I Love My Kids So Much, But There’s Something About Motherhood That Really Caught Me Off Guard
Sarah Chai | CanvaThis mom cage I live in is terrifying. Beautiful, maddening, breathtaking, disastrous, hilarious, chaotic, terrifying. Am I spoiled? Do I just not understand how good I've got it?
When you can't go into the bookstore with your children — not only because you don't have the energy, but just knowing what a task it will be — it takes all the fun out of the idea. When the people in a fast food drive-thru start to recognize you because your only escape is strapping the kids in their seats and driving until everyone either passes out or claims they're starving.
I love my kids so much, but there's something about motherhood that really caught me off guard
Monika Grabkowska / Unsplash+
As a mother, how can I be so lucky and feel so deprived?
When a room is finally clean after an hour of hard work and distractive play for a whole five seconds, only to be destroyed when you turn around to tackle the next task.
When you look upon your husband's job — the long hours, the co-workers, the inclement weather, the problem solving, the danger — with envy, and you resent him for the 30 to 45 minutes he gets alone in the bathroom to wash off the day before facing a pregnant wife and three children who NEED his attention. Because he was outside. He got to interact with others.
He feeds me tiny morsels of what life is like in the real world daily because he's THERE. He's IN IT. Stay-at-home moms, research has found, work an average of 98 hours a week. This is the equivalent of two and a half full-time jobs, but without the time off, no social interactions, and no clear boundaries.
When you feel guilty for making plans to leave the house two nights in a row. When a doctor's appointment and parenting class elicit such feelings of bliss that it shakes you to your core.
"Please, let the doctor be running behind so I have an extra 10 minutes to stare out this window with nothing but my thoughts."
Oh, Mother, is this what I sound like now? When you've become so sucked into the lives of these tiny people that need everything from you that you lose yourself. You're a cup, and they take gulp after gulp after gulp out of you, never able to quench their thirst, rarely — and sometimes never — giving you time to refill.
After a time, you begin to stop offering yourself as a cup because an empty vessel isn't useful
What can I fill my cup with? What do I like to do? What music do I like? Is there a new book I could read? When did I stop knowing everything about myself? Is this really who I've become?
As child psychologist Dr. Sheryl Ziegler explains, one of the most insidious fuels of mom burnout is feeling stuck in a rut, where the days are so predictable and the to-do list so consuming that mothers slowly lose their sense of joy and start asking themselves, "Is this it?" Rebuilding that sense of self requires deliberately carving out time for the things that remind you who you are outside of your role as a parent.
I came across this today, and it's what sparked these musings: "You become like the 5 people you spend the most time with. Choose carefully."
Which begs the question: How do you choose? And once you have chosen, how do you go about spending more time with these idyllic people without scaring them away?
I would certainly be wary of a woman saying, "Hi, I admire you and want to share qualities X, Y, and Z of yours. Here's my cell, Facebook page, e-mail address, and Twitter handle. Can we start spending every Wednesday afternoon together?!"
Yes, I have become like a child. A toddler, even. Socially awkward. Demanding. Prone to fits and tantrums. Clueless and lost and just hoping someone will come along who's willing to entertain me, spend time with me, understand me for just a minute. Wait, please, one more? Where are you going?
Research finds that over 65% of parents say the demands of parenthood feel isolating, and that the social disconnection mothers feel is not a personal failing but one of the most commonly reported and least discussed features of early motherhood.Am I the only one?
Jessica Cobb is an aspiring novelist who writes about parenting and relationships.
