Everyday struggles: Make yourself a priority

I have multiple posts started that remain in draft form. The topics range from society thinking parents should love all sorts of things that I just don't love all the time to how sucky my Friday was to a giant rant about the crap said about the Mets' second baseman Daniel Murphy taking three whole days of paternity leave. O.M.G. Three days!? How dare he!

And that's where those posts are going to die. Right there in the draft folder. Because I was passionate in that moment and now, even though I still care about those topics, I've simply lost steam where they are concerned. I may revisit the love/hate post, but right now it's at a standstill.

Instead, I asked my friend Kristin what she thought about the topics and what one I should go with for the next post, and aside from loving the idea of a post on Murphy's paternity leave she gave me this:

I'd love to see more on the marriage versus mommy perspective, because I feel like that all the time...the mommy versus working girl versus wife struggle is another that sends me over the edge from exhaustion and guilt, too. At the end of the day, I miss being social with friends...we haven't gone out in a long time and I wish I had a hobby I could balance with my life and hang out with people outside of work.

 Sorry to throw our conversation out there for the masses, Love, but sometimes you give me something that is way too good not to share, so I'm going to talk about the struggle.

It's the everyday struggle to not forget yourself - we're mothers/fathers, husbands/wives, coworkers and for a lot of people trying to juggle all of that there's no time to just be. Be yourself, be alone, be content. If there isn't a sport or activity going on, there's laundry and dishes needing your attention, there's another paper to grade or another page to edit or another system study to look over. Me Time is a thing of the past for a lot of us and we've lost ourselves in the hustle and bustle of married life and parenting.

Who were you before all of this?

I was adventurous and independent and fun loving. I would spend way too many hours at the office and then too many beers at the Legion. I was careless and reckless and stubborn. I'm still stubborn. But I'm in need of adventures and so co-dependent it's alarming and I still love to have fun, but instead of drinking my friends under a table, I'm ecstatic to go meet up for a play date at the mall because fun is also watching my kids have fun. I spend too many hours in front of the computer because it seems a majority of my social life lives here and I never have enough beer to dull the ache of missing all those things that have changed. I'm careful to a fault now and reckless is staying up past 10 most nights. I take less risks, unless you count totally blowing this week's grocery budget because I just couldn't leave that top round roast at Wegmans ... it was reduced price for quick sale. Man, I'm a fucking rebel to spend $25 on a cut of meat that will make four or more meals for my family. Just call me James Dean.

 I try really hard not to miss the old me. The me who was skinny and flirty and had no responsibility other than getting a paper out every night. But that's all I did. I worked. My recklessness was writing a story I was scared to death to publish because it would definitely piss someone off. My independence was because I didn't want someone to hold my hand, or hold me back.

I can look back at all of that - the pre-marriage and pre-babies me - and at the very least know I learned something about myself. I'm capable. I can do all that. I can be successful. Success like that now would come at a very steep price. I can't juggle all I used to do with all I do now. I have trouble keeping up with laundry and cleaning and I'm here most days in the thick of the suburban jungle wading through the muck and the mire of parenthood, toddler years, pre-K prep, wifery and ... I lose myself.

Me Time.

How do we find time for us? How, when so many people or things depend on us to do all that stuff too, do we take a few hours to go out to dinner with friends sans children or hit up a movie with our significant other (again, sans kids) or take time to read quietly?

The juggling is the struggling in this life, the life we're living now and when you throw so many balls up in the air at once you're bound to drop a few. Or more than a few. And if you're like me, sometimes you toss them all up in the air at once, step back and let them all fall. Unlike Humpty Dumpty, the pieces can all be glued back together, and you're stronger for it. Anyone who read my depression piece is aware of that. I fall apart and I scream and I cry and I hate and I pick up every last piece and glue me back together ... and remember myself in the process. That's what it is. A process.

Last Friday I needed a break. I needed the Me Time like I needed air and water and wine. I was pissy and moody and just plain tired of how shitty the day had been. I brushed my teeth at 7:30 p.m. along with the kids. I gave them kisses. I walked down the hall to my bedroom, walked in, shut the door and climbed into bed with a book. A real book with pages and the smell of ink and no "low battery" notification popping up in the middle of a chapter. I didn't intentionally make my husband put the kids to bed alone, but that's what happened. I'm a better mom for doing that.

I lost myself between the pages.

I needed to get lost in someone else's story.

This is the struggle in the suburban jungle. The fight to be better than everyone else isn't worth the things we lose in the process because the biggest thing we lose is who we are at the base level. We need others but we need ourselves more because once you lose that, once you forget who you are, there's nothing left to give the ones who want a piece of you and you can't be a social creature if you don't recharge your batteries once in a while.

Is this why so many women are in need of a spa day or anything other than grocery shopping alone? Is this why men want to go watch the game at a bar with their buddies or hit the links and golf a round with a close friend? I'm not even being sarcastic. I've wanted for so long to go do things like get my hair cut all by myself because I remember how I used to feel when I did that before marriage and kids. I haven't gone to get my hair cut professionally since I was pregnant with Josie (or maybe she was an infant? I might have been pregnant with Charlotte. That two years just sort of blended together in my head.). I've pretty much cut my own hair for four years now, and I don't even pamper myself leading up to the hack'n'whack - I take a shower, wash my hair, brush it, flip upside down and cut. I could at least buy myself dinner after a quickie like that, but no, I'm usually running out of the bathroom playing "What was that crashing noise!?" as I go.

My husband is an introvert, big time - in college he usually would go to the dining hall alone to eat; I couldn't leave my room for food unless I had at least one friend with me because eating alone was such a foreign concept to me - so he doesn't see why others have a need for time alone after being home all day doing the housewife/childrearer jobs or why some people want to be with someone but without responsibility (i.e. go out and have fun without worrying, or sit and watch a movie without having to get up to wipe a child's tush). He just doesn't see the problem that we face when we can't separate ourselves from the roles we're stuck in. I'm the mom and the wife, but I can't always just be the wife or just be the mom. I'm the mom and the writer, but while I've sat at the kitchen table writing this I've been interrupted to help someone brush her teeth and get dressed, make multiple peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, search for a pacifier and put dinner in the slow cooker. I rarely get the chance to just be a writer. Unless the kids are in a really deep sleep, I'm never just the wife. I don't go out with friends. I'm never just someone's friend because all my other selves are part of that since my friends have kids and it's never just the adults doing something. The kids are always there. ALWAYS.

I adore my children, but there are times I want to remember who I am. That's where the guilt and exhaustion rear their ugly heads the most. When I take time for me, I feel such remorse for not taking that time with my kids because, as everyone likes to remind the parents of young children, they are only little once. Taking time for myself helps to alleviate that exhaustion, but that's the double-edged sword of it all: guilt cuts as deep as the exhaustion. It's the same when we wear our spouse hat. Then put the spouse hat on with the parent hat and the coworker hat and it's a combustible situation because of that guilt/exhaustion/who am I cycle.

Nuclear. Meltdown.

It doesn't matter which self we're trying to be, if we attempt to be one or all of them at once, we feel guilty because we aren't able to juggle it all. And then we're guilty because we've spent so much time being exhausted by trying to be too many people all at once that there is nothing left.

All the same, though, let yourself get exhausted once in a while. Step back and let the balls fall down around you. Pick up your purse, walk out the door and go get your hair done. Make plans with coworkers for a happy hour once a week to blow off steam. Give up bath time and bedtime one night a week to go grab coffee with a friend or sit in a quiet corner of a cafe to work on the novel you've started writing but never have time to work on. Remember who you are, because you're not doing your children, your husband, your wife, your coworkers any good by being too exhausted to give a shit anymore. It only makes you a liability to yourself and those around you.

Make time. Make Me Time. Make yourself a priority once in a while.

The struggle isn't going away, but figuring out how to step back once in a while and worry about yourself is the most important thing some of us can do. Last Friday it was the most important thing for me to do. And in a week I'm going to need a break like that again. It might come before then. It might take longer.

When it comes time, though, I plan to know what to do, even if it is just throwing my running shoes on and leaving the house for an hour (to hide in the car and write part of that novel using my phone as a computer).