I've complained about everything from a rash on my face, to Zac's illnesses, to my lack of money and willpower to lose weight on this blog. I don't set out to be negative every morning when I sit down to my computer to type these words, it seems to stem partly from my social isolation in this city and my frustrations with being a young parent of an even younger child.
Part of it is the nature of the beast - my blog would drive you absolutely fucking insane if every day I wrote about how great and wonderful my life is. I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't even read it, but by only venting my frustrations and anger I'm sacrificing some measure of truth about my life. Many days I simply exist and try my hardest to make it to the next day. Then there are days, hours, minutes when something clicks inside and I realized:
If love is a decision, then happiness must also be a choice. (December 7th entry on the link).
I choose today to be happy. I spent time with Mr. Tugboat last night and in between the barbed insults that I threw his way periodically, there was a moment when I looked at him and realized how happy he and I could have been as romantic partners. It was surprising to be presented with a singular moment of contentment, all giftwrapped and tied in a bow for mutual consumption. The hard work comes now from redefining that happiness and joy within the boundaries of friendship.
It made me wonder, though, how many other moments like that I pass up.
At my lowest point last week, I called the FOB. Actually, it took two phone calls of me screaming, "Call me as soon as you can!" for him to call me back. I was so tired of being puked on, worrying about where Zac was going to go during the day if I couldn't take time off from work and how I was going to afford to keep my grossly underutilized memberships to the gym and Weight Watchers. I was so tired of worrying about saving for retirement, for a down payment on a house, and paying off my massive student loan debt. I felt fat and unattractive my skin, carrying around the weight that I've gained back. I just wanted to give all of that stress to someone else and say: "Here is a broken heart. You can fix it. It just fell apart."
He can't fix it. No one can fix it for me. The stress that I carry around, that ages me prematurely, weighs me down and keeps me from being the most perfect version of myself. The decision to release at least some of this ballast has to come from me.
Today, I've decided to let it go.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
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2 comments:
I'm going to tell you something that has easily gotten me out of a funk in the past 2 years and 5 months of being a mother.
No one ever said I had to be perfect.
And asking for help does not make you a failure. Just because you called FOB to vent to doesn't make you pitiful or anything else. It makes you human. You're allowed to make mistakes.
And aging makes it a bitch to lose weight. But you read what I said about you in that brown dress for the party. We're always harder on ourselves than we have to be.
And thanks for this entry about Love is a Decision. I just did some soul searching myself after reading it.
Hope your day gets better NSPIT. :)
I'm an exhausted mom too, so I rarely have time to catch up on your blog, much less comment. So, hi. :)
I just had to give you a little "go girl", or some other annoyingly cliched comment, because this post was awesome. I don't even know you, and I'm so proud of you. Realizing that you have a choice in all this unhappiness, that you can't control all the crap that keeps happening, and surrendering all that, is HUGE.
I wish you much luck with all this. I hope you all are feeling better, too.
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