Friday, August 18, 2006

Balance

I feel the need to move that very depressing last post out from the top of my blog.

So I'm going to talk about *something*. And that *something* is, for lack of ability to think of anything else to talk about right now, how off-kilter the balance of me vs. kid time is.

We hear it a lot; you need some time for yourself, some time away from the kids, blah, blah, blah. The fact is, I damn near NEVER get that. The proof of that is everywhere; Fran says "do you want a recording of this radio program I liked," I say, "is it kid friendly," "no," "well then when would I listen to it?"

If I can't fucking listen to a cd recording of a radio program he liked, what does that mean?

I don't have ANY time without the kids anymore. ANYTHING! I go to sleep when the baby goes to sleep at night, and wake up when one of the kids wakes up in the morning. I slink into the kitchen like some half-made mama prototype ("coffeeeee, must have coffeeeeee"), pour cereal or throw fruit at the kids to get them off my back, and carve myself an hour of "me" time drinking coffee and staring at the computer.

Can I even CALL it me time when I'm still the ONLY person in the house with the mental capacity to realize that scissors + outlet = bad idea?

It isn't that Fran is not GIVING me free time, it is that I have, at this point, found "me" so completely subsumed by my kids that I don't even know what I'd do with it if I asked him for it. And he doesn't see the point either...what would be better than all going out and doing something together? Isn't anything else really a waste of precious time?

Well, no.

But I have lost my balance so badly that I've fallen almost entirely on the kids-are-my-life side of the fence. It is pathetic. OK, so maybe I jump up and down and *LOOK* at the "me" side of the fence every now and then. But nah, I'm not walking that line in a healthy kind of way.

I'm hoping that starting in at school will help me to reclaim the "me" out of this. And that is pretty pathetic too, is it not? That I expect some external thing to force me from the funk?

3 comments:

Unknown said...

You're totally one of my personal heroes for how embedded you are in your family life without resenting it.

Seriously, you embody "mother's love and patience" to me.

Having said that, there isn't a lot of Niki poking out on the edges. I believe that I see you for who you are aside from the kids, but I don't see you exercising those parts of you very often.

Let's break out and meet in the middle! :)

*T* said...

I can't even tell you how many times I have felt that way. And its not that I want to change who I am and my role in my family.....I think I get so caught up in them that I forget who I really am. And I feel that Rome doesn't always try to draw *T* out. Thats the frustrating. I wish that just sometimes he would comment on *T* and not on "mommy".

Don't worry you aren't alone!!

~A~ said...

I took a if you can't beet them join them stance. Everything that is me, is kids, and frankly I don't care, because they are me. So this whole "me time" thing that my peers complain they must have, I really don't care about at this point. All too soon, there will no longer be a me with kids but a me with kids grown and on their own. So give me the scouts and it's drama, give me volunteer jobs at school, give me a bed full of kids that I'm falling off the side because 32 chromosomes of them is me.