I Can't Pour My Heart Out

SI and RH

It's been a really hard week.  Month.  Year.

And I want to bare my soul and weep onto the page, but I can't.

I can't simply air me and my husband's dirty laundry all over the internet.  I don't want to make things worse during the hardest time my husband and I have faced in our relationship.  Yes, harder than brain cancer.  Harder than newborn, preemie twins.  This is the hardest it has ever been.  But I can't talk about it here.

I can't bemoan the loss of my friends or past friends or whoever and whatever they are publicly.  I don't want to burn any bridges.  I want the people who I love, who are angry at me because I'm wrapped up in my own world, trapped inside my own depressed thoughts, to be able to forgive me my selfish self pity and come back someday.

I can't pour my heart out, empty it of all the pain and grief and confusion, because I truly fear that if I do, I'm just going to make things worse.

It's a helpless, trapped feeling.  And I've spent so much time feeling helpless and trapped.

They tell you that having kids is hard.  But you never really stop and think that maybe, just maybe, it's just as hard as they say... but for all the unsaid reasons.

That it's so hard because everybody knows, but it all happens inside your own head.

It's not being "stuck at home" with the kids.  It's having the kids be the only people you spend time with.

It's not being needed 24/7, it's the sociopathic need- the moment to moment total obliviousness as you as a human being, and not just as the provider of all their earthly needs.

My children are wonderful, and I love them so much... every day they do something new, something wonderful, something hilarious.  Every day I am overwhelmed by how deeply I can care for them.

But that is a trap too- an emotionally exhausting cycle that never ends.  You never get to idle in neutral, you're always running through extremes- jumping straight from first into fifth and then suddenly dropping it into reverse.

It kills your transmission.  Or, if you don't like that metaphor, you just get totally burnt out.  Worn down.

And for some reason I believe that most moms have other mom friends.  That they have other people they can talk to about it.

I have so few other mom friends.  And like me, they're too busy to talk about it.  It's hard to have a conversation when any second you might need to nurse, or wipe a butt, or kiss a boo-boo.  When on top of the childcare, there's laundry to be done, and food to be made, and floors to be swept, and somehow in all of that you need to find time to do something as simple as make yourself a cup of tea and some toast.

It doesn't matter if you have a three day migraine, or if you have a cold, or if you're queasy and tired, you don't get to stop.  You still have to feed the baby, clean up the oatmeal from the floor, moderate battles over who gets to play with the ninja.

And you still want to do all of it- to give your kids the best possible childhood they can remember.

Because they will remember.  They will remember you yelling.  And they will remember you crying.

And while they might not remember the details, you will.  You'll remember sitting on the floor and weeping while your children take turns hugging you, kissing you, wiping your cheeks, and asking you not to be sad anymore.

You'll remember that.  Until the day you die, you'll remember that.

Because that is not their damn job.  That is your job.  It is your job as the adult to suck it up and be a fucking parent.

It is not their job to parent you.

And so I'm not going to tell you about how hard it's been.

Instead I'm going to say how desperately grateful I am to the friends who have reached out to me in the last week.  Offered to meet me for lunch with my kids, offered to come by with a bottle of wine, offered to come crash on my couch and have some fun with me.  Offered to let me come and stay with them, if it came to that.

I am so, so incredibly grateful.

And getting those texts, those emails... the occasional phone call... the note on facebook suggestion a play date...

The comments from strangers on my blog, telling me that my lovely readers care, that they might not know me, but that they care.

These things mean so much more to me that I can say.  These things make it kind of okay.

These things make me feel so much less alone.  So much less lost.  So much closer to putting this very, very hard time behind me.

This time that I can't really talk about, but that I am grateful to have somebody willing to listen to.

Thank you.