The days are a series of tasks to complete, or objectives to meet. Maybe this isn’t such a bad way to live. Except… I often feel as if I am hurtling through the day, the week, the month. Things happen to cause change, but I don’t realize, until long after our lives have been altered, how different things are than they were even a year ago. We are so consumed with our daily flight through time that I’ve stopped taking real note of things.
A year ago I was desperately trying to get myself through a terrible break-up, living in a shabby apartment, waking each day with a fresh dose of anxiety about how I was going to get my son to school on time and myself to work, and ending the days thinking about how lonely I felt and wondering if I was a good enough mother to raise my children well. I tried hard to not think too much about my financial troubles, the reasons I was recovering from that failed relationship or the sadness I felt over what I viewed as my stymied potential. Yes, this was all very self-absorbed. I would have been better served by thinking through strategies to lift mental blocks about my goals, learning from the failed relationship so that the next one would be healthier, and most importantly, identifying my children’s needs more clearly so that I would better meet them.
I first found Shep on May 24, and we met on May 26. That was when everything truly changed. Shep came along and rescued all four of us. He helped me with the kids by pointing out that there were things they needed that I could easily give them, and then he showed me how to do it. He took some of the load of caring for the kids off my shoulders so that I had more time and energy to think through, and then bring about, my short and long term goals.
I have to admit that I wasn’t sure about him at first. He’s right when he tells me now that he came into this relationship emotionally available, though I did not. I had a history of making myself unavailable in relationships - maybe it was a defense tactic, but more often than not I seemed to be the one hurt most at the end. So, for a while at the start, I kept Shep at arm’s length, and then bit by bit I slowly allowed myself to fall in love with him in a real, life altering way. Now, 11 months since we met, I realize that under his influence, I am in many ways a different person and am certainly living a life that is only slightly recognizable to the one I had before I met him.
Still, we hurtle through the days, weeks, months. I do have time to stop and re-charge. When I am on my bike, after the kids are in bed - but I live on a rigid schedule and that can wear a Grand Canyon sized hole in anyone’s psyche after a while.
A few weeks ago my sister sent an email to my father in which she told him that she might come home for a long weekend at the beginning of May - unless, however, I would be willing to take the kids to go see her in San Francisco over the summer break. I wrote to her and said that I would love to take the kids to SF and would the week of the 4th of July be okay? She said it would and I have spent the last two or three weeks obsessively searching for affordable fares, and thinking through the resources I have for this trip. Not just the money, but the time. Not just the time, but the patience to handle the needs of three small children on a three and a half hour flight each way. I decided that the four of us could really use the time with my sister, and I bought the tickets in a burst of decisiveness.
About six hours after I purchased the airfare, I realized that I had forgotten about a hugely important project at work that will be due during the time I am away. The thought of having to explain this on Monday is causing me more anxiety than the thought of keeping my three year old from crying and/or screaming for the three and a half hours we’ll be on the plane to and from SF.
I don’t really have a point. I need a break, except that I screwed up and scheduled it at one of the worst possible times. I love Shep, and not just because he’s made all of our lives better. I love him because he plays a wicked game of pool, makes me laugh, drives me crazy, adores 30 Rock and hockey and riding his Trek hybrid, devotes his time and energy to a family that is not his own and yet, should be, and does things to me in bed that make me so insane that we have to shut all the windows and doors beforehand so that the neighbors won’t hear it.
Oh, and Shep and I are still broken up. We just seem to work better this way.
This entry was posted
on Saturday, April 28th, 2007 at 9:53 pm and is filed under Just Mommy, Person Now Known as Former Contributer.
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