Tag: mothering

Humanity

July’s end

Lovelovemotherexpletive

I’ve been reading a lot. I’m waiting for the patches to dry and then I’m repainting the walls in the kitchen. I’m beginning week two of my daughter being at summer camp and I’m officially over it. My 18-year-old has been working every day and then evenings with his dad as they over there are preparing to move into a new house. lovely man bob is down with another heart thing (not open-heart surgery again so that is excellent) and i’m just done with all of it.

ALL OF IT.

i’m dreaming about escape to a waterfront cabin in far north maine, where I will spend my winters with nothing but books and a fireplace. fuck it all. let me nurse the wounds of leaving motherhood all by myself. maybe some bread, cheese, a weekly beer and a television that only works once a week. No need for a plow because I have nowhere to go.

the last time I was this fixated on escape, I was married with young children and had no company. that, I still understand. this time around? I don’t really understand it as much. I mean, I have a life, friends, man, job, and a great ability to find all the shimmer and joy that there is.

Now? it is loss, so much change of an internal, self-identity sort that I cannot process it all. My middle E, 18, was singing and playing the guitar on my sofa and singing, still in his lifeguard uniform, and I shoved him out when he was done because I was about to sob in his face. I’ve spent a lot of time pretending I’m fine. It’s fine. It’s fine.

I’ve started writing for myself again, journaling if you will, but what I keep circling back to is the need for me to reforge myself. I’ve been burnt already and now, since I am currently in a melted pool on the porch, it should be a straightforward process?

How do I make myself into the main character?

I was a good daughter, good grandchild, decent-enough wife (though clearly, not ACTUALLY enough), and then a mom, and in all those relationships, I was in service, or that is how it feels. and so now, when I am no longer approaching things like that, no longer serving others… I become an entirely different being.

I mean, don’t I? Do I?

more to come, more to come.

-lovelove

Humanity

I do not know

Lovelovemotherexpletive

Second birthday is done now. Onto the Christmas thing.

Just made three different kinds of cookies to give as gifts. It was hours in the kitchen and I gave up on holding onto my sanity and it went right out the front door. I watched it go, that skanky bitch. She had a fucking swagger, she did.

My eyes are dry and I’m slightly sticky from all the sugar. I don’t know, man. Its a chance to say thank you to people, to show them a little generosity: of time, of thought, sometimes of money. I like it, actually, but not the wild stampede of my guilt and overwhelm as I try to fit in all the things and the planning and the grocery. Its all the steps that get me, the ways in which I am overwhelmed three weeks before the thing, the way my brain carves a groove in the ‘is this worth it’ platter holding the cheeses we’ll eat on the Eve.

My kids have Christmas with their dad the day before they have it with me. Mine is smaller this year than it ever has been and I’m just so done with all the things I think about that. Man, I need a good therapist, and I’m just so damn mad at myself that I am still falling into old patterns, ones which I’ve already tired out a few therapists with. OOOOLD news. so fucking old.

I don’t even care about them anymore, those old pieces of shit, to tell you the truth. But they come up AGAIN with the overwhelm and the fear that I’m not doing enough, that I’m not appreciated, that maybe I’m still invisible, like I was then.

so shit. i do not know. and here i am, all cookie-d out. and i look forward to giving them out tomorrow. I have to be in early, and its cozy day, so i’m just wearing a gigantic sweatshirt that almost comes to my ankles. I may not ‘rally’ and ‘be lively’. I predict a sort-of dazed experience of the day.

Love you guys. Be merry if you want to. 🙂

Cookies! So many goddamned cookies.

Humanity

Allright, hold on.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

I did some writing yesterday, about how I don’t really let go of things. There were pieces of it that were downright beautiful, and that was a real delight. I’m sure I’ll share it eventually. It was a little bit storytelling and a little bit metaphor and a little bit imaginative. but tangibly imaginative, if that makes sense. Things dirty and worn, and dragging on the ground.

It was a snowfall, a quiet one, and I’m really glad I had it.

My college-aged son went back to school yesterday too, and everything feels off again. This time, I know it’ll reset back to me and the two, and our ‘just fine-ness’, but there is a gentle tearing, as we perforate. It was so good and heartwarming to have him home. It is a change of many relationships to be getting used to letting him go.

When was the last time you called your parent’s home yours? I’m feeling my age when I think about how many years that has been, and where i have been all that time.

I’ve got a fire going, and earlier I mostly cleaned off the kitchen table to use the candle holder that i love. the shape is thrilling and I suppose is probably resonant of Naruto, the anime my kids loved for so damn long. Or maybe you want to say its Nordic? Maybe that’s classier, I don’t know anymore. As my kids say about everything, that’s racist, and I think they may be right, most of the time, even though they think everything is a joke.

I’ve broken the charger on this laptop, inside of the laptop somehow, so now I’ve got to figure out the whole world of hardware vs. software and do a backup while i wait to get it fixed. For now, I’m just waiting for an appointment, and for the battery to die, both. Somehow it seems meaningful, to invest in my typing machine. Also, I may have to look into how I treat my tools, because it is broken because I stepped on it, because I store it on the floor. And what is that?! ??

Sigh.

i love you much.

-me

Humanity

Softly

Lovelovemotherexpletive

I’ve told my kids for a long time that I think staying soft in a hard world is by far the strongest thing I’ve ever done. Like many things I say, I am sure they didn’t hear it or make note of it. So be the story of this bunch. Their loss.

I do think its true. But I’m not always soft. Not at all. It takes no strength at all to get mad, to take hold of your fear and eat its face off until it tells you that you are right, that you are persecuted, that your problems are all to blame on someone or something else. It is an incredibly easy slide. Incredibly.

Today I wrote a little bit about the softness of last night’s snowfall, soft but not timid. the ways in which it froze, and became hard, the crunch and the cut, more dangerous, but easier in someways too. the lines of demarcation strict and clear. Pavement vs. mess. You choose where to drive now, unlike last night when you had to go where your wheels decided to spin.

Knowing where to go, what to do? Way easier.

the ways in which i say no, hard, like this freeze, knowing that next year the kid might not ask me to watch her play in the snow at nine pm. And even in the knowing, still saying no, because my desires and wants exist, and matter, and she’s fine without a witness. hard, and soft.

black stone
Photo by Peter Döpper on Pexels.com

i’m still moving softly in the world, but there are parts of me that are hard and sharp as flint. sometimes i am distressed by this. but like flint, i am part of a much larger rock formation, the bedrock of the earth to belabor a metaphor. Most of the time, I am the dirt of the crust, the space for the growing things.

but don’t fuck with me.

beneath the surface i am sharp, and i am nobody’s fool.

take care my loves.

its just the mood I’m in today.

love you.

k

Humanity

Momlife

Lovelovemotherexpletive

I found myself having a bit of an anxiety attack in the middle of a Spirit Halloween store, one of those roving, wildly expensive stores with a refund policy designed to fuck you and fuck you and fuck you, forevermore. and not in any positive way, at all. My daughter’s stepmother is now the proud owner of a scary clown costume, complete with sword and black and white striped bike horn. forevermore.

forevermore gets a lot less exciting in these situations.

The anxiety attack was mild, I was able to take deep breaths and get myself under wrap again. The sweeps of ‘Ican’tdothis, Itstoomuch, nobodyaskedme, thekidstakemeforgranted, everyonetakesmeforgranted, ineedtogetout, ineedtogetout, i’mtrapped’… it rises right up to the top of me, like the water in a scary cave-based movie. I am flooded.

The deep breaths spilled me back down onto the ground, and I was fine. I told my daughter that her penance for making me go into the hellhole was that she had to browse TJMaxx with me, for as long as I wanted. She consented. In the slipper section I got a phonecalled request for a ride, to, fro and afterwards, so a kid could watch a movie on a school night, ending past my bedtime. I told them I needed to walk some more because I was having so many reactions. I made it to the towels and the blankets, rubbed some soft things and saw that they’d texted it was allright if they couldn’t go. Sometimes the no is so much easier. And so it was.

I came out with a few things, no towels, no slippers, all for under $50, one of which is a Santa to add to my collection. A Santa on a unicycle, balancing presents on his head. And I’m all set now. Clear air, some unharried browsing, slow breathing, and a renewed appreciation for retail therapy, as well as the power of no, as applies to the ceaseless mom-taxi life. Sometimes the best life of me rates higher than yours, kid, just for an hour or so, and yesterday was that one.

Ever get the feeling that your world is not worthy? What I have to say, the ‘problems’ I encounter, so small, that sharing them just feels …almost inappropriate?

I’ve not been writing, and I’m trying to dive in on this weekday of so few work hours. And it feels weird, and upsetting. And I’m going to push through it because I think of it all the time, and I’m exhausted by the ‘not doing’, if that makes any sense. So here it is.

love to you. hope you are well,

kate

pinball retro
Photo by David Radomysler on Pexels.com