Squalor & Chaos
I want to do this. I truly and deeply want to be a blogger. I just can’t find the time to do this! I know that’s such a cop out. I know that’s my excuse for everything in life- I just can’t find the time. I live in squalor and chaos littered with To-Do Lists that never get completed, if I can even find them the day after they are written.
It use to be that I would spend significant parts of the day journaling in my head, and then crawl into bed with my journal on nights I could be alone and get whatever thoughts I could out on paper before sleep captured me. It’s not an convenient to plop in front of a computer during the close of a day, even less so now that my lap top has died and I can’t even crawl into bed with it.
So many things have happened over the past couple of weeks that would be great fodder for blogging and self-inquiry. Jason has been shipped out for 2 weeks, so I had the perfect opportunity to take the time I needed to post, but did I? No. And why do I take the time to do so now? Only to avoid paying bills, which is what I intended to do tonight… on the 16th of the month.
Yet again, life seems overwhelming. There is so much to do that I cannot even wrap my head around the idea of where to start. I brought home a bag of papers to grade this weekend that did not get touched. I have yet to “finish” laundry. I mean ever. I would like to have just one day in my life in which the laundry baskets- all of them- were empty… just one day. I remember years ago that I use to pull all-nighters to get the house clean before Jason came home from being shipped out. In college, just 4 years ago, I would often not even start my classwork until 10 p.m. and stay up late into the morning hours to finish it. I cannot fathom having either the energy or desire to do that now.
I e-mailed Jason tonight that I was looking forward to having a week off work (Spring Break is next week), but I was not looking forward to being home alone with the boys. He replied along the lines that he didn’t understand why I often felt the need to get away from the boys and that I needed to get over it since we share the same roof. He truly doesn’t understand. I’m not even sure I do. But I do know that he does not have to get ready with them in the morning, drive to and from work with one of them, help with homework for hours in the evening, and have no time separate from them, except the couple of hours carved out for television at night. He has a life separate from us. I don’t. He leaves before anyone is up. Drives an hour to and from work. I realize that has its own “suck factor” and I certainly wouldn’t trade it, but it gives him alone time. I need some. More than the little time I’m awake at night after everyone’s gone to bed. And frankly, at this point, I don’t care if that makes me a bad mother. I welcomed the chest pain that I felt while stressed to day and imagined the vacation a hospital stay would provide. Maybe even having a heart attack would finally FORCE me to make myself a priority. I remember sitting in my class after school one day last week and body just ached from the physical stress of it all. A couple of days last week- or maybe it was just one- I had students telling me how tired I looked.
I am going out of town next Saturday. I am going to leave very early and I am going to stay out very late. I want to find something to do that is more significant than hang out at a mall, but I will take it as it comes for now. Maybe I will shop stores that have no clothes to fit me, and perhaps sneak pictures of outfits I like to create a photo album of the way I wish I could dress. Or perhaps I will be kinder to myself and go into stores with clothes that do fit me and try on countless outfits. Or maybe I will avoid clothes all together. Whatever it is I decide to do, it needs to be a respite before Spring Break so that I am able to use those days off to renew.
