“Being single won’t make you happy. Dating someone won’t make you happy. Being married won’t make you happy. Being a parent won’t make you happy. Divorcing won’t make you happy. The only thing that can make you happy is your choice to be happy…” ~Gamal Hennessy~
When I was a little girl, I never had it in my head that I would ever be a single mother. In fact, I swore I would never get married. Or if I DID get married, I swore I'd never get divorced. And hell if I was going to have kids...or maybe I'd have six. I can go back and forth on it forever.
A typical day in my life has me getting up super early and getting to bed late MOST of the time. A lot of days I feel like how the Hindu Goddess Kali is depicted-with multiple arms and is the fierce picture of maternal power and dissolving of attachments to all things like most mothers I know tend to do. Woman Warrior. Proudly hopeful that we are stripped of all pretense of illusion, fighting for the family. But, even Kali had to get so bone-weary tired of fighting that all she wanted to do is curl up in an undiscovered dark cave (or luxury hotel with spa) somewhere and just...hibernate?
Yep, that's me. I want to hibernate. I'm tired of being the fierce woman warrior I need to be most days. I think I'm overextended. Have been for a long time. I don't like it. I don't want to be. But what I like and what I want have very little meaning in my life since I've had children.
I'd LIKE to spend some time doing something completely frivolous, NOT related to work and OUTSIDE OF MY HOME. I'd like to spend some time catching up with my girls, and not hurting my sister's or friends feelings because I am always working or always busy and never get to see them. I'd like to spend time cultivating the relationships that matter. AND I'd like to take an actual vacation- SANS CHILDREN! *GASP!* (Don't ever let anyone know that I would like time away from my short people...I can't possibly admit I'm human and need a break.)
I posted something on my personal FB page earlier this week with this quote:
“I'm about to make a wild, extreme and severe relationship rule: the word busy is a load of crap and is most often used by assholes. The word "busy" is the relationship Weapon of Mass Destruction. It seems like a good excuse, but in fact in every silo you uncover, all you're going to find is a man who didn't care enough to call. Remember men are never to busy to get what they want.” ~Greg Behrendt~
I don't know why I am so fixated on relationships lately. Maybe because I know I need to work on mine. With my family. With my friends. I don't intentionally try to be an asshole, but that's what it's coming down to. I am sick of it. Sick of feeling like I don't do enough to maintain my non-business relationships. Sick of always trying to justify that what I'm doing is for my little family's greater good when I just feel like a total bitch because I HAVE to work all the time and don't have the flexibility to do anything. I'm at a loss on how to fix my relationships without hurting my business though. Yes, me...Ms. Know-It-All at a loss for what the hell to do.
And what about my OTHER relationships? It's not that I want a romantic one...but I do. It's not that I'm lonely or needing companionship...but I am and do. It's not that I don't need time to decompress...I SO DO. It's not that I don't like dating...I enjoy it but I don't WANT to date. Will I ever have time to really find "my penguin", as my daughter calls having "my person"? Probably not. Why? Because I'm always working! I don't have a real relationship with anyone for the same reason I don't have a pet. I don't have the time to expend on taking care of it. I don't have the energy for one more thing. I don't have the inclination to begin something that will probably kill me if I lose any more sleep, or take time away from supporting my family to do so. And I'm afraid I'd have to kill my person, like Kali did Shiva, for not picking up his socks.
I'm a mess!
I watch those commercials with "the easy button" and I'm like, " I NEED one of those for my life!". I am so envious of those people in relationships...looking at my friends and family who have "their person". I know as a single woman I probably broke some unspoken code by saying I'm jealous, but...I am.
Even if you don't have the greatest relationship, you at least have someone you can bitch at about all the trivial shit you two have to do. "I had to pick up YOUR dry cleaning on my way home from work." "You didn't wash out your coffee mug and the creamer and sugar congealed in the bottom and now it's a hard disc of milky stuff in the bottom of the mug. Thanks." "You left your dirty socks on the floor...again." (Pictures of the Goddess Kali with her slain husband beneath her foot for not picking up his creepy socks in my mind).
Think about it this way. You and your person have someone as your back-up. Someone else can make you dinner when you're too tired or you've got too much work to do. Someone else can feasibly pick up the kids if you have to work late. Your combined incomes may not necessitate you having to work two jobs to take care of your household or family. Or if one of you doesn't work? Someone else can do some of the OTHER stuff you have to do AFTER you come home from one of your two jobs. You actually may have free time. You may actually have free time...together. You can feasibly have a date with someone you don't feel totally akward around the first few times. You can have sex. In your own home. Without the weirdness of knowing your short people know you're having sex. And if they know? They just think it's gross like short people do when their parents/parent and the parent's SO have sex. (This has never happened to me, BTW. Why? Because I don't let anyone close enough to bring home to meet the short people.)
So, the next time you want to complain and bitch about your person being a total douche for not doing something they were supposed to, or they did something trivial to piss you off? Remember that there are those of us without douche's in our lives to get pissed off at. Sometimes this is a good thing. A very, VERY good thing. And there are other times when even a douche that forgets to pick up their socks remembers to do it. And makes you dinner. So what if it is a lasagna from Costco. It's one less thing YOU had to do today.
My daughter is still hopeful that I'll find my penguin. My youngest is still hopeful I'll have a baby. These things may never happen in a million years.
Perhaps I should be more like Kali. All the things in life that bring one sorrow or pain shouldn't be ignored. These things are a huge part of life. That's what makes the beautiful even more meaningful. Because we have these things. I have to understand that for me to be at peace with my freedom and the things in my life that I have to work so hard for, I can't long for the things that just aren't available to me right now. Whether that be time with the people I love and miss, or even "my person".
"Kali is Mother to her devotees not because she protects them from the way things really are but because she reveals to them their mortality and thus releases them to act fully and freely, releases them from the incredible, binding web of "adult" pretense, practicality, and rationality."
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