13

 

It’s been 13 years. Today is my anniversary and it may be the loneliest I’ve ever been. 13 years that have included raising kids without much of a village or support system, plus nearly two years in isolation in North Platte, the unexpected deaths of close family members, topped with a global pandemic have seemingly left me with only my husband for adult companionship. And while I like him and I love him, he isn’t around enough to be enough. He works long hours, he’s torn in five directions by the kids when he’s home…there’s never enough time for us. And I’m lonely. Up until recently, there was always someone I could nonsense text throughout the day when I was bored. I couldn’t grow together a girls night every few months, find someone who’d be interested in going to a movie or a concert.

For 13 years we’ve been building ourselves into this life where it’s just us. My sister got a job outside of the home and more of my messages, if I even feel brave enough to send them, go unseen or are left on read. My two closest friends, the people I’ve grown up with who have seen me at some of my worst moments, are suddenly gone and I don’t really know why. Nothing concrete happened. I saw my best friend Angel a year ago, not unusual for us. The interaction was okay, as far as I could tell, but she was already drunk when she showed up and as we parted ways she said “I know you hate me” and we haven’t spoken since…until I sent her an out of the blue message hoping to reconnect. While she technically did respond, it wasn’t much to go on…the ball is really still in her court and it doesn’t seem like she’s doing anything with it. 

My friend Mike, on the other hand…I don’t even know. He’s going through his own shit, I guess, or that’s what he keeps telling me, but who isn’t?  Our dynamic has felt off for months. Once again, I’ve grown tired of always being the one to reach out, and once again…I’m left waiting for someone else to throw the ball back to me. 

I’m being self-pitying, I know, but that’s what this space is for…I had to step away from social media so I’m not word-vomiting negative feelings for hundreds of people (or you know, 50ish based on my story views). Almost every best friend I’ve ever had has had another best friend. I was never the obvious favorite child. I don’t think anyone ever threw me a surprise party or decorated my locker for my birthday. I’ve always had friends, but I’ve ever felt like I mattered. I’ve never felt like anyone’s first choice. I always wonder if I’d have a closer relationship with my mom if I were the one reaching out, but…why does it always have to be me? I want to feel like someone wants to talk to me or spend time with me, I want them to make the effort. And when my own mother doesn’t, why should anyone else? Travis and I are only together because I was aggressive. I instigated. My stubbornness has kept us going. My insistence on having kids. Every decision has been mine. It’s what I thought I wanted after being married to someone controlling and manipulative, but…now I just feel like maybe I took on that role. Maybe I’m just controlling and manipulating someone else. Someone who has told me that he was the dumpee in all of his previous relationships. Sometimes I look at myself, at the chaos of my life, and wonder who in their right mind would choose this? 

I’m just really sad. And really lonely. 

A Return to the Aughts

 

On a whim, I decided to read the most recent, random blog post from Hey Natalie Jean. Her old Nat the Fat Rat days pulled me out of a deep depression once upon a time and for a while, I lived for what she posted. She was my Mormon mommy Oprah. And funnily enough, her most recent post was about her leaving the church and creating a safe space for others who were wrestling with doing the same. She also mentioned another reader who changed her life when they told her her words helped them stop self-cutting. 

And I skimmed a few archived posts and felt so wistful for the early blogging days when Instagram was barely a thing and we were all posting blurry, heavily filtered shots for basically no one. 

I decided to go back. To try anyway. To barely existing on Instagram and blogging just to get out your thoughts and posting a few filtered snapshots to accompany them. 

Not for nothing, Natalie Jean was the one who inspired me to have a positive attitude about motherhood, which felt like such an incredibly rare thing. And since she stopped sharing…I’ve stopped feeling the joy and let myself get bogged down in the drudgery. 

Also totally unrelated I blew through the final season of Dead to Me and not without some tears. I am so sad for Christina Applegate and knowing how she suffered to bring fans this conclusion. There was also an appearance by Katy Sagal and it took me a minute to remember that she was Christina’s TV mom once upon a time. Shows like this and like Grace and Frankie give me hope that one day I’ll have a best friend again. Travis is more or less my best friend these days, but a platonic female friend who really gets me and accepts me would sure be nice. I am friendly with a lot of people but I don’t feel like I really have friends anymore…and that’s part of what had me feeling so lonely and dark lately. 

I’m going to try harder. To find the joy. To appreciate what I have. I could really, really use a win…but until I get it, I can only control my own response to what goes on around me. 

One Door Closes

 

Unofficially, this is a chapter that’s been closed for four years. But there’s been this little voice nagging me, unable to fully let go. A little what if? A little uncertainty that this is what’s right. Fear of going forward and being a whole-ass adult woman free to live her life. 

For four years now, we’ve been careful. I tried another birth control implant that made me feel psychotic and out of control. I think the only way it prevents pregnancy is by killing your sex drive so there’s no chance of it happening anyway. After fourteen months, I had to remove it for the sake of my relationship. Since then, it’s been good old-fashioned condoms. The plan has always been for him to have a vasectomy; to be honest, I’m not entirely sure why he hasn’t. It’s not something I can do for him, I guess? And the continued ability to produce children isn’t causing physical pain like his wisdom teeth. I don’t know...but I’ve been telling people loudly and often that I’m definitely done having kids. Whether to convince myself or perhaps to try to tempt fate once again, I’m not sure. But I started to believe it as the years went on. 

Last month we weren’t careful. We weren’t careful more than once. We weren’t careful during my peak fertility days. And as I sit here, still constipated and a little nauseous, lacking the trademark soreness in my boobs that always signals the impending start of my period, I’m struggling accepting that single, solitary line on the test I took. The one I honestly didn’t see coming with the way I’ve been feeling. Deep in my guts, I still don’t feel done. I had resolved myself to cutting us off from any more biological children, reasoning that we will be in a great position to adopt someday “when we have our life together,” if we still feel like we’re missing someone. I’m less than a year from all of my kids being in school full-time. I’m finally applying to the accelerated nursing program I should’ve started four years ago. I need another baby like I need another hole in my head. 

But when the week of my period came and I felt none of my usual symptoms, I couldn’t help myself. I Googled OBs hoping their short blurbs could tell me which one had the most high risk experience. I mentally worked another car payment into the budget to trade for a bigger passenger van. I imagined myself sheepishly telling Travis, my friends...asking my sister to save me a spot when she opens her in-home daycare again. I pinned Solly wraps and space-age baby equipment on a Pinterest board I haven’t really touched since I was carrying Willa. I tried to picture my normal daily routine with a baby in it. I refreshed myself on the benefits of red raspberry leaf tea during pregnancy. I researched the outcomes of pregnancy and delivery after uterine rupture. I looked at tiny outfits at Target. 

Yesterday was the estimated start date for my period. Today I bought a two-pack of early detection tests via Target drive-up and thought about how much more amazingly convenient life has become just since my last baby. I picked up my order with a carful of children under the age of five, in between preschool and lunch. I rushed everyone into the house, my bladder bursting, hoping I could make it to the bathroom and get the test open before I exploded. The test line showed up fast and clear. It didn’t look like another line was going to appear, but I set down the stick and walked away, busying myself with lunch preparations. I checked it after five minutes. I checked it after twenty minutes. Still just one line. Not Pregnant. 

My stomach dropped a little bit. I texted Travis that he dodged a bullet but we absolutely need to get him fixed if we don’t want anymore babies or for me to die...for real this time. It is really, truly the end. 

And I love having older kids. I always thought of myself as a baby person and had no idea what to do with older kids, but I’ve adapted and grown alongside them and I’m in love with who they’re turning out to be. They fight a lot and they’re messy and their interests don’t always interest me. They have opinions and they’re loud. But it is so much better than I ever dreamed of. I can’t saddle them with another one when our house, our car, our budget, our life are all already bursting at the seams. This is the way it’s supposed to be. 

Yes, I’m still trying to convince myself. 

The Bad Place

 When I was actually excited (but still anxious) about going out. 

Surprise, I’ve been struggling lately. Every so often I try to quit social media because I feel so shitty about it and/or post something embarrassing and want to disappear. But then I still have so much in my brain that I can’t share so I come back to this neglected space and dust off the cobwebs and word vomit all over the place. 

I don’t know if it’s hormones or just the state of the world but I never feel okay or safe anymore. I’m scared all of the time of something bad happening, especially to the baby. I feel so out of sorts and I can’t quite pinpoint one particular thing making me feel that way. Tiny House just sort of…stopped scheduling me and basically ghosted me without a word? Which is sort of a relief but also adds to my general feeling of worthlessness and never-good-enough-ness. I volunteered to come in in the middle of my vacation to cover someone who said they had asked for the day off and didn’t get it. It was an opening shift I hadn’t worked before, which I made clear but said I’d come in if it would help out. I ended up working with the owner, who probably thinks I’m a total idiot…despite my saying that I’ve never bartended or done more than serve very basic drinks like on-tap hard cider. I’m usually a fast learner, but learning all of this fancy cocktail shit when I’ve always been a beer-and-seltzer girl and only work one usually busy evening a week has been a struggle. I assumed it was okay to ask a lot of questions and try to keep learning as I went but it seems I was written off as a lost cause. My little bit of extra summer fun money, My Own Thing, my excuse for getting dressed and interacting with other adults is gone and it’s back to being the overwhelmed mom with sticky floors and no breaks. Also pretty sure the person I worked for didn’t even say thank you…

Travis worked last Saturday and has been working late almost every night this week so we’ve felt pretty out of sync. He busted ass to get done earlier on our anniversary and I still had to rush all of the kids around myself and show up late to our date. We had asked my sister to babysit and I had a feeling going into it that it wasn’t the best idea, but we didn’t have many other options and Clementine and her stranger danger aren’t cool with a lot of people right now. It’s been rough. Every conversation we’ve had lately has been further proof it was a mistake to add my neediest (well…probably second-neediest, honestly) child to the mix. But I desperately needed this night out and while I was disappointed that we were going to have to get back so early, especially when I already had to show up late, I had every intention of sticking to the agreement. We had no intention of milking our time. I kept thinking “10:30ish, as long as we leave by 10:30 at the latest, we’ll still make that ‘-ish’. We just kept running into people we hadn’t seen in forever (because we almost never get out), and were struggling to break the conversations. I told Travis repeatedly “we HAVE to get going.” But I also drank too much too fast on a nearly-empty stomach, trying to make the most of our two hours, and I was starting to forget about anything else. 

In any case…things didn’t end well and we haven’t talked since. I know it was my bad for being late but I don’t think things were handled well on either end and attempts to talk it out never go well for us so I guess we just…don’t talk anymore? The worst thing is I had to ask my ex-husband to babysit Sunday night for the Bright Eyes show we’ve had tickets for since my birthday…that I don’t even really want to go to anymore after how things went the other night. I know he won’t make me feel bad (in the moment anyway) or rush me but I also know Clementine won’t be happy and I don’t want to be tempted to drink, which I always am, no matter how bad things get. It’s just terrible timing all around. 

I feel wracked with guilt and shame all of the time. My mental energy is consumed by how bad the news is all of the time. I want to do so many things with my kids but I just feel frozen. It feels like so much work just to be alive and be a person. 

2021...

I don't quite know how to describe my feelings as we head into this worse version of 2020. Mostly I would say that I feel invisible. Inconsequential. Non-existent. After going back into relative isolation following the holidays, I've been lonely. It's been harder to take unanswered texts, ignored messages, decreased engagement. 

I didn't really set goals or make resolutions for this year. But I think one goal that is slowly forming is to step away from social media once and for all. I'm tired. I've been doing this for ten years and it doesn't make me happy. I've always enjoyed a certain aesthetic and appreciated design, I don't feel like social media has affected me caring what things look like. But it has affected how I think about everything. It takes over my days and I get nothing out of it. I miss old-school, early 2000s blogging before everyone was a brand. A lot of my favorites have disappeared or are slowly losing their relevance. 

My brain has forgotten how to write. I'm uninspired. I don't think I did one creative thing in 2020. I'm trying to figure out how to get back to that without being in an echo-chamber of similar voices. 

I want to get outside more. After a year of so much online schooling, online social engagements, limited access to our regular haunts, I want to find responsible ways to see and enjoy more of the world. I hope we can find new hiking trails, hit more state parks, more spontaneous road trips, that we can finally try camping. 

 We've spent the weeks between Christmas and the present week creating makeshift sledding paths on the small hill behind our house, learning to play chess, working through our DVD collection, playing pretend school when the kids aren't doing distance learning, breaking in our new popcorn popper, playing Mario Kart, building Legos, snacking around the clock, ordering lots of grocery delivery, playing new board games, and dealing with the saga of our car finally dying, something we've been anticipating for a while. 

Willa went back to preschool a couple of weeks earlier than the other kids, and we've been struggling to find routine again. I've been struggling with going about my normal life in a world that feels like it's ending. I'm struggling to connect with people.  I think more than anything I was hoping so much for this year to feel different. Better would have been a bonus. I somehow wasn't prepared for it to feel worse. I don't know where we go from here. I don't know if it gets better. I'm scheduled to get my Covid vaccine on Thursday morning. I turned in my nursing application. I deleted all of my social media apps, but the accounts are still active and waiting for me to sign back into them. I got an email from our beloved summer camp, the one that was cancelled last year after I worked so diligently to get them all into the same session. I'm still heartbroken that Ryland missed the final year he was eligible to participate. He's too old this year, but I can still try to give Wilder and Isla that experience, because according to the email, they're going ahead with camp this summer. 

I felt hopeful going into this year. Part of me knew that it was foolish, but it's hard not to assign meaning to a new year. That hope was dashed on the sixth day. 

 

Nothing’s Fine, I’m Torn

 

I’ve been feeling some type of way about having kids that I can’t accurately explain. Frustrated? Unfulfilled? Overwhelmed? Regretful? None of these are really it. I can’t go as far as to say I regret my kids. That’s a dark place to go and I just don’t believe that’s it. I love them in a way that’s impossible to put into words and I believe that they’re so much better than me and that the world needs and deserves them. But I also feel like they deserve better than this world and this life. I feel like...if I had fully grasped what depression was and known that I wasn’t ever going to grow out of it, I might have reconsidered my position on having them. It was never really given a word, my depression. Any time I had feelings growing up I was told to stop being weepy, to let things roll off of me. I was called angsty, and I believed that’s what it was. Teen angst that would someday get better. Even now, I regularly convince myself that I don’t actually have full-scale depression because I’ve learned to be so high-functioning. I am not the mother I dreamed I would be when I have depression. Which has been rampant this year. 

I also didn’t think we’d be seeing the fallout of ignoring global warming and systemic racism in my lifetime. Quick aside, I’m glad that there’s a reckoning about race happening and more people are realizing that the system was never designed to benefit BIPOC in this country, but everything also feels really scary and uncertain and a lot of true colors are showing and relationships are crumbling and it’s beyond anything I ever imagined I’d see. Mostly because...I was blind to the fact that there was/is still a very real problem. I thought the increasing level of representation of BIPOC in Disney movies meant the playing field was leveling out and certainly by 2020 everything would be okay. 

But the planet...oh the planet. I thought we had a lot more time and I thought it was still possible to reverse the damage we’ve done if we all just recycle enough and buy more green cleaning products. Now we’re saying that much of the US will likely be unlivable in 50 years? I realize by that time I’ll be close enough to death, if I’m even still alive, and my kids will have had enough time to live pretty full lives and even have kids of their own (if they want to...I never, ever plan to push that). But it’s still terrifying to think of what that will look like and how it will play out. I can’t imagine we’ll all just be rolling merrily along living our normal lives as the planet becomes uninhabitable. 

And then there’s just the day to day...the messes, the sticky floors, the fighting, the butt-wiping, the amount of food they go through, the amount of food they waste, the wearing my new shoes that I’m trying to keep nice out in the dirt, the tearing apart my personal notebooks and unmaking my bed and leaving toys and crumbs in it, the struggle to adhere to routines, the refusal to put away their shoes and jackets and backpacks when they come home, the mad dash to find a matching pair of shoes when we’re trying to leave the house, the way things disappear into some alternate dimension and no matter how much we clean, we can never find them again, the impossible-to-find balance between having a life of my own and being enough for my kids. The mental load. Is this just the pandemic? Is this just seven straight months of being with them, all of them, at all times with no break? Is this because we had a really bad week in the middle of a particularly awful month? 

And the regret. It’s not about the kids, really. It’s about not valuing myself beyond being a vessel for children. It’s about the fact that I never considered a life for myself beyond that. It’s that I didn’t take the time to live, to know myself, to grieve, to love, to travel before rushing into this life of existing only for other people. And for what? To heal the wounds of my own childhood and prove I could do a better job of loving unconditionally than my own mother? I guess...but it probably could have waited. I was in such a hurry to replace the life I thought I lost with my divorce, too. All of my decisions have been motivated by fear, by loss, by a lack of self-worth. I grew up hearing all about my potential and how smart I was from my teachers but I was too afraid to really go out and use it and now I’m Just A Mom™️

Now I’m 10 years into a thing that has never not been hard. And we want things that we should’ve had a long time ago; a nice wedding, to own a home, a car that isn’t on the brink of death. But we’re still struggling just to keep the lights on and the rented roof over our heads. Everything we own is broken, dirty, tired, secondhand. I feel broken, dirty, tired, secondhand. I have nothing left for anyone, least of all myself. Sometimes I think my being gone would be better for everyone and sometimes I’m afraid it would be too damaging and the emotional damage is what I’m trying hardest to avoid. 

I don’t really know what the point of all of this is. I’ve tapped into some dark, ugly place inside me and I’m trying to figure a way out. 

And not for nothing, but a second Trump presidency will be my undoing. My kids will be 8, 9, 11, 13, and 17 at the end of this next term. Trump’s America will be all they’ve ever known. And I realize our problems don’t start and end with him. The President, the government, won’t save us no matter who sits in the Oval Office. I just don’t think we stand a chance of ever getting any better with another four years of madness. 

Hopelessness is a scary place from which to parent. 

Overthinking 101

I don’t know how to fix being a person that overthinks things to the extent that I do. Every interaction with a human has me completely on edge, trying not to say the wrong thing, or say too much. Sometimes I just talk until someone stops me. If I don’t get a timely enough response to a text message, I immediately think “oh, I guess they hate me.” Somehow that’s the easiest scenario for me to accept? 

I don’t know how to fix being a person who cares SO MUCH but is unable to accept that anyone else cares as much without hearing constant reassurance and reasons why anyone would care about me. 

I don’t know how to fix being a person who doesn’t know the difference between establishing healthy boundaries and being too overly sensitive, because I’m always certain I’m doing the former but am consistently accused of the latter. 

Honestly, the only person I don’t constantly worry about my place in their life is Travis, and he doesn’t know even a fraction of what goes on in my brain. 

Part of me thinks technology and social media is what has ruined me, a person who runs entirely on emotions and human facial cues and the cadences of a persons speech. Part of me also thinks I might be on the spectrum and that I’d be relieved to receive that confirmation so at least I’d have an excuse for my complete inability to function as a human being. 

I’m just really lonely but also being alone seems so much easier than feeling this way all of the tine