Yesterday I drove an hour to catch up with two friends that I haven’t seen in a long time. It was a date that had to keep getting rescheduled due to life commitments, busy schedules and children.
No time was a good time. No day a good day. We all had to jump through hoops to make it happen, but somehow we did it and I’m so glad we persisted as I walked away with my cup feeling filled to the brim and perhaps even overflowing.
After initial hugs and squeezes were given the first words we exchanged were that life is a shit show and a beautiful mess all at the same time. We laughed. We got it. It’s a daily gong show of survival just getting by on a hope and a prayer and sometimes an alcoholic beverage or a cup of patience.
It’s not easy and these two women were just the dose I needed to feel grounded again.
They are my people. The raw, the real, the honest. The ones I don’t see for months on end and yet pick up the conversations as if we had just chatted an hour ago.
We share perhaps more than we should but, they are a breath of real in a world of fake.
They are the friends everyone needs.
The grounders. They come with no competition or one-upping. They don’t judge and they share… oh do we share!
We spill it out and then move on and I find it funny that yesterday I think we all needed each other more than we knew. Funny how sometimes that happens.
You see last night at my house it was an actual shit show.
No joke.
My husband and I have been battling over dumb things, feeling disconnected because we have no time to ourselves. My house is a mess which drives me batty as I don’t run well in clutter, but our schedules have been so overwhelming that a ‘clean and tidy’ is low on the list.
As the laundry piled up, the kids rooms looked like ‘Toys R Us’ with a stomach-ache and my work to-do list toppled over onto two pages… I felt about ready to explode.
And if I couldn’t feel any more overwhelmed, the actual shit show came when the dog woke in the middle of the night to the howls of coyotes in the back ravine, causing a game of musical beds with all of us ending up in a different room than we started in. The dog, who was brought upstairs in hopes of calming his barking, slept in my daughter’s room rather than his crate, which was a terrible idea as he then decided to literally shit all over the carpet, which he had never done before.
Shit show was an understatement and did I mention this happened in the middle of the night?!
As if the bags under my eyes needed any more weight!
Yes, admittedly that just tipped my scales.
This mom was not a happy one this morning. This mom was ready to pop.
This mom felt overwhelmed, tired, exhausted, burnt out.
In need of a break and yet saying that out loud made me feel guilty.
Because moms are expected to do it all right?
From the moment that first child wakes up or that alarm goes off we hit the ground running.
Get breakfast.
Make the lunches.
Get the kids dressed and ready.
Pack the school bags.
Sign some school trip form.
Diffuse an argument between the kids.
Make the bed.
Tidy up.
And then somewhere in that one hour of what my friend referred to as a “beautiful mess” I am expected to work out, shower, look presentable and work all day… well six hours, cause they need to be picked up at school, then fed and carted around to their after school activities, after eating a hot meal that I have had to prepare early because the mom guilt of eating just a sandwich before four hours of dance is real… and …. Okay I’m rambling… I could go on and on and even as I type this I feel my blood pressure rising, but it’s a lot.
This parenthood is a lot.
We do it all and then some. More than our parents did and I’m not sure if we are doing it to keep up, or show off or what the heck we are doing,..but after yesterday’s meet-up I know that I am not alone in these feelings of overwhelm.
“One day you will miss this time”, my mom says.
“Enjoy the chaos now as one day it will be gone”, another friend reminds me as she is now an empty nester with kids moved out and gone.
But… right now, I have a really hard time embracing this.
I just need 5 minutes.
Five quiet minutes to have a bowel movement in privacy as my friend yesterday proclaimed.
Five quiet minutes to sit still and sip a tea.
Five quiet minutes to appreciate all that I have and how lucky I am.
Cause in this daily shit show, it’s so easy to forget.
As children we were never as scheduled as our children are today.
We weren’t on cell phones and therefore not having to post and brag about every single activity we have done to make others feel inadequate. Not feeling pressured to keep up or do it all.
Life was simpler. Stores were closed on Sundays.
Families sat for meals together, went for drives in the countryside.
I feel at times that I’m on a hamster wheel running in circles trying to keep up.
And I’m not alone, my friends yesterday reminded me of that.
We all shared.
And in that sharing we all sighed a deep breath and laughed in the reality that we all call our lives now.
Life is not filtered. It’s not always beautiful, sometimes it’s a mess… and some days like mine was yesterday, it’s a literal shit show.
But that is life.
It’s up, it’s down. It’s backwards and complicated.
And some days it just is what it is. Life.
I was brought back to reality by a mom in my daughter’s dance class sharing that her infant son had to undergo heart surgery and they had been living in the hospital for three weeks, with this tiny baby on a feeding tube and a mom exhausted by the back and forth of living in the hospital and trying to run her life.
It was a sucker punch of reality… it hit me hard. The piles of laundry, messy rooms, work stress and scrubbing dog shit out of carpets in the middle of the night are nothing compared to that.
I am lucky.
It’s easy to forget.
We are busy because I have kids that CAN do things. That WANT to do things and that are healthy enough to do things.
That right there is a blessing in itself.
As we run and run we forget to breathe, so I am heeding my own advice to pause and look up.
To change my perspective and embrace the beautiful mess that we call life.
I thank my people for reminding me of that.
It could always be worse.
So if you can’t think of any other motivational words when you are stuck at the bottom, as I found myself yesterday, just remember those five… it could always be worse.
It’s a mess and it’s beautiful. It can be both.
So find your real and raw and honest and know that you aren’t alone.
We’ve Got This!
@half_full_most_days