[Saw this earlier and I was like "WHOA!?! I've felt like this before..." but I created the continuation of Ryan O'Connell's rant...the single parent version.]
“It’s taboo to admit that you’re lonely. You can make jokes about it, of course. You can tell people that you spend most of your time with Netflix or that you haven’t left the house today and you might not even go outside tomorrow. Ha ha, funny. But rarely do you ever tell people about the true depths of your loneliness, about how you feel more and more alienated from your friends each passing day and you’re not sure how to fix it. It seems like everyone is just better at living than you are.
A part of you knew this was going to happen. Growing up, you just had this feeling that you wouldn’t transition well to adult life, that you’d fall right through the cracks. And look at you now. La di da, it’s happening.
Your mother, your father, your grandparents: they all look at you like you’re some prized jewel and they tell you over and over again just how lucky you are to be young and have your whole life ahead of you. “Getting old ain’t for sissies,” your father tells you wearily.
You wish they’d stop saying these things to you because all it does is fill you with guilt and panic. All it does is remind you of how much you’re not taking advantage of your youth.
You want to kiss all kinds of different people, you want to wake up in a stranger’s bed maybe once or twice just to see if it feels good to feel nothing, you want to have a group of friends that feels like a tribe, a bonafide family. You want to go from one place to the next constantly and have your weekends feel like one long epic day. You want to dance to stupid music in your stupid room and have a nice job that doesn’t get in the way of living your life too much. You want to be less scared, less anxious, and more willing. Because if you’re closed off now, you can only imagine what you’ll be like later.
Every day you vow to change some aspect of your life and every day you fail. At this point, you’re starting to question your own power as a human being. As of right now, your fears have you beat. They’re the ones that are holding your twenties hostage.
Stop thinking that everyone is having more sex than you, that everyone has more friends than you, that everyone out is having more fun than you. Not because it’s not true (it might be!) but because that kind of thinking leaves you frozen. You’ve already spent enough time feeling like you’re stuck, like you’re watching your life fall through you like a fast dissolve and you’re unable to hold on to anything.
I don’t know if you ever get better. I don’t know if a person can just wake up one day and decide to be an active participant in their life. I’d like to think so. I’d like to think that people get better each and every day but that’s not really true. People get worse and it’s their stories that end up getting forgotten because we can’t stand an unhappy ending. The sick have to get better. Our normalcy depends upon it.
You have to value yourself. You have to want great things for your life. This sort of shit doesn’t happen overnight but it can and will happen if you want it.
Do you want it bad enough? Does the fear of being filled with regret in your thirties trump your fear of living today?
We shall see.”
~Ryan O'Connell~
I feel like this sometimes...like now...like right this very second when I am paralyzed with everything I am faced with in my life and have a list in front of me a mile long of things I need to do, a home full of responsibilities and I'm the starting line-up, the back-up AND the clean-up crew.
Especially on days when I come home to a kid fueled mess and I'm frustrated that I spent HOURS upon HOURS on my little time off cleaning and organizing only to have it become world war three yet again. Nothing takes the wind out of your sails more than being proud of your accomplishments only to have someone piss on it and treat it like it doesn't matter. It'd be like Tom Hanks creating fire in "Cast Away" and for it to start pouring down rain and putting out the fire immediately after. Welcome to Parenthood.
I just wanted to come home earlier and make dinner and enjoy time with my family, but no one did their chores and I didn't have what I need to make dinner...again. The little brat that lives inside my body was throwing a full on tantrum screaming "I DON'T HAVE TO DO IT!!! SOMEONE ELSE IS SUPPOSED TO DO IT!!! YOU CAN'T MAKE ME!!!" I don't want to do yet another thing that isn't my responsibility. Because that's me...that's all I freakin'do. Someone else's job. Part of my problem is that I am a care-taker. I take on cares of other people and shuffle my cares to the end of the line.
It's overwhelming sometimes. It's when I realize that there's not a damn person that is going to be helping me raise these kids with me that I get all bent out of shape. That was supposed to be the deal. I had a partner that is now helping to raise someone else's kids when all my short people have is me. It's great they have me, but who do I have?
I want my person too, damnit! Someone to take care of that takes care of me right back. My someone to sleep with and wake up with and argue with about hogging the blankets. I can't do that because I'm too busy working and trying to raise happy, well adjusted children while cleaning world war three, I'm too busy to date or spend time with the someone I desperately want to and care for. I just want to have a normal relationship with someone...not stolen trysts when I can manage time away from my children.
I have a laundry list of rules that I always enforce because I am going to make sure my short people aren't introduced to another sociopath narcissist that they can't count on to stay in their lives. So, where does that leave me? Alone. LOL!!!
I laugh because it's making me crazy. Being the captain on a ship with no crew that feels like it's going nowhere. It's not lack of sex. It's missing human contact and a compassionate relationship with a mature individual whose entire being complements me on a mental, spiritual and emotional level. It's having someone to inherently understand my half sentences or looks or sounds. It's someone who I can say stuff like "Can you get me that thing I need for this? It's in that place that we did that thing that time." and they would understand exactly what I meant. What I hate is being alone, and knowing I am all alone and WILL BE alone for an indefinite amount of time
We're like pack animals. We need other people. It's why so many people look for love and will settle for anything they can get. But it's also why so many people stay alone. Fear that if they will have their person, it might not be the RIGHT person and it will be like you're alone and you're not. And us single parents? Who wants to invite someone that may not be the RIGHT person into your life to see that your short people can create apocalyptic size messes in an afternoon and you have absolutely no control over that? Not me.
Not entirely true. I have someone that I've known for a loooooooong time that knows me and my situation. He has been very patiently waiting for me to be ready to be ready. A few friends call him The Bodyguard because he's so controlled and so serious most of the time. He's very responsible, calm, mature, dedicated, loyal and adores me. I haven't introduced him to anyone because I wasn't sure if he was a keeper or not.
The Bodyguard scares me in a way. Why? He knows what I've been faced with and what I still face. He's undaunted. And he wants to ADD to the ranks with himself and yet another little war monger. But he's also safely ensconced in his happy little "I save other people" world a few hundred miles away for months at a time. So,I feel like I'm relatively safe...for now. For how long? Hell if I know!
Don't get me wrong. I value myself. I want great things in my life. I want MY person. It's not fear and regret that paralyzes me. It's the fact that I'll have to share world war three with someone else. And they'll actually like it.
