Just a Mom

I took a cold walk tonight to get where I am.  I savored every moment, I tried to cling to every sensation as I took each step.  From the cold air piercing my face like a thousand needles to the gravel being gripped by my worn out Asics.  A break from the screaming child, the crying baby, and the elementary student who is far more clingy than I can handle at times.

I love being a mom, I really do, but sometimes it is difficult to feel that way.  My own needs are sacrificed because I dutifully put others ahead of myself, as do most mothers.  Bitterness and resentment quickly follows and I resume this cycle until I force the "me time" I have been craving.  What do I mean by forcing it?  I mean I completely break down and just leave.  It is at this point that life cannot be handled.

Why? Why does it always seem to go this way?  Do all moms experience this or is it just me who does it exactly this way?  What do other moms do so differently that allows them to stay sane longer and need less than I seem to need?  Sometimes I try to fool myself into thinking that I am just meant to be more than a mom and that's why I need more than other moms.  But more than a mom.... what do I even mean by that?  We all are far to aware of motherhood being a thankless job, underappreciated and under valued by our culture...even by fathers.  Have I started to believe this as well, was it something I always believed?  Ever since high school we are taught to reach for more, get educated, have a career, women empowerment...

I dont get it.

Here I am raising children.  Young children.  The future.  Little people with thoughts and emotions who are already collecting memories and experiences.  How can I even entertain the idea that my job is not important.  Research certainly isn't lacking with regards to how the first 5 years of life are crucial in the development of humans.  Yet here I am fighting the urge to say "I am just a mom."

Then I think; is it all in the individual's mindset? (Doesn't it always come back to this?)

Check Out Girl

Generic

Faceless

Blank

Don't look at me.  Please don't expect anything of me. blend in. survive... just keep surviving.  Breathe.  Because yes, sometimes I forget to. 

I imagine myself in a box.  A wooden box, slatted to let in thin lines of light but mostly dark on the inside.  It is secure and protected.  The world continues to spin, people continue to move around me, but I stay isolated, it is what I want.  I cringe at the thought of people interacting with me.  I remain safe floating on the surface of verbal exchanges and dance atop the water, afraid of what lies beneath.  

Shrinking in the shadows, I keep my head down and change with the environment, I am outwardly  obedient to the atmosphere of the social gathering.  As the faces laugh and converse with one another I remain at war with myself.  Part of me enjoys, lives in the moment, but then there is another part that wants to run far away from everyone.  It's a low in the midst of a high.  I stuff down everything creating a black hole that eventually will turn inside out and will overtake the relationships I desperately want, although you wouldn't know that I want them because of my behavior. 

It's a push-pull of wanting to be close, to be intimately connected, but want to push it away because it feels so so frightening.  I distrust, I have seen the destruction, the disappointment... fear overcomes.  I am a shell of myself as the fruit inside shrinks and shrivels.   

So I check out.      

no one to blame but myself, but old habits are hard to break.