Saturday, Dec. 21, 2013 11:49 p.m.

-

I don't really write much in here lately. It's not that I don't have anything to say, but that I have so many things I'd like to say, that I'm not able to say anything. It's just too much too think about.

I've been thinking a lot the past few days about honesty and dishonesty, and what's really the best way to live. Is it truly worth it to be a good person, even though it is the often the unscrupulous who are the ones who get ahead in life?

Is survival, at any cost, the most important thing of all? Is cheating and stealing from others forgivable as long as the one doing the stealing feels that they are justified in their actions?

While pregnancy, on one hand, makes me feel important, on the other hand, it also makes me feel confined. I'd say I'm looking forward to the end of pregnancy and having the baby in my arms, but actually, I know that the newborn days are the hardest part of all. That's actually what I'm least looking forward to.

I'm looking forward to much father into the future, when the baby is sleeping through the night and when I'm no longer nursing and when I have my life back somewhat. That's what I'm looking forward to.

And I'm also just hoping that we somehow have money again then and can occasionally afford a babysitter so that K and I can spend time together, as a couple, on a semi-regular basis.

Honestly, this whole 2nd child thing mostly just stresses me out right now. I try not to think about things too much so that I become overwhelmed, and just trust/hope that our lives will be better by the time the baby comes...but I'm over halfway through with the pregnancy now and I have no guarantee that anything different will happen in this second half than what happened in the first half.

It is interesting though, that I've recently realized that I no longer feel like I'm just biding time until this phase of our lives is over. It's as though I've come to the acceptance that this is out lives now. I mean, I still have "hope", but "hope" feels like such a vague term, like a faraway dream, and no longer something that I look forward to that I believe will happen eventually.

I don't really think that I'm depressed though. I've just accepted this position in life.

This is not to say that I don't long for more though. I always long for more. Buried deep down is still that overwhelming passion to be someone. Someday. For things to work out for us. Someday. To feel freedom and individually again.

Someday.

Marriage really changes after awhile of being married. I'll never give up on K. I'll never divorce him. I'll always love him and want to do right by him. But it's been a rough year or so, and I'd be lying if I said that we were really happy and in-love at the moment. Well, we're not unhappy either. K would be annoyed and hurt if he heard me say we're not happy, because he would understand a different meaning by saying that than I meant. But I think it's a fair assessment. We love each other, and we are not giving up on marriage. BUT, things ARE different now and I think it's ok to admit that too.

I always imagined myself, as the mother, as the ultimate decision maker when it came to parenting decisions. I told K this a long time ago, that this was my plan. I always assumed that my husband could be the prime decision marker for other household decisions, but that parenting choices would be under my final control. After all, I'm the one who grew up the oldest in a large family and took care of my own sisters as well as did tons of babysitting of others. I'm the one who was a camp counselor for 7 years and who is a credentialed teacher. I, by far, have the most experience with kids and this is something I wanted.

It has not worked out this way. And now that C is 2 and starting to become a real kid and we have to make real choices on how to handle her behavior - this lack of control is becoming very obvious to me. But what else am I supposed to do?? I have to rely on K to watch C during large parts of the workweek while I'm working. And I can't just jump in and tell K how I want something to be handled with C while I'm in the middle of teaching an online class. I have to let him do his thing. Because I don't have the ability to do what I want I'd really like, and really want to do, as C's mother.

But I have to work. I don't have a choice.

Maybe I never really knew this before, but I guess I've always longed to be a stay-at-home-mom when I had kids. And now that I will be having a second kid soon, and having a family and actually raising kids is becoming a very real thing...I really really do long to stay at home with my kids and function as the primary caregiver to them.

I thought about this today, and I think I can sum much of how I feel about everything right now is this: lack of control.

I have no control of anything. Which translates to no independence or individually in anything. I'm not allowed to wear shoes in my own house. I am not allowed to leave the house very often, due to working from home, having only one car, and having a young child. K and I have to coordinate our schedules constantly. If one of us takes the car to do something, then the other is stuck at home. If one of us wants to do something, then the other of us has responsibility of the toddler. Since we can't afford a babysitter for anything, either we go out of the house as a family, or not at all. K and I do nothing alone together anymore.

Except watch movies or tv at night after C goes to bed.

Really, that's out lives together. Hours of sitting on the couch in front of the tv a night. Sure I'm usually on my laptop simultaneously, and K's on his cell phone, but that's all we do. Then we fall asleep in front of the tv, stumble into bed, and then wait for C to wake us up in the morning and we start another day of the exact same thing.

K still loves movies, like he always has. I feel slightly bad that I don't enjoy them like he does. We can't share whatever magical experience he seems to have in watching them. I don't get it. Movies are just a distraction from real life. But otherwise, they're really pointless. A lot of movies actually make me feel worse inside after I watch them. I know that movies are supposed to be an escape and way or us to pretend to vicariously live through fictional characters...but now I seem to watch these movies and instead feel sadness at the characters - at least everyone in the movies seem to do something with their lives or progress forward. It makes me sad to watch things on screen that I know I have no chance of getting myself. I don't want to be reminded again of things I can't have.

I don't get a sense of alternate reality when I watch movies, I get a sense of disappointment that my personal life can't compare.

I have no joy in the industry that K works in any more. Everything is too complicated, too politically correct, too sneaky, too drawn out, too unsteady. Nothing good comes out of it. Nothing wows me.

I support K and stand by K, but my heart's not in his career anymore.

previous | next