I’m currently alone in our bedroom sitting on the bed with the lap top. I was ready and willing to go into time out. I think I need it. I think I deserve it. So I’m doing it – without guilt. Or am I? Maybe I just need a pep talk.
My husband is off for the day on a Thursday. He will more than likely have to go back to work tomorrow (Friday) approximately 3 hours away, but it is definitely worth it just to have him here for a day during the week when this happens. He is out in the living room watching Celie while I am trying to do a few things and make a few phone calls in the bedroom. I guess I need to do some writing and relaxing first. This has been one of those weeks. I guess like all of the other ones. Monday comes crashing down on me after the weekend and I am left unsure of how to fall into the routine of being alone again. This lifestyle certainly does do a number on your psyche and sometimes I wonder if someone such as myself is really capable of living this way, because I refuse to admit to myself how hard it actually is sometimes. Every now and then I do talk about it, but I have learned to exist by suppressing the sense of terror that I actually do feel every time that man walks out the door. He leaves me. Over and over again, he leaves me and deep down, you never know if they will ever walk through the door again. I don’t like to focus on this, obviously, but it is in my awareness, so I fill our conversations with a lot of “miss you’s” and “I love you’s” and try to not to argue on the phone while he is out of town because you really don't know if it will be the last time you talk to them, like they say. (I'm not completely unstable, it's just that my husband does a lot of traveling for work on top of his job being fairly dangerous.)
Honestly, I think I do enough “bitching” at him anyway (note the quotations) while he is here, because I also fear that our entire time together, which is really only a little over two days a week, is used up trying to “work things out” and learning each other. Note the quotations. Fighting we will also do, obviously, no marriage is perfect, but mostly what we do I consider working things out, because at least that is my goal. I’m not sure how my husband views my attempts at communication especially when I am rattling off at the mouth like a Banty hen or something. I know that he understands I am trying to come to terms with him or something but he also understands that I am very messed up in this head of mine. He is one of the only people that knows, that has seen, that has felt – how incredibly hard to understand and unpredictable I can be. Despite my problems, I am thankful I have my husband because even through his inattentiveness he is a good listener and has seen me through a lot of things. I also am the most honest and open with him than I am with any other human being in existence, and I even value honesty amongst people and friends, I just like my privacy too, but my husband sees me deal with myself nakedly all of the time...mostly. He also isn't here a lot; there is a lot of me he misses. I don’t want to paint myself out to be a psycho, that’s not it. But would it really be a leap to say that I was mentally ill? Probably not. Any condition that is diagnosable lands you mentally ill, technically. I have a lot of issues and emotional problems that are constantly coming to light and healing themselves while numerous others are simultaneously emerging out of the depths of my psyche. I see myself on a journey of personal growth. I don’t know how to explain it without me sounding like a complete nut job. I’m not on and never have been on anti-depressants…maybe I should be. I’m not in therapy and never have been…maybe I should be. I have never had what I would consider a strong support system growing up and while I was labeled as “independent” I always felt it was just because I had no choice. I had to learn or do these things somehow, and I found my resources very limited, let’s just put it that way, and I feel I was left to figure a lot of things out on my own. Did I make myself independent? I always felt like I was being shamed by this label. I always felt like it was a bad thing. Like my alone time. I always felt like it was selfish and weird of me to require so much alone time. But both of these are only because of the way I was socialized. The problem, perhaps, with the situation, is my shame about them. There should be no shame in me being able to take care of myself, and there should be no shame in me needing to take time for myself in order to do this.
Which brings me back to sitting here on my bed on a Thursday. I love my daughter dearly, but my mind just needs seclusion at times to function. I need to work on a pointless, random project like this blog, or my Ode To My Little Hot Water Bottle. I need these sidetracks. I need this place in my head. That’s how I de-stress, it’s my Zoloft, it’s my Xanex. So how does one do this in order to maintain their sanity without jeopardizing their role as a mother? The point is, I don’t want to have her away from me. I want her by my side, in the house with me. I want to be able to handle her and tend to myself at the same time. I don’t want to have her watched. It is nice to get breaks once in a while, but I do miss her when she is away because I am so accustomed to the attachment parenting lifestyle. I just want a happy medium. And how do I bring that about without looking like a crazy woman to my daughter? I am not 'just a stay at home'. I am a work at home. I am a build your own business at home. I am a give yourself therapy at home.
It’s needless to say I have much to work out before I pass these things on to my daughter. It’s a journey and I am honestly working on all of the pieces of me every day, but I think that I’m missing a few. Some have fallen off the table, I’m maybe fumbling around looking for them but I’m not looking – because I’m embarrassed that I dropped them. And who cares?? Who cares if I dropped some pieces and have to pick them up again?? Who cares if I’m not perfect? I’ve had an epiphany, as it is the season, one of which was that someone can actually have multiple epiphanies in a lifetime, it’s just the change that is possible to come about with said epiphanies does not always accompany each and every epiphany. We don’t change as often as we REALIZE that we need to change. Because that is the easy part, realizing. Changing – now that is the hard part. And that takes time and work. So between my head and my business and my baby, I think I have a lot more on my mind every day than just maintaining this household, which is hard enough when I do it mostly alone!
But I shouldn’t feel guilty about needing this time with myself to spew these words out onto these keys and turn them into something visible on this screen. Something real that can be examined or dare I say, felt. I shouldn’t feel guilty for wanting to get it out there. I shouldn’t feel guilty that I can’t do everything without effort. Epiphany. (Aha, the hidden point emerges!) I feel guilty that I don’t come programmed and just knowing things or being able to do them. Where did that come from? Independence? Expectation, rather. I feel as though a lot was expected of me for some reason and that is something I need to get to the bottom of because that is why I feel so behind and such a great amount of pressure – for no reason. This leads me to stress. I am also, I think, one of the laziest people I know. Now, maybe I am confusing laziness with depression, but I think that’s what my dad would call it. I don’t think he believes in it. He’s like Tom Cruise that way, I guess. My dad is a very wise mind over matter kind of guy, which I commend, but he’s not really one to tending to the delicate need of the psyche or emotions. And my mother was always full of them. And I find myself filled with both of them and am just struggling to stay afloat sometimes I feel. Sometimes I do feel like I’m sinking.
I guess that’s why I need alone time. Time to cry if I want, or write if I want, or play the guitar if I want, or create some other way artistically or pay bills or make phone calls or even clean if I – well, let’s face it, if I have to. I just want some time to have the option to tend to me, because I think that is not emphasized enough to mothers. I think we are made to feel guilty about taking the time for us when what are we really worth to our families if we aren’t tending to ourselves? They don’t want a wound up ball of nerves; they want us at our best. I take my alone time when I can get it. I spent a large part of my childhood alone in my room - listening to the Beatles and reading and writing. Playing with my Self. (the inner one, people!) And it’s my Self I have been searching for all of these years. My Authentic Self. And she is out there somewhere, or in here somewhere, rather. I will find her. NaBloPoMo this month is themed on Beginnings. I think that it’s really about time I had a renaissance of spirit, a reawakening. I feel like over the years I have lost so much of the Great Spirit that was me – my Self. But how do you lose yourself and find yourself all in one breath? See. This is why I need alone time.
[To Be Continued…again and again and again…]
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