August 2006

Sometimes I wonder if life is really supposed to be this hard or if I just make it that way.  Anyone taking a glimpse into my life would think that everything is just grand.  I live in a decent house.  I have a good job and a nice car.  I have a husband who, for the most part, is pretty damn good to me.  I have the most beautiful son on the planet who I love more than I ever thought was possible.  I have a family who loves and supports me and I actually enjoy spending time with.  I have a few really great friends.  Yet, even with all of that, I don’t feel fulfilled or happy.

I’m in a big time rut right now.  I don’t really know what I need to be happy.  I do know that right now I’m not getting it. I don’t know if this would be classified as depression but I do know that if I don’t make a change, it will get worse.  I am so unmotivated in every aspect of my life.  I want to do the things that need done but I have no energy to do them.  My headaches are back, almost daily.  I sleep, but still feel tired in the mornings.

My husband is suffering, mostly because of me I think.  He deserves someone who can give him what he needs and right now I can’t.  I feel terrible about that but can’t seem to make myself change.  I give all of my energy to Zach and hope that he is getting the love and affection that he needs.

There are things weighing on my mind that can’t be discussed here.  They can’t really be discussed anywhere, for that matter.  They remain in my heart and in my head, as I suppose they should.  But those things create a barrier that not even my husband or my closest of friends can break through.

I think more than anything, what is bringing me down is that I am so disappointed in where my life has ended up and in the choices I have made.  I used to be so full of ambition, with so many dreams, hopes, and aspirations.  Now, I just settle for where life has led me with no hope of ever making a change. 

I really need therapy.  I know I do.  I think I always have needed it, but I’m too chicken to actually go and I’m too broke to pay for it.  I would tell anyone else to go to their church pastor but my pastor is my dad so that’s not really an option.

I could ask my doc for more drugs, but I hate being medicated. 

So, instead, I turn to the internet.  The only place where I really can be me and no one else can tell me what to say or do. 

p.s.  Yes, I do know that there are lots of other people who are in much worse situations that me.  But, this is my blog and if I want to host my own pity party I will.   

For some reason I’ve been a little bit emotional lately so sit back and bear with me.

In the last week or so I have been catching myself just sitting there doing nothing but watching my son.  I watch him as he plays with his toys or teases the dog by holding his chew toy just out of reach.  I watch him as he pulls the drawer out of his toy bin so he can reach in and grab the specific toy that he wants.  He knows exactly where each toy is and how to get to it. 

I watch as he walks up to the tv, pushes the power button, then runs away and looks at his daddy, just waiting for the reaction that he knows is coming.  I watch as he walks up to his dad, arms outstretched, hugs him, then goes back to playing. 

I watch as he points to anything and everything within his sight with curiosity, wanting to touch it and explore it to see what it does.  I watch him point to pictures of family and loved ones around our house and then wait for me to tell him the name for each person.  I watch him as he climbs up onto a chair or on the couch, sitting like a little man, trying to copy what Mommy and Daddy are doing. 

I listen as he chuckles and then releases his beautiful, boisterous laugh that I love so much.  I have never in my life heard a more wonderful sound.

Before I became a parent, I read.  I read and read and read all the parenting magazines, the books,  and tons of parenting blogs.  I figured the more I read the better prepared I would be.  But no amount of reading, advice, or preparations could ever prepare me for the deep, deep, love I feel for this child.  I can’t describe how it makes me feel when he reaches out to me for a hug, or when he cries and there is nothing I can do to console him, or when I brought him to bed with me lastnight and he reached out to put his little hand on my face trying to pull me closer to him.

Just sitting back and watching him as he moves through the room can almost bring me to tears at times.  The emotions that surge through me are so powerful.  I have never in my life loved anything so deeply.  He is my life, my world.  He is my everything.  I never want to know a world without him in it. 

I have to tell you something that I have never, ever said before.  Are you ready?  These words have never come out of my mouth before.  Well, I guess they still aren’t coming out of my mouth really, but you get the point.  Okay, here goes…I am so ready for summer to be over.  There I said it.  Whew!  That wasn’t so bad.

I woke up today in a huge rush (as usual).  With school starting back up, breakfast at day care is now at 7:45, rather than whenever we stroll in as it has been all summer.  This means that I have to either get up earlier to get Zach there by 7:45, or I have to get up earlier so I can feed him breakfast before we leave.  I’m opting to try to get him there by 7:45 and get an earlier start on my workday.  This, conveniently, also allows me more time to read blogs before everyone else shows up to the office. 

So, where was I?  Oh, yeah.  I hurried through my shower and got dressed as quickly as possible and rushed outside to take the dogs out before waking Zach up.  I stepped outside to the most pleasant greeting I’ve had in a while.  It was very pleasantly cool out this morning.  It wasn’t cloudy or gloomy out, just sunny and cool, like a nice Fall morning.  Perhaps I’m being a little over-dramatic about the whole thing, but with the heat we have been having the last couple of weeks, it was certainly a nice surprise.

The cool morning made me anxious for Fall to get here.  I’m ready for jeans and sweatshirts and boots.  I’m even a little bit ready for football.  Oh, and I’m definitely ready for some of the yummy pear cobbler that I make every fall when the pears on the tree in our front yard are finally ripe enough to pick.  I’m also ready for our busy summer schedule to wind down so I can spend some quality time in front of my ridiculously large tv.

I do have one slight little request for Mother Nature though.  Could you please hold off on the cool weather until after I get back from the lake this weekend?  You see, I plan on spending two glorious days at the lake swimming, getting a nice sunburn, and enjoying my Dad’s new boat as much as possible and none of that will be nearly as much fun if the water in the lake is cold.  So just wait until Monday morning and then bring the cooler weather on.  I’ll be ready then. 

(And, just for the record, I got up, got myself ready, took care of the animals, got Zach ready and was out the door in only 45 minutes this morning.  That just might be a personal record.  We pulled in the driveway at day care at 7:50.  I may have forgotten to brush Zach’s teeth, but hey, at least I got him there in time to get some breakfast.) 

p.s.  I don’t know what I was thinking yesterday, but there is no way in hell I’m going to give up my blog.  There may be some changes coming, but giving it up is not an option.  Some of my other web sites may be disappearing soon though, but that is simply a money issue and a topic for another day. 

I’ve been trying to decide all day if I want to do yet another weekend wrap-up style entry here.  Honestly, I get a little tired of writing things like that.  But then I figure I might as well do it because someday I’ll come back and read those entries and have a nice reminder of what my life is like at this point.  Sometimes I wonder if I really want to remember it at all.  The entries about Zach will always be treasured, but the rest of it I’m not so sure about.

When I get really honest with myself, I don’t like my life right now very much.  I wonder why I write the things I write here.  Who really wants to read about how much I hate my job or how I can’t seem to stick to my diet, or how crappy my personal relationships are.  Does any of that really matter?  Years from now, will I even care about all of that?

I have thought about doing a cleansing of sorts and deleting some of my 250 posts that have collected themselves here.  I think about it, but I never can do it.  It is like deleting a part of myself if a way.  Even those posts that say things like "dude, I am so bored right now" are a part of me, an insight into my life that I can’t part with.  I suppose that has something to do with my packrat tendencies.  Someday I plan to merge in some of the older posts from my first blog…when I get the time.  In a way those posts were more raw, more of the old me (before I started caring what people thought of my writing), shallow as they may be.

I thought briefly today about stopping.  I love my blog.  I truly do.  I love having a place to vent, laugh at myself, and be creative.  But I also wonder if escaping into the internet is keeping me from dealing with my life.  I have always preferred to run away rather than deal with my problems and I think maybe I’m doing that here.  This is my hideaway.

I question over and over again whether to make this blog more public.  I hate having to be so secretive about it.  Yet at the same time, I still need a place where I can write about my private feelings and paper and pen aren’t really an option.  I think opening up my blog to my husband at least would perhaps help out a little, but I know eventually he would slip up and mention it to my family or his and it would ruin this little outlet that I have here.  I’m still working on setting up a way to protect certain entries, but for some reason cannot get the plugin to work.  I think if I had that perhaps I would feel more ready to share with others.

I guess really what I’m trying to figure out is if this blog is really enhancing my life or hurting it.  I would like to think that it is enhancing it, that having a hobby like this is a good thing.  Sometimes I’m just not very sure about that though.

And, if you must know, the highlight of my weekend was Zach’s 5 HOUR NAP on Saturday afternoon. I love the little man so much, but that was an awesome 5 hours that I desperately needed, especially the 2 1/2 hours of it that I spent snuggled up in Hubby’s arms sleeping.  And the fact that he still went to bed at his normal bedtime was just icing on the cake.