lawmummy

The house is quiet this morning.

Katie is back at school after being home for the Jewish high holidays. Being home for the holidays is particularly stressful when you don’t celebrate said holidays… Then, you’re just home. Of course, the weather has been terrible - rainy and stormy - something for which Katie has placed the blame squarely on me.

Amy is also back at school after a quick trip yesterday to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to see the cardiologist. The results were positive, nothing to worry about. Her biggest fear? “Ms. Betty Anne will call my name and they will have to say ‘absent!’”

Charlie made noise about not wanting to go to school today, but walked in, backpack in hand with nary a fuss. He made a last ditched effort to leave, telling me that he was “ready to go” but I convinced him that his friends needed help putting together a railroad track. He shrugged his shoulders, said, “Well, okay” and walked off.

I walked back to the house with all kind of grand plans for the morning, none of which materialized. Oddly, I don’t really care. I have been running myself ragged over the past month or so. I needed a moment to not feel responsible for anything or anyone. I needed to drink some cold coffee (not on purpose but I was desperate for caffeine) and think.

In the midst of it all, a friend texted me, sounding like she needed to chat, so we did. For quite a bit, actually. And it was oddly therapeutic for me.

She is kind of where I had been awhile ago - my head not quite on straight, worried about money and the kids and my relationship with Chris. And although I know it sounded patronizing, I found myself uttering the words, “It will get better.” And I believed it.

Nothing is easy. And sometimes, things feel insurmountable. When you pile on thing after thing, it’s easy to get lost. And for the last year or so, I have felt very, very lost. Vulnerable. Discounted. Unappreciated. Worthless. I felt like I was just stumbling through every day and barely hanging on - some days, I wondered what would happen if I just kept driving down the highway. I wanted to get away from everything. It was a dark, miserable place to be.

And while I was feeling all of this, the bad news and the bad feelings kept piling on. My dad’s health declined at the same time that my mom’s health was also going south. My brother announced he was getting a divorce. Our move fell through. I was worried about Katie’s school. Amy’s sleep issues were getting worse. The house had a plague for five months (damn parasites). I began to hate work. Blogging and writing were no longer sources of comfort, they were chores. I had a falling out with some of my neighbors and the results were painful. I felt lonely. And resentful. And cynical. And scared.

I had no joy.

Things needed to change. Chris, often wiser than I give him credit for (and don’t you dare tell him that I said so), knew it, too. You have to, he would say, take some time off for you. I would, being the martyr, argue that I couldn’t. Really, it was that I wouldn’t. I think I was afraid of what would happen if things changed. As bad as they felt, they could always get worse, right?

But then I thought about what I was doing to my kids. I have always prided myself on being a good mom. But I wasn’t being a good mom. I was stressed and short with them. I yelled a lot. A lot. I didn’t have it in me emotionally to be the “fun mom” and physically, I was so out of shape that I had no stamina to play much.

I realized that I was exactly who I had never wanted to be: the fat, bitter mom that sat on the sidelines at everything yelling at her kids and blaming the world for everything.

And that wasn’t really me.

It just wasn’t.

And I resolved to make it stop.

The easiest change was physical. I started exercising more and eating better. I even joined Weight Watchers online. As of this morning, I weigh 33 pounds less than I did in spring. That is as much as Amy weighs. I feel better. I eat better. I’m more active. I run, I walk, I play soccer with the kids. I am not as tired as I used to be.

I look better. At my low point, I was struggling to button my size 16 jeans. This morning, my size 12 skinny jeans were drooping a bit in the back. I may be getting size 10 jeans soon. I haven’t worn a size 10 for almost 15 years.

I was so ready for a change when the weight started dropping that I wanted more. Last month, on a whim, while waiting for my kids to get their hair cut, I cut mine. All off. It’s short and sassy now, like I used to be. I love it.

But like I said, that was the easy part. It’s much harder to fix your heart and your mind.

I started with trying to eliminate some of my stresses. You know, those things that I swore that I had to do but I didn’t really. I let them go a little at a time. Last week, I let the biggest one go - my job as a Channel Editor at b5media. It was a job that I initially enjoyed. And I loved my bloggers at the Business Channel, such a great group of folks. But the job was time consuming - and not in a good way. Changes were happening at the company and I wasn’t on board with a lot of them. And the great sense of community, the one that I used to look forward to every morning? It fell apart. Mistrust and lack of respect ran deep. It was eating away at me. So I resigned. Yesterday was the first day in more than a year that I wasn’t responsible for checking my email every five seconds, I didn’t have any fires to put out, I didn’t have to figure how to spin bad news. It was officially not my problem. And it was a wonderful feeling.

I changed my workload at the office. I decided not to take any new clients for a bit, I have more than enough to keep busy. And despite that horrible feeling that I should, must, absolutely take every case that walks through my door, I have stuck to it.

And little by little, I’m trying to find my joy again.

I’ve realized through all of this, that no matter how unfair life seemed, how much it felt like everything was out of control, it was always me who allowed myself to fall apart. I made the decision that I wasn’t worth taking care of, that it was okay for people to take advantage of me, that maybe the person that told me that I got what deserved was right. That was all me. All of it.

Monday was my birthday. Every year for my birthday, Chris makes me a photo album - the coolest gift ever. This year, he had to make two. And last night, as I was looking through the books, I was terribly sad. I realized, staring at pictures, that I lost nearly a year of my life. I actually could not remember some of the events in the album - our trip to Gettysburg, for example. I have been so overwhelmed by everything that I wasn’t in the moment for literally weeks on end. And I can tell: I am not smiling in a single picture.

But not anymore. I’m focusing on my energy on getting better. I don’t want to become that bitter person who allows negativity to eat away from the inside out. I am better than that.

Does this mean that everything is perfect? Of course not. I’m far from where I need to be. But does it mean that I’m trying? Yep. I owe it to my husband and my kids to be a better person. But mostly I owe it to me.

I hope that if you find yourself in a similar situation, you hang on. It will get better. Trust me.

October 2nd, 2008 | Tags: birthday, depression, motherhood, parenting, relationships | Category: Lots to say, Me | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL