Every now and then I realize this chaos is fleeting; that one day our very loud and very busy home will be silenced and we will call our grandchildren begging for visits but in the meantime, I am allowed to wonder what the hell is going on here. I see so many social network posts about the kids...how adorable, how smart, how precious these long days are but can we have a day of honesty here once too? Is it too much to ask that moms especially tell it like it is? Some days we are fucking tired. Tired. Overwhelmed. Our house is a mess. Our bills are late and our car looks like a family of hamsters set up shop in there. That no, I don't want to see Chipwrecked and no, I don't want to steam organic mung beans into a frothy shake that is "so good for them!". I don't care if it's an hour past bedtime and the non hemp cotton, non flame retardant pajamas don't match. Chicken nuggets and a go-gurts for dinner won't kill them. Gasp...
Do I love my kids? Passionately and unabashedly. Do I love being a mom every second of my life? Do you love what you do every second of your life? Well then, why should I? Gasp with a hand cup over mouth...
Okay let's so be honest here. If we all just told it like it is, we'd be so much kinder to each other. It IS hard, it IS life sucking and it IS overwhelming and if it's not for you, then you are doing it wrong. I embrace my kids, adore them and live for everything that comes out of their mouth. I quote them, photograph them, hug them constantly and attempt to make things matter but at night, sometimes I crawl into bed and wonder what the fuck I am doing. My closest friends are the ones who deep in the night, over a bottle of wine admit this wasn't in the brochure. That if this is all there is, they may not make it. But they will. They will and I will because we get it. We aren't bad moms because we don't embrace sleepless nights because it's fleeting. We aren't negligent because Disney is more entertaining than a book about the environment and we aren't ignorant because our kids' list of sight words starts with Target and ends with McDonalds. There I said it.
So here I am at 5am not embracing the "beautiful day Gd created" but cuddling a cup of coffee and hope today is easy but if it's not, it's not and I will survive. And pizza for dinner with no side of vegetables and cut up apples is fine. It comes with a chaser of "you will be fine" and I prefer that to vegetables. It actually does make them stronger.
Well said! This post is why I love my therapist and going to therapy. I also think it is harder to raise kids this day and age -- much more pressure to do it all perfectly because there is all this knowledge on what is good (organic, learning another language, playmates, reading to them, etc) and what is bad (too much tv, Internet, video game playing, etc). Lots of added pressures our parents never dealt with. And the throw in outside influences like other kids with sexting/texting, FB, and peer pressure and it all results in one big, neurotic mess.
ReplyDeleteI take each day, one at a time, and I hope that I am not royally screwing up. Then I go to bed and my mind races over what occurred through the day and I pray there were more good moments than bad. Sometimes I can fall right asleep and other times I'm woken up in the night. It's not easy!