Thoughts From A Mom

"Behind every great kid is a mom who's pretty sure she's screwing it up."

I read this on Facebook the other day.  It was on a day when I particularly needed to read it.  And it's stuck with me ever since.  Sometimes I keep repeating it to myself like a mantra.  On that day particularly, I was feeling overwhelmed by my complete and utter failure to please my daughter or persuade her to do anything at all that needed to be done. She wouldn't eat anything I made for her, she wouldn't take a halfway decent nap, she wouldn't stop crying for her binky even though I'm trying so hard to start a slow process of separating her from it, while realizing I might not have the heart to do it.  (Yes, that will be MY 12 year old kid with a pacifier.)  Parenting is hard.  It's also amazing.  But wow is it tough.  It's amazing what a beating your self confidence and self worth can take from such a tiny little human. 

Parenting is hard whether you're a mom OR a dad, working or no.  But all I know is what my experience is.  I am a working mom.  It is freaking tough.  And I only have one child, currently, so there's that.  I feel a certain level of accomplishment that I no longer take medication to keep from losing my shit like I did when Ada was born up until about 8 months old.  That was a bad, dark, scary period of my life, and I kind of can't believe I was so out of control of myself.  I have a lot of regret and guilt about pretty much missing out on all the good things about her infancy.  I always will.  But what's done is done, and I can 100% truthfully say that I am a relatively normal person now, without any pharmaceutical aides.  (As normal as I could ever be, anyway.)  That is a good feeling.  I kind of didn't feel like I would ever be myself again.  Now I am myself, and in a lot of ways, a new self. 

The problem is that there are some things I don't know how to make room for anymore.  My body can adjust to rarely getting more than a couple hours of sleep at a time throughout the night, my schedule can adjust so that I have just a little extra time between leaving work and getting dinner on the table, then finding some time to play with my swiftly growing darling daughter before carting her off to bed, just to wake up and do it all over again.  All in all, spending approximately 4 hours per weekday with her, which makes me incredibly sad when I dwell on it. Bring on the never ending, always evolving mom-guilt.  So then after she's tucked in for the night, I get a couple hours to veg out on the couch with my husband and catch up on some tv shows.  Which is always enjoyable, and I look forward to that time.  But as much as I tell myself I don't need it, there are days when I realize I can't remember the last time I actually had a significant amount of time with myself and myself alone.  (What? You're thinking of yourself?  HA!  Oh, sure, just pile that additional guilt right here on my plate, which seems to never run out of space for it.)  I really can't remember.  At all.  I'm always, always trying to make sure that everyone gets a little of my attention, the best I can.  And that's hard enough without adding myself into the mix.  How are we supposed to do it?  I'm as positively certain that moms deserve the title of "superhero" as I am positively certain that each and every mom holds that opinion of every mother but herself.  It's not in our DNA anymore to recognize our own successes.  We just look at the other moms and wonder why we can't be doing it like that.  But they're looking right back at us with the same question.  And the cycle continues and we never feel like we're doing it "right", no matter how much of ourselves we give in trying.

Here's the thing - for as much as my insides get beat up now days, I cry less often than I ever have.  Not because I don't feel like I could.  But because I don't have the time or the privacy or the will.  I've gotten tougher than I ever thought I could be. For better AND worse.  Sometimes I feel like it's ruining parts of my identity as wife and friend.  That worries me.  I keep saying I'll do better, I'll specifically devote more of myself (wherever THAT is going to come from) to being a more attentive partner, more affectionate, more patient.  I keep saying it, I keep making note of the blaring alarms in the back of my mind that tell me it NEEDS to be done before it's too late.  And then the day is over and I have to promise I'll try tomorrow.  I don't want it to be like this.  I hate feeling this lack of feeling in these areas.  And it's just more guilt.  More, more, more.  I just have so much going to this little person that relies on me for everything in the world, even though she clearly doesn't want to.  I'm not usually "present" anymore at any given time.  When I'm not physically taking care of her, my mind is churning with all the things I need to do for her tomorrow, next week, next year.  How can I make things even better for her?  What should I be doing to aide in her development?  Am I giving her enough of anything at all?  It's truly never ending.  And in this process, my marriage gets shoved farther to the back of the stove so that I can focus on the child-rearing not boiling over.  Then there's yet another thing I'm failing at - being a wife.  And instead of being depressed about it, I end up just feeling annoyed, all the time.  And it's really stemming from annoyance with myself - that I can't do everything, and be everything, and make everything work.  But it gets displaced toward people who don't deserve it.  And I am scared I'm going to pay the price for it, but I genuinely don't know how to pull it all together.  And this is why my mind is NEVER quiet.  There is always something to worry over.  And it's always something I'm not doing well enough.

All of this being said, I love being a mom.  It's made my life so incredibly full and satisfying.  I keep hoping that with enough time, I'll figure out the balance of it all, and that it will come before I lose something to make room for everything else.  I know hoping isn't going to make it so, but at this very moment it's all I can do.  Time always seems to be the key.  But time is the thing that feels like it's slipping through my fingers.  My baby girl is not a baby girl anymore.  I'm turning 30 in a month.  Everything is getting older. I just more than anything want to keep every single moment preserved in a book so that I can give them all the attention they deserve, eventually.  But I can't do that, and I'm just trying to figure out how to be the best I can be for everyone in my life.  Who knew that would be so hard?  Should it be?  Is it just me who can't get a handle on it?  I don't know.  Maybe I never will know for sure.  But at the very, very least, I can tell everyone that I am truly trying to figure it out.  Bear with me.