So I'm feeling frustrated because I haven't been able to prepare healthy meals like I'd like to, and a few nights a week we eat 'easy and simple' - read frozen pizza or equivalent and a salad to compensate. And simultaneously I am conscious that there are people who don't have the option of preparing healthy meals, ever, and definitely don't have the option of picking up some quick food from the supermarket on the way home from work.
I find myself splitting.
I hear myself talking myself into guilt ridden situations and remind myself that I, in fact, as a used to be meditater and use to be yoga instructor, should know better than to listen to and believe in the negative chatter conjured up by the monkey mind. And still my shoulders tense and I feel bad.
I know I am splitting.
I feel like Mr Mom. I picture Micheal Keating pigging out in front of soap operas and identify.
My little girl is asleep for at least an hour in the afternoons, and I have piles of dishes and laundry to sort, and I do not want to do it! I refuse to spend that little bit of free time doing house hold chores. I resent the housework like it's eating into my free time, instead of tending to it with love and care. Instead of blessing it with attention and being happy to make it into a comfortable home for my family, I resent it for eating into MY time. And I feel guilty for thinking I deserve My time. I'm sure that nearly every person in my ancestry didn't have as much free time as I do, and I still want more. It's never ending. And even if I get an extra hour, I want another hour. I am the free time monster.
I know all the sides of the argument - but it's how I feel. I want and feel that I need time to do what I want. To feel like me, without the apartment, without being a female, without being a mother, without being a partner, without being a friend. Just purely selfish me time. And you know what, even if I had an hour, I wouldn't know what to do with it. I'd probably sit on facebook liking delicious meals and pretty homes and adorable babies and kittens.
I never used to be like this.
I resent the younger me. I resent that she was happy and didn't know it.
Oh, don't think I can't hear your judgement. Oh, but you have a lovely little girl, aren't you happy being a mother with the look of what kind of female are you - pile on the guilt. Thank you.
Disclaimer: I love Lydia. I would not change a thing. She brings so much joy and brings laughter into our home. I adore spending fun time with her, and I'm so glad we can afford to keep her at home in these precious years.
That said, I'm not at all organised in my home or personal life. Everything is out of control and I am getting by. And the fact is, I see it on so many women's faces. They are disheartened by life. They are despondent and fed up and miserable.
I don't think I've every been especially pretty, really. But I was alive. I was the happiest person I knew. I vibrated with life and awareness. And somehow, over the past ten years, I have caved inwards and met the little poisonous snarling animal in me that hates existing and sees misery everywhere and understands why people just get up and leave their lives and never come back.
And for a few days, without guilt, and without shoulds, I'm going to sit with this. Out loud. And let it be ok to feel like that. I'm tired of feeling guilty, of feeling like I should know better, of thinking anything that makes how I feel not ok.
We are human. This is it. I don't want words of encouragement or trite things like 'things will look up soon'. I just want to express. And I know I am not alone in this. Just for a few days. Just let it be. That's all. And we'll talk about shifting out of this another time. Just not now.
Thanks for listening.
