this moment

(Thanks, soulemama.)



I so wanted to share a cute picture of Simon this week. He's sorely underrepresented on this blog, and I hate that. But it's going to have to wait.

This week was really hard. Let me go ahead and admit that so far 2011 hasn't exactly been kind to us. Yes, I am lucky to have my two beautiful sons, my husband, my cats, a house to live in, blah blah blah. But life is hard. Sometimes overwhelmingly hard.

This week I had several moments when I wanted to run away and never look back. I wanted to leave it all behind. And by "it all," I mean just that: my kids, my husband, the life I have here. What is strange is that in some ways, the transition from one child to two has been much easier than I thought it would be. Just last Friday, both boys were napping and I was musing on what a beautiful day it was, how much better my postpartum period has been going as compared to last time, etc.

And then this week happened. It's one week after that beautiful afternoon where both kids slept peacefully while I ate my lunch in solitude. My back is killing me from the very involved way in which Simon needs to go to sleep. I have a crick in my neck from sleeping wrong last night. Roy is sick with a cold. I cannot keep up with the laundry or the dishes or anything else. Our house feels so small and cramped that I truly feel like the walls are closing in on me. I can't hold either one of my children as much as I want to. Charlie absolutely loves to test me and then screams when I put him in time out. Oh, and we are broke. So broke that we are having to make some really hard financial decisions. And all of this? Well, it's taking its toll on our marriage, and while I'm not sitting here telling you all that our marriage is in trouble, the reality is it is so hard for us to connect as anything other than parents these days. Simon is only waking up once a night now, but we are both still so tired. To the bone. It's hard to talk/laugh/spend quality time together when all you want to do is sleep.

I'm kind of scared.

I'm scared that I'm disappearing into this whole motherhood thing and someday there won't be a "me" anymore. That I will end up this mindless Stepford wife who only cares about poop and play dates. That my marriage will dissolve because both of us are so busy just trying to keep up with life and all it entails. There is still so much I want out of life; I can feel myself reaching for it but I can't get my hands on it. And yet I don't feel like I have the right to want more. I have so much already, and people out there are starving, have sick children, have no place to live, etc.

What can I say? I'm typing this in the dark in our small, drafty, messy office, the only place I can sometimes just be, and no doubt my laptop is casting a shadow on my face like the photo above. I'm just full of shadows. I think people look at me and see this happy chick but that's only part of me. I always feel like I'm fighting the dark half of me, and I don't know who's winning - all I know is that I'm tired of feeling halved and conflicted.

I don't want this chaos. I just want to look life in the eye, like I'm doing in the photo above, knowing that I need to calm the fuck down and trust that it'll all be okay. In the meantime, I'm giving into the chaos. Leaving the laundry unfolded, the kitchen dirty, the toys strewn around the living room. I'm shutting down the computer and am going to go hug my husband, because our marriage is where this family starts and ends.