  He's been working toward this for years and after he left his office job last fall, the stars all seemed to align for him and pieces kept falling into place, each piece leading him closer to this final step.  He's excited, and I'm excited for him.  He is the happiest I've seen him in years, and I'm glad.  I needed him to be happy, to be honest.  I tend to absorb the emotions of the people I surround myself with, so his misery was becoming my misery, and since he left his old job, it's like a weight was lifted from our lives, which I needed.  We both needed.  Probably him more than me.  But it has made the world feel like there's more oxygen in it, and it's good to breathe again.


My daughters are doing well.  The oldest has been dating someone for a while now who seems like a very good fit for her.  She's the happiest I've seen her since she moved in with us, and she keeps casually dropping comments about some day marrying this guy into conversation, looking for a reaction from us.  In reality, I think my husband and I would both be fine with that.  Not tomorrow, obviously, but if that was her choice somewhere down the road, he's a decent one.  Plus, I don't think she's going to find someone who matches her level of weird quite as well.


The younger is in full toddlerhood, which has its good and bad sides.  The fierce independence is hard, and it comes with tantrums that are epic and sometimes exhausting.  Then she swings quickly into moments of adorable that make you want to snuggle her to pieces.  Her vocabulary keeps growing, and she is starting to recognize letters when you point them out to her.  She continues to be obsessed with the cat, and insists on picking out her clothes each day.  Over all, she's turning into a stubborn, quick tempered, bright, hilarious little person, and there are times I wish I saw a little less of myself in her.  For those at home, it's not the bright and hilarious that she and I have in common. 


Was it Robert Frost who said that he could sum up everything he's learned about life in 3 words: It goes on?  I think it was.  I think he's right.  I think that's the best any of us can hope for.  It keeps going, and we go with it.  So that's what I'm doing.  I'm moving along with life.  And for now, that's ok too.  Sometimes it's nice to just go where things take you.

Read More

Departures are hard

A few days ago a friend of mine told me that she and her family were moving to Colorado.  It was casual, just a quick drop-in comment amid a conversation we were having, but it hit me in the gut like a punch.  I sat there, staring at my phone, trying not to cry.  I was crushed.  This was one of the only friends who didn't treat me differently after my daughter was born. She was the first person I told I was pregnant.  She has never questioned who I am, or asked me to be anyone different.  She talked me off the ledge every time I said I was afraid of being a bad mom, and she listened to every one of my crazy rants about how nervous I was, or how I felt like I was a bad person for not crying while I boxed up my daughter's newborn clothes, or not getting emotional when she hit new milestones, and each time she reassured me that I was ok, and that not everyone falls apart over little things like outgrowing an outfit.  She is my only friend who has never expected me to be more than what I am, and she's leaving.  I'm heartbroken.

I'm at this strange place in my life where all friendships are precarious.  People I loved, people I valued, people I would have given the shirt off my back, people I accepted for who they were despite their flaws, they're all disappearing.  It all started going down hill last January when my daughter was born, but it's just continued on and on to the point where my weekends are spent at home watching Netflix and communicating with no one.  If it weren't for my sister, I'd have just about no one left.  I don't know if that's my fault, or the fault of other people, or if it's just life and how people evolve, but it's sad. It's sad because I sill need people.  It's sad because I truly believe it takes a village to raise a child, and my village is gone.  It's sad because I feel like the reason is, as it is so often, because I am who I am.  I have tried, oh my goodness I have tried, so incredibly hard to be someone else, but at the end of the day I default back to this flawed and busted version of myself and it never seems to get better.  I have gone to therapy, I have done the work, I have pushed myself out of my comfort zone, and I have come up with the same conclusion each time.  At my core, I am me, and I'm learning that it's not what people want.  I try.  I try every day, in my work life, in my home life, and I'm pretty sure that every day, I fail.

Last week my family was in a state of upheaval, which is so often the case with my family, and the insult that was being wielded like a weapon was that people in my family were just like me.  Being like me was being used to insult other people.  It was clear that the general opinion is that I am the worst thing a person could possibly be, and I had to sit by and swallow that and pretend it didn't matter.  But it did.  It mattered a lot.  It just reinforced years and years of people telling me that the biggest problem with me.....is me.  Then I heard the same thing at work.  And I'm starting to wonder, some days, why I exist at all.  This isn't being said in an attempt to assign guilt, or seek some sort of pity.  It's a true and valid question I ask myself quite often.  Everyone is supposed to have a purpose.  Everyone is supposed to be here for a reason.  I just.....I can't seem to figure out what mine is, or why I'm here.  I hope it's to help my daughter to be so much better than the flawed and broken person I am, but I always fear that I'm going to pass my flaws on to her, and I'm going to leave her sitting in this same place 30 years from now, asking herself these same questions.  It's a huge fear I carry with me every day.  I've been told that my daughter deserves better, that I should be better for her sake.  The crushing thing about that statement is the assumption that I'm not trying every single day to be better, to be stronger, to be different for her.  So, if my purpose is to be a better example for my daughter than the one I had for myself, the implications here are that I'm failing at that as well.  And there are some days when I just need a win.

So....I guess that's why it hurts so much to hear that one more piece of my village is leaving.  I know we'll still have ways to communicate, but it's hard.  It's hard to know that when I need someone to celebrate with, she will be so very far away.  Her family has often included us as their own.  When her sister graduated college the same year I did, they threw a party for her, and when I arrived I saw that my name had been added to the cake.  No one had celebrated my achievement to that point, and there I was, at a party for someone else, and they thought to include me anyway, because that's who they are and that's what they do.  I will miss her.  I will miss brunches, and New Years Eve, and summer kickoff parties every year on the last day of school.  I will miss my friend.  Probably more than she will ever miss me.  She will always have her village, no matter where she goes, and I don't even know if she realizes how important she was to mine.  I just hope that distance doesn't prove to be impossible to overcome like it has in the past with other friends who have moved away.

I will miss my friend.

I miss all of them.

Read More

What was I afraid of?

Today my husband and I met up with a friend at a local museum to see an exhibit that's housed there through the end of the summer.  We took my daughter along in her stroller, and she clapped and danced to the music playing in the exhibit.  Later we took her to an outdoor area and let her run around and look at animals on a working farm.  She seemed to have a great time, and we brought her home for her nap.  She woke up and played with her train set, shouting "Choo choo!" and rearranging the houses and trees on the train table.  She ran through the house, playing with toys, and on occasion when she'd run from one room to another, she'd do a run past me or my husband and climb up onto one of our laps and give us a big hug before going back to her playing.  At one point as she was hugging me, she said "Loooove you!" before sliding down onto the floor to run back to her toys.  I sat there for a moment, watching her look back at me with a huge grin on her face as she hugged a toy bunny and thought "Why was I so afraid of this?".

I'm always afraid of the unknown.  I'm afraid when I can't plan, can't anticipate what's going to happen, can't get ahead of the unexpected.  There were a million things about bringing a baby into our lives that scared me to death.  There were a million things about being a parent that scared me.  There was so much to be afraid of that I never had a chance to think about all of the things that wouldn't be scary.  And, if I'm being honest, even the scary things weren't all that scary.  I totally resent having to get up at 6:30 every morning, and I don't love having to work a day around nap time, but the big things I was afraid of weren't really worth being afraid of.  The payoffs you get outweigh the things to fear, and I wish I had known that.

Read More