Friday, May 11, 2012

Rock the Boat

It's been a looooong time since I've posted. Let's face it, blogging just stopped being important since I started to write in a real journal awhile back. But I haven't and things are simply just busy and life is happening and time is sliding by without me noticing.

But tonight I'm full of emotions and just need some feedback, maybe to know that I'm a normal 20-something mom/woman and I haven't lost it.

I've been cleaning house like crazy the since yesterday and then my mother-in-law took both my son and daughter over night for a gift to me for Mother's Day. Needless to say, rather than turn in early to catch up on sleep since we're at a battle of wills with the baby concerning any type of sleep, I was buzzing from cleaning endorphins. Then when I finally lied sown for the night shortly after midnight, I couldn't sleep. All I could think about was the fact that the kids' doors were open and through the doors their curtains were open because I didn't close anything since they didn't go to their beds to sleep. I just kept thinking about how they were both away from me.

Now, to make things a little bit more clear, my husband and I started to watch reruns of The Wonder Years on our Netflix account and while I was overhauling the kitchen yesterday, I listened/watched to about 5 HOURS of the show. Today was much of the same thing, I overhauled the house, folded, sorted, ironed, and put away laundry to the voice of Daniel Stern's ever familiar voice portraying the adult Kevin Arnold. Now if you've ever watched this show as an adult, the things you thought were super funny as a kid, well they are still ever so funny, but the deeper meanings that are played upon actually make sense being well out of high school and college. Which brings me to what I've been thinking about.

Personal Pressure.

Many of my friends are pregnant again, most of them with their third children. And somehow, I feel like I'm missing out. I feel as though I should be on that baby wagon heading east, or west, or whatever. I feel like I NEED to be having another baby.

But I don't want one.

I had a scare last month when my period was 10 days late, which has NEVER happened since my period regulated after I got off birth control before I had my son nearly 4 years ago. My period happened ON TIME. And intimate moments just weren't happening due to the invasion of a daughter who woke up her brother when she came into our room, or vice versa. The fact I was late didn't add up. So I took 3 tests (like always~ two you could have a false positive, but 3 can knock either  false positive of negative out) and just as I had accepted the fact that I was going to be a mom of 3 (after days, hours, milliseconds of anger and hosility toward this possible unborn child) I checked and they were all negative.

I was happy, right? I mean, I'd been angry and up in arms about what to do with another child when I had SO much to do to be ready to accept and be ready for another child into my heart, arms, home, and family. But the fact was, was I was crushed. Devastated. I had already *just* decided and let the glimmer of excitement (and dreading the physically if carrying another baby without losing weight first) of another baby slip in under the radar undetected and the not-quite-real loss of it all hit me quite literally like a tether ball square in the chest.

The fact is, I'm not ready. I'm having many unexplained health problems that I need to get worked out (don't get me started), my kids are both going through their own power struggles as they learn and I try to teach them their independence (not to mention a million other things) and they're just about all I can handle. Strike that. They are ALL I can handle. So why is it that I feel so lost? Why do I feel like I'm being left behind? I don't want another child. And I feel a wall in my emotions about it. There simply is No room No time in my life now for another child.

But when I think about 3 weeks ago and the lost-that-never-was, I feel ever so sad and teary-eyed for something I'm not sure how to put into words and it's hard to quell the emotion that rises in my chest and the lump that forms in my throat because of it. I lost something. But I kept something as well. And with both, I'm clearly depressed and confused. Actually, I don't even remember what I was going to ask in the first place.

I guess it's just been so long and I've been so busy holding on so tightly to so many deep emotions that I just needed a place to unload. It's a hard uphill road doing it by yourself, keeping ahold of those heavyset emotions, and right now it's simply too much. I'm sad and tired and weighed down. So I'm leaving these things here. Please be kind if you choose to respond. I have so much I'm feeling and dealing with already and I'm likely to tip and spill if you rock the boat too much.