It's been awhile.
I have so many thoughts flying around my brain that I am still trying to make sense of. Two weeks ago, I realized it had literally been months since I'd taken time to write anything more than a grocery list. Even my usually bursting planner has been abandoned for most of this summer. I gave up on updating our family blog a while ago. I have been trying to muddle through Shutterfly scrapbooks, but I'm still a year behind on those. I haven't created anything, painted anything, or designed anything just for the sheer joy of it in months and months.
Why? I thought to myself. Why am I not making time for these things that I love?
I've been reading. Actually, I've been flying through the fluff fiction. 25 books since May. Reading is breathing for me. It's life.
But it isn't everything.
I'd be lying if I said that this summer has been the best ever. Parts of it have been amazing, but 70% has been downright miserable. I've been losing track of myself, retreating into a person who is neither pleasant nor successful nor content. I feel as if I've been hiking through wet sand, uphill, in a wind storm. My husband comes home to find me battered, listless, and completely worn out. I'm not usually one to back down from a fight, but my whole summer has been a losing battle.
In explaining these emotions, I wish I could find the reason for it all. I have my suspicions: an anxiety-riddled six-year-old, a potty training flunkie, a curious baby who makes me realize that my other two were, in fact, somewhat mellow toddlers. At least more mellow than her! I shake my head and have to laugh. My favorite portion of my older two's childhoods was undoubtedly that period between 12 and 20 months. I'd got back to 4-6 months with my youngest in a heartbeat. She had such a pleasant babyhood and oh how I loved being with her! Of course she is highly entertaining nowadays and nothing melts me more than when she'll stop whatever mischief she is making, crawl over, and thrust her head into my lap for a sort of half-cuddle before she is off again.
With all my energies going three different directions, there is very little leftover, and what I do have, I like to give away: to my husband, my parents, my friends, my home. I've been doing these people a disservice though, because I haven't been taking enough time for me.
I don't feel like my routine has changed that much. I've been going to the gym, saying prayers, showering on a consistent basis. I am starting to realize, however, that sometimes when life gets harder, you need longer time outs and more time for you. As a mom, it is hard for me to take that time without feeling like I'm stealing something from the people I love. An overnighter with my best friends restored me more to myself than I've felt in weeks--but I still came home feeling like I'd been away too long and cheated my family out of something that should have been theirs. I feel like I take these breaks but they are always a race against the clock, because there is always something waiting for me when the break ends.
Having something to come home to is a wonderful thing. I first really learned this lesson nine years ago on my intermission, when time was both my enemy and my ally. This time my break was at home, doing some of the things I now like to escape from. I wanted so badly to be back in Texas, but oh how I relished that time that I had to be somebody's sweetheart, somebody's sister, somebody's best friend--and all without a nametag and a structured bedtime.
The other night my newfound stylist and friend had a last minute opening for a haircut. My hair feels like it has been falling out faster over the past few weeks, and sometimes haircut gives me a mental peace of mind that I won't go bald. I know it doesn't make much sense, but that's the way it is. I snapped up that appointment and then made sure it was okay with my husband. When he got home from work a few hours later, he found the wife he's been finding all summer in a not-great state. A conversation about going out for dinner turned into trying to get the kids herded out the door, a feat that we gave up after twenty minutes of pre-leaving activities (like putting away laundry and going potty and getting along). After overhearing me leave a child's room when said child refused to do his/her (protecting the identity of the not-so-innocent) responsibility or listen to what I was calmly (I'm giving myself props for staying calm here) trying to say to said child, he came upstairs to find me brushing my teeth at 5:00 and, for the first time in our married life, pushed me out the door with a directive to go get some dinner and have some time to myself before my haircut.
So I did. I left. His actions gave me the permission to breathe for a minute. I used a birthday coupon to get a free hamburger and treated myself to onion rings, which I ate in the library parking lot while reading a book on my phone. I went to the store without having to coral children or feel guilt about spending money. I was buying toilet bowl cleaner. I felt...liberated?
Then I took my tired eyes to my appointment and spent the next two hours (the haircut did not take nearly that long) talking to a kindred spirit. I found myself telling her about the struggles of this summer. We talked about the wonderfulness of understanding husbands, the frustrations of messy houses, the challenge of mental illness and depression, the feeling of losing control and losing yourself. I found myself explaining to her that writing was my outlet, my thing that helped me make sense of the world. And I inwardly kicked myself because I have been robbing myself of that understanding. I called it cheap therapy, but she corrected me and said no, there's nothing cheap about it. It is therapy and it is necessary.
And I've been ignoring it.
No wonder I haven't been able to make sense of life lately. No wonder simple chores have seemed pointless and my relationships with my children strained. I've said to Scott on more than one occasion how I feel like they treat me like I'm worthless and there is no element of gratitude, only entitlement and how I wish I could get that through to them that life doesn't owe them anything.
Perhaps the answer here is as simple as my epiphany about getting Kevin to practice her piano. It's probably the same as reading, I thought. She sees me reading, so she knows I love books and she wants that too. Maybe I just need to find time to sit down and play the piano more just because I enjoy it and she'll see that it can be fun and not self-imposed torture.
Maybe if she sees me taking the time to love myself more and treat myself better, she'll find that she wants to do the same. Maybe it's okay to put myself first, to come home and not apologize for being gone too long, to sit down at the computer and ignore the to-do list and focus on the to-be category.
As my dear friend Anne Shirley says, "It's not what the world holds for you, it's what you bring to it."
I'm going to spend a little more time bringing myself.
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