Welcome to My Mind

It is now bedtime and I am so tired. Which is really funny, hahaha. I laugh because I took a two hour nap this afternoon and do not understand how I can still be tired again by bedtime. Whether or not I will be able to sleep though is another story.

I want to have a third baby. But I don't know how, with what little energy I have now, I would manage with a newborn and so little sleep. Of course, then I think, if I'm waiting for "the perfect time" it is never going to come. And if I'm waiting for a time when I'm not tired I will be waiting forever.

But now is not the time. And I know that. Even if I don't always want it to be the truth.

Of course, even though I nap pretty much every day, I maybe should give myself a little more credit. Yesterday when my husband was feeling overwhelmed I actually asked him what I could do to help. And when he asked if I'd mow the lawn I did.

But then I think how I only mowed the front. And how our house (minus the bathroom) hasn't been cleaned in at least a month. And how every time I do laundry, piles and baskets of clothes sit for days, sometimes weeks. (At one point last spring/summer I was on a schedule with my laundry and cleaning and it was great and now I can't understand why I can't get myself back on it again.)

That's the dance I do. Feel good, be nice to myself. Quickly followed by feel bad, be mean to myself. If the guilt is not there about keeping up around the house, it is certainly there about being a good mama to my girls. And every once-in-awhile, every GREAT once-in-awhile, there is a respite of guilt and I manage to Just Be and feel good about who I am and what I'm doing.

Why is that? Why is it so hard to feel like it's okay to NOT be Supermom or Superwoman? Why do I feel like I have to be doing all things perfectly and right? And certainly why do I feel like that when I have some close and real friends who assure me that not being Superwoman is actually okay?

It is exhausting this parenting gig. But sometimes this life gig is exhausting. The ups and downs and side-to-sides, I feel all jumbled up sometimes. Not always in a bad way, sometimes in a very good way. But man, jumbled up and rattled and exhausted all the same.

I don't understand what it is about me that makes me feel like everything is so hard. Why there are some people who view the world with their happy-glasses and life can mostly be rainbows and unicorns for them. How I wish it was as simple as flipping a switch so that I could find silliness and joy and delight in most things. Instead I can be too serious, and I'm almost dragging my feet wearing heavy boots through the mud. Because sometimes everthing.is.so.hard.

It's not always, you know. Hard, that is. It really isn't, but then I overthink things (you would've never guessed -- right?), and I get stuck in my head, and unfortunately my head is not full of little happy gnomes and bunnies, sometimes (okay, maybe usually?) there are cobwebs and dark spots and maybe witches stirring bubbling caldrons.

But then that makes me smile. 'Cause even if I don't have cute little garden gnomes, I have sneaky little witches brewing up who knows what inside my head. That makes life fun, right? Or it could if I didn't overthink almost everything that goes through this brain of mine.

Maybe it is as easy as flipping a switch, I just don't know how to do it, you know? Maybe it's like when you walk into a dark room and put your hand on the wall for the light switch, only your hand is in the wrong spot so you're rubbing it all over the wall trying to find the switch, but you can't find it because the room is dark.

Or maybe it's okay that this is how I am. Maybe it's okay to be an overthinker.

I have no answers. Only questions. Lots and lots of questions. And that's okay. Somehow, that is totally and completely okay.

xoxo.
Christine

I wrote this on Monday night, and posted it for Pour Your Heart Out.