I miss me

I miss me.

Perhaps that has always been the hardest part of motherhood for me. The feeling ebbs and flows, depending on the season we are in. It’s stronger in the newborn and infant years, worse when I’m on a long stretch of solo parenting, greater when I’m not in a good place with my own mental health and level of self care. I can now add to the list that the feeling is also strong when I’m faced with a worldwide pandemic.

I miss me.

Some days are better than others. On some days, I feel more energetic and confident under all the hats I’m wearing - teacher, wife, mom, supporter to a medical professional, acquirer of food in a war-time-like environment where store shelves often lay barren. Life is beyond strange right now for all of us.

I miss me.

I miss doing the things that fill my cup. I miss being alone. I miss having the kids GO to school.

I miss me.

I miss feeling like I’m good at something. I KNOW deep down that I’m doing an okay enough job with teaching my kids. In fact, I would even venture to say I’m doing a GOOD job. But my kids aren’t generous with their positive feedback. Mostly they fight me tooth and nail on everything. It’s hard to feel good about the job you are doing when your students make your every request seem like torture.

I miss me.

I miss feeling like I have time for something. I can’t even identify what that thing is specifically right now. Just something. Anything from start to finish. Uninterrupted. Yesterday it was gardening. I wanted to plant a few seeds, toss some fertilizer on my berries, edge the lawn. It was a beautiful day. It really didn’t feel like too much to ask. But it was. It almost always is. One kid wanted me to find and print sheet music for the Star Wars theme song because she has a budding interest in piano. Then she wanted me to spend special one-on-one time teaching it to her. Another kid was having one of her roughest pandemic days to date. Numerous emotional meltdowns. Everything was wrong. She was trailing me around for half the day, her high needs seeping from her every pore. The youngest was out shooting hoops in the culdesac when suddenly a crowd of neighborhood kids joined him. They were unable to maintain a proper “social distance” so I had to call him inside and help set him up with a new activity to keep him occupied. After the third interruption in 5 minutes time, I threw all my gardening tools in a bucket and gave up in surrender. There are some days (most days) when the requests are just too frequent.

I miss me.

I guess what I probably miss most is having lengthy chunks of time to remember who I am and to do the things I love. I get an hour here and there to squeeze in a run or read a couple chapters in a book but, as an introvert, “recharging” in tiny snippets is no longer working. It’s like we’ve all reverted to the newborn phase of parenting again - there are no guarantees whether this nap, this craft you set up to entertain the kids, is going to buy you three minutes or three hours. So instead of starting something, you start nothing and waste away the minutes scrolling through your phone, trying to fill the void. And then when the minutes suddenly turn into an hour, you silently berate yourself for not seizing the opportunity to do whatever it was you wanted to do. But you didn’t know. You never can predict.

I miss me.

I miss the version of me who doesn’t yell so much. Yesterday, after full-blown yelling at the kids for the third time, I had the wherewithal to recognize what was operating, and I narrated it aloud to the kids in live time. “Kids,” I told them. “I’m yelling a lot today which means that I’ve reached my limit and I need some quiet time. For the next hour, I need you to leave me alone.” I ran outside to the patio with a novel and pretended to be invisible. Aside from one kid who joined me outside but whisper-promised that she “would be quiet”, they actually obliged my request. This moment on this particular day felt like a win, but still I wish we didn’t have to get to the yelling point to get this mama what she needs.

I miss me.

I miss having even an inkling of energy at the end of the day to anything other than to eat a bowl of ice cream and drink a glass or 2 of wine in celebration of another day checked off the calendar. I’m often soooo tapped out at the end of another long day with the kids that I don’t even feel like spending time with my husband or jumping on a Zoom call with some of the friends I love dearly. I miss my friends. And yet sometimes I guess I miss myself more and that internal cry to go into my shell in hibernation wins out.

I miss me.

I’m learning about myself that it takes me a good long while to settle in to change. When things are hard and my feathers are ruffled, I’m slow to adapt. I spend a long time flailing before I’m able to don my lifejacket and feel safe enough to stop fighting the current and just let it carry me in the new direction. I exert massive amounts of energy trying to get everything back to the way it was before and in doing so, I often completely miss or overlook unexpected moments of joy because it “wasn’t a part of my carefully orchestrated plan.” I miss enjoying things and a lot of that is my own darn fault.

I miss me.

But things look different now. Maybe this means that I, too, like the world around me, am going to have to change. I don’t like the sound of that. I’m still here grieving my “Dream Year.” This was “supposed” to be my first year with all the kids in school full time. This was “supposed” to be the year I had loads of alone time to remember who I am. This was supposed to be the year I work on writing a book. This was supposed to be the year I revived and breathed life into the parts of “Kelsie” that didn’t revolve entirely around my children. Ha. Boy is the joke on me right about now!

I miss me.

Some days are certainly harder than others. I’m learning to accept the good and the bad. It’s a bit like riding a roller coaster blind-folded - you just never know if today is going to involve a lot of smooth coasting or a steep uphill climb. I know all you parents out there can relate. I hope that we can make space for every part of this crazy ride we are all on - the grief, the good, the hard, the terrifying.

When my husband gave me this chunk of time today to write (can I get a hallelujah!?), I was hoping to compose a post about putting down roots and “growing where we are planted,” but honestly, I woke up this morning kind of wanting to spit on that message. That’s my typical M.O. by the time I reach about Thursday or Friday in a long week of quarantine, I guess you could say. I’ll get back there at some point. I promise I will. Because I know there is a really good message for all of us in there. But some days are harder and that’s okay. There is space for both.

In the meantime, I’ll draw your attention back to the passage of Scripture at the beginning of this post. It’s been really speaking to me and inspiring me to dig deep and keep going during these days that feel oh so mundane and repetitive and exhausting: “Do not grow weary in doing good for in due time you will reap your reward if you do not give up.” Galatians 6:9.

Carry on, Weary Ones!