Happy Mother's Day to Me.
No weigh-in today. It's the middle of the day, and I've eaten plenty of food, so it wouldn't be a legit weigh-in. Besides after eating fast food and a big pre-Mother's Day dinner yesterday with dessert and everything, it wouldn't be a good weigh-in. But nothing has changed from the usual. I should be just under 230, where I have languished since January. No working out, moderately trying to eat right (salad at lunch every day). It doesn't matter. Without hard-core exercise, the weight won't change.
I'm soloing for Mother's Day. My husband had to travel for work, so he left at lunchtime today, leaving me with the boys until Wednesday night. It'll be a long few days, for sure. But there wasn't going to be much celebrating for Mother's Day anyway. My husband made me a steak dinner last night, which was great, but no card, no gift. It isn't that he's insensitive or anything like that, but he doesn't often think of gifts or whatnot. I'm usually responsible for holiday gift giving, for the most part. Couple that with a lack of money this week (heck, this lifetime), and there was no organized plan for the holiday. Brendan gave me a painted vase and tissue paper flower he made in preschool, and I got a card from my dad and texts from my sister-in-law and several friends. I've already had to deal with a messy nosebleed from Ian after a head to head collision with his big brother, that has created a bunch more laundry to do. Yay.
I don't really feel much like celebrating my motherhood right now, anyway. While I love my boys, and nothing will ever change that, I do not like parenting. Life right now is very few hugs, snuggles, and adorable moments, and lots of dirty diapers from a potty-training-resistant almost-three-year-old, nasty attitude from a terribly badly-behaved four-year-old, and misery. The boys have brought out a side of me that I did not ever imagine I had: a mean-spirited, violence-threatening, constantly angry me. I swear all the time. I shout all the time. And I occasionally desire to lash out physically; while I don't hit my children, I have actually let Brendan know how much I wish I could. I am terrified that I am instilling in him the idea that it's ok to hit people or at least threaten them, but I don't know how to stop myself from getting so angry.
I am never happy. I teeter between anger and tears all the time. I spend every moment at home wishing I was anywhere but here, and I spend every moment at work wishing I was home. It doesn't make any sense. I am miserable, and I don't know what to do. I know my husband is frustrated and confused with the changes I've gone through since having kids; while I occasionally experienced depression, I was not a truly depressed person until I had kids. I feel like I don't get as much help from him as I need--I'm the one who gets the kids up and ready in the morning, I'm the one who gets their meals together, and I'm the one who gets them bathed, jammied, and in bed, 90% of the time. I'm the one who does most of the laundry and dishes. He spends most of his time in the easy chair with his laptop, tablet, or phone, watching tv. It's surely not as bad as I perceive it to be, but it sure feels that way.
As Mother's Day approached, I read some internet posts about what mothers really want for Mother's Day, like a massage that isn't intended to be seductive, a foot rub that lasts more than 90 seconds, a thank you, stuff like that. I thought about what I wanted for Mother's Day, and the only thing that came to mind was the desire to go back to the way things were before I was a mother.
Before kids, we could go where we wanted to go and do what we wanted to do, whenever we wanted to do it. We didn't necessarily have any more money than we do now, but there was less pressure to use it responsibly, I guess--we didn't have to worry about the kids losing their daycare or their preschool because we couldn't pay the bill. There was less mess. Not that we were very clean people before, but we didn't have books and toys and goldfish crackers everywhere.
I'm paranoid posting something like this, because I have a terrible feeling that I'm going to be judged for feeling like this. I don't want to get rid of my kids. I don't want to hurt my kids. And I don't want my kids to grow up, read this somehow, and feel that they are awful people and ruined my life. I just miss the days that I didn't have to be responsible for anyone other than myself. I miss being happy more often than unhappy.
So it's not "Happy Mother's Day"...it's just Mother's Day. Same old same old.
