This time of year is just dismal. I stop working. The weather changes. I get fat. I am left to actually spend time in my house and with my kids. Neither of which I'm used to. Both seem to be beyond repair.
Don't get me wrong, I feel like I have a lot of blessings. I can see God's hand in my life helping things along in spite of me. I now have good friends and a great husband and a fun job and a house. But I am still left wondering sometimes, when does my life begin? When will I get to start having many babies and stay at home and walk my kids to school before I sit down with a Sarah Lee pound cake and watch my programs? When will I put my kids down for a nap, wrap up in a blanket in front of a fire nursing a fat baby reading Twilight for an hour while dreamily thinking about being in love with a Vampire all wistfully full of longing and romance? Then make dinner while the kids play Xbox. Put my kids to bed and rub Brett's shoulders while we watch Leno. My biggest concern being which pictures I should use for our Christmas cards, the ones of us in reindeer sweaters or where we're all in white...
I always wanted a normal life. I only wanted a normal life. So I used to lie. A lot. About stupid stuff. I told my friends I was in a dance troupe, that I took violin lessons. I so deeply wished my Mom didn't work for the National Enquirer, General Hospital, A Country Radio Station. I wish she didn't wear cut off short shorts, flirt with men, miss all the landmark occasions in my life. I wished my Dad would step up and call her out. Leave her, tell her no. I wished she didn't spend money we didn't have. Pay her mother's huge phone bills. Have huge phone bills. I vowed I would never be like that.
But I am forced to see how I am just like my mother. I work a job that takes me away from my kids. Makes me miss important events. A job that is kind of embarrassing for my children in it's frivolity. I have a house that has hundreds of incomplete projects. My kids go to school in clothes that are too small for them, or the wrong season. They need haircuts and smell bad. I spend money I don't have and assume irresponsibly that I can just Ebay to make extra cash. Or start selling dresses or make kids clothes or jewelry or open a business or patent a million dollar invention or write a screenplay. My mother is in her mid sixties and says she isn't worried about retirement because she will just write a best selling novel. She can't decide if it should be about her sex life or helping people die or being a lesbian or...
Can I still dream? That after this Saturday when we all finally get sealed in the Temple I will magically fix this house and make a million dollars and get pregnant and live forever in perfect, normal bliss? Or is that just the equivalent of lying about being on a swim team? I think what will really happen is that I will have a great day and be thankful for my family and we will all feel really great. And a great weight will be lifted off my shoulders. And then Bella will have had a long morning and get crabby and need a nap, so Brett and I will kiss everyone we love goodbye and come home. We will then sit on the couch on his and her's laptops while we ignore the overwhelming amount of things around the house we don't have the ability or means to do while I worry endlessly how I will pay my minimum amounts due November through February. And when my real life will begin.
10 comments:
You are so sweet and wonderful.
Honestly? I'm not sure anyone has a normal life . . . but I'm sure I don't have to tell you that!
I can tell you that in just the one evening I spent with you, I was totally inspired to be a better person, a better member of the church, a better listener . . . lots of things.
Congrats on the sealing on Saturday! What an amazing thing!!
I love this, it's so real and honest and how I think a lot of us feel, yet don't want to ever get caught saying out loud.
Tom and I had my daughter sealed to us 6 years ago this January. It was a beautiful experience.
One of the life lessons I've learned and try to draw upon when I'm feeling a melancholy is, I only really need the people who are living inside the walls of my house. They love me, I love them, and we all need each other. Anything or anyone outside these walls that offer something positive to my life is a bonus, and I have many bonuses.
You and Brett have worked so hard, and Saturday is a big, big representation of so much of that. It is really incredible, all that you two have accomplished. You are amazing!
Oh Amelia, I love that you can always say so well what I so often want to say myself. Saturday is going to be so awesome--I'm so excited for you guys. Also, I owe you money, right? Well, the Thrills do anyway, so there's a bill or two...
You need to stop reading blogs. They make you think everyone else's life is SUPER awesome and their kids are cute and always well dressed and they make felt pumpkin placemats for halloween. We still really like you.
dreaming is always allowed and in fact it is a must for the 6th and 7th chakras, (your intuition and your connection to the divine), these are present in your body and in your soul. So connecting to the divine like this Saturday, and connecting that to your internal female knowledge will be amazing. Your dreaming is working through you and your universe and your community. Your dreams will come true because you are in partnership with a heavenly father.--Love your sis
Be glad that you aren't normal.
Celebrate your uniqueness.
I do everyday!
admittedly, as i read this beautiful post, it made me realize all the things i take for granted. the life you described is mine, minus the pound cake ... and school aged kids ... and twilight. you know what i mean. i am fretting over what kind of picture i want for our christmas card. i take the girls on walks to the beach, to the park, to playgroups. i get to stay home. i get to live the most perfect life.
so thank you. and keep dreaming. and keep being you. and somewhere in the middle is where your life will probably end up. a perfectly perfect life befitting of you.
congratulations on saturday! i'm excited for you and brett.
I LOVE YOU. We have talked numerous times about the overwhelmage that is life. I SO wish I was living that dream you described, it sounds fantastic. But I too have smelly kids and a project-filled house and I constantly spend money we don't have. I think it goes without saying that you have everything that matters. You have a family who loves and adores you, you are sealed to them, you have a job, you have a home and you have radical friends. The rest is just icing! If you have the baked goods, you have a perfectly, enviable life! I think you are amazing and I am constantly in awe of how great you you. Now get over here so we can eat cake batter in our pajamas and watch home improvement shows...
My daughter smells funny too. I have her wear tights with her summer clothes because she does not have pants. My girls are the girls at the dance studio that have holes in their ballet tights and the hand me down ballroom shoes. I go to my friends birthday party and find that when I get there my teen has taken my small bills and I don't have enough to pay for my meal.... so I have to pull every penny out of my purse......:) my parents divorced and remarried 3 times. I am still in love with the idea of Jason and I living happily ever after. When he comes to the realization that he really does love me and these last ten years was just a hiccup on our relationship.....I work from home as an 'editor' and just because I am here I am not. My baby has learned to hate the sight of me sitting at my mac.....final cut will be part of her therapy in years to come.....I don't go to church because the thought of seeing the 'happy couples' set me into a spin of depression..... I know what you are saying...i understand I understand I understand.......We are normal. :)everyone has a great story....and someday we will write an amazing screenplay and be rich rich rich...... You are amazing and I was just thinking the other day that I was so lucky to be your neighbor.
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