I’ve been feeling lost, sluggish, out of it lately. I feel as if I’m in a holding pattern between where I was and where I want to be, but I don’t know exactly where I am right now. Life is going good, so maybe a little part of me is secretly waiting for the impending doom that is surely lurking around the corner.
In my experience that’s how it works – life is good, shit goes down, life is okay, shit goes waaaaay down, life is good again. We haven’t had any huge issues in weeks, months even. There is some heavy stuff going down with some family members of mine (namely someones absolutely crazy, completely absurd and psychotic soon-to-be-ex spouse so PLEASE pray) but nothing on the homefront. So why do I feel so blue? Blue isn’t the right word because I’m not really feeling sad but maybe… beige? Beige is pretty bland and unfeeling. That’s how I feel – UNfeeling.
I haven’t read back through any of my posts in a long time but I bet if I did I know what I would find. Lots and lots of cute baby pictures and the appearance of all bliss, all the time. All of that happiness was real, but where were the other parts? Why didn’t I write about the days I cried All. Day. Long. because being a mom was completely unlike what I thought it would be? Why didn’t I write about the moment I realized that working outside the home made me feel better about myself, made me a better mom than staying home with my child and how that made me feel? Or the one million times I wanted to strangle my husband because I had to ask yet AGAIN for him to help me do anything around the house? Or the one million and one times he did it without being asked and reminded me how much I loved him?
Is it because I am too tired to write anymore or because I am just too scared to admit to some of these things? I hope it’s not the latter. Sometimes when I write a post, usually the very serious or very sarcastic ones, my heart is pounding the whole time, wondering if I will have the balls to hit “Publish”. I proofread it 30 times, rewriting and rearranging it until I hope it makes sense and then wait, nervous with butterflies in my stomach to see if I get any comments. No comments on a post full of pictures is one thing, even I don’t comment on picture posts, but no comments on a post you really spend time on, that means something to you, especially one you are afraid to post in the first place is a really ominous sign. It makes me feel icky, and I obsess over what I did wrong. Is it just because no one reads this blog anymore? Is it because I offended someone with my words? Is it because I just made a gigantic ASS of myself? The self deprecation is endless.
When I started blogging it was to track the pregnancy, and most of the posts are just “24 weeks – your baby is the size of a [insert fruit here]…” variety. There are only a few paragraphs and posts about myself actually being pregnant, and no one read it. UNsurprise. If you look back between November 2007, when I started, and April 2008 when Avelyn was born you would never know that midway through I caught a virus that could have had potentially fatal effects on my baby. Why didn’t I write about that experience? Why did I feel like I had to keep it secret, or keep that part to myself? I remember thinking that I didn’t want to give out those details because I didn’t want people we knew to be constantly asking me about it, I wanted a little privacy from THEM. –––
This gets me thinking about the irony of caring less about the internet world reading some of those details than people I know in person. I don’t want people I might run into, or well meaning but OMG-you-are-SO-not-my-favorite family members pestering me with questions about something I don’t want them to know about. It’s a lot easier to write about an experience in a forum such as this, and be able to control the information readers see than it is to be face to face with someone who thinks they have a right to it just because they know you. Does anyone else ever feel this way? I know a few of you out there have somehow kept your blogs secret from your family so you could write about whatever you want and I think it is amazing you have been able to do so. How therapeutic it must be to be able to rant about the day-to-day topics that torture you most. Love ‘em, hate ‘em, your and your spouse’s family are here to stay and words in print last FOOORRRRREEEEVVVVVEEEEERRRRRR so I try really hard to steer clear of that topic.
Some of my favorite blogs, the ones I read every day, are those that write about the realness of life. The good, the bad, and the sometimes really really ugly. Becoming Sarah is fairly new to blogging (has it even been a year?) but she’s totally blunt in her description of pregnancy and new-parenthood. I love it. Interested in what the pregnant vagina looks like or the insanity that comes with post-partum hormones and over-the-moon love for a new baby? You will love her. And Kickyboots, the first blog I stumbled on and still hang on every word today continues to amaze me with her gut wrenching honesty and I continue to hold fast to the belief that it is possible she is part of some secret Canadian FBI group that has tapped my house and my brain, because the words she writes about being a mother are just spot on sometimes and it scares me.
So for all that, I want to officially say that as of today I am making a pledge to myself to write for myself, to keep a record of what “today” was like so that “tomorrow” I can look back and remember, oh yeah that was a really hard time but we got through it or yep, that was THE BEST day. It’s so easy to focus on the bad in real life that I think I have over compensated on the blog by focusing too much on the good. And that’s not real. Someone left a comment once along the lines of “Your pictures make me happy. I wish my life were that great.” I thought to myself how nice that one of my pictures made someone smile, and also how sad that they thought my life was so great all the time. It’s important for me to recognize the rough times so that I can really appreciate the good times too. Because no matter how bad it can sometimes get, for the most part it’s a whole lot of excellent and I think it should be fairly reflected.
Wow, not sure where I started with this but I guess this is where I ended up. Oh, I hear a baby waking up from a nap. I’m off to make homemade soft pretzels and maybe some brownies before work tonight. So far so good on making my life sound less crappy huh? Today is a good day. :)
Pretzels and brownies!?!? Tay and I are coming right over! Life is crazy, being a mom is a hell of a rollar coaster that is your life forever.
I wish you and your family a great week!
This is def in the top 5 best posts.
I too wish that I could write with no abandon and know that I don’t give a rip about what my mother or grandmother or whomever (I think that’s about the sum of my readership) is going to see. Good for you!
And p.s. baby pictures still totally rock my world!
P.s.s. I think you need to move to WF and work at URHCS with me at night. Oh my gracious the trouble we would get into!
Oh Jennifer, one of my favorite posts. I’ve vented on here plenty about how I’m a better mom because I work. And how in the early days when Claire’s reflux was so bad that I cried and cried and literally could not take care of her and had to call my mom over to watch her. And how my husband is a complete idiot and helps me NONE unless I ask him, and then one day he’ll surprise the crap out of me and have all the laundry done and folded and put away – not the right way – but HIS way. And many a times I’ve hit publish and thought “what is the blog world going to think about me???” Then I realized that the ‘blog world’ are really strangers. And I really don’t CARE what they think about me. If you don’t like it, don’t read it. And my IRL readers, they are my best friends and they already know the ups and downs of my life.
Keep postin girl – I love your sarcasm and real life stories. And yes, the pictures of Avelyn can brighten a day when your own little Angel acted more like the devil this weekend than the Angel that we all know she is ( :
One of the hardest things for me to accept was that I make mistakes and people can learn from them.
I decided a long time ago that although my MIL and my Mom and my husband and DCS (yes, you read correctly, DCS-I volunteered it to them to help us get custody of my stepkids) read my blog, I will be honest. I will write what I feel because it’s my space and nobody can tell me how to feel or that what I feel is wrong.
It’s been liberating and scary but it’s honest.
Kudos to you for figuring it out!
Keep writing. Everyone knows life sucks and that its hard. We don’t expect everything to be perfect all the time. No matter what you have written in other posts; it is always a bright spot in my day. Its a connection that I can have with you since we don’t get to talk. I look forward to reading your blog and to read the shenanigans that Avelyn has been up to or to here what dumb yet sweet thing Kevin has done yet again. The days that you have a new blog up are normally the days that I enjoy quite a bit. You writing is very real in everyway. Even when you sugar coat it people can relate. Keep it up! There are alot of people out there that look forward to your blog and eat up the words just like you do for others blogs.
Good for you. And I do understand. I am completely crappy at posting lately. My depression has been getting the best of me, and instead of writing about it like I used to, I curl into a little ball and do nothing.
Hopefully that’s going to start getting better.
I’m proud of you though.
have i ever directed you to mimismartypants.com? there’s a story in the october 5th entry you’ll appreciate.
I saw this the other day, but had trouble commenting, so here we go again! COME ON, COMPUTER, LET’S MAKE THIS WORK!
What I wanted to say was that I know, kind of, sort of, a little bit, how you feel. Although I’ve only had BecomingSarah.com since, I don’t know, March or so, I wrote a blog somewhere else for years. Years and years and years, and then somebody in my real life found it and suddenly it just didn’t hold the appeal it once did. I couldn’t be the same sort of honest and I felt bogged down by that little slice of the Internet, when it should have been freeing. I would look back through my archives and not recognize the stories I wrote down because I’d omitted so much information. So I stopped, closed up shop, called it quits.
It was a good two years before I started my current blog. And even though I have the same problem as before with my family and friends, I find that if I exaggerate to high heavens, I can write peripherally about the real stuff and just tell them not to take it too seriously. That really helps alot and it works for me.
Whatever you decide to do and whatever works for you and this blog, I wish you luck. Knowing how to go forward with blogging can sometimes be incredibly tough, but it will get better. Kudos to you for making the choice that you have, and I wish you all the strength in the world to stick to it =) It’s hard, but I’m sure it will be worth it.