When I began this blog post, well on a month ago, I wrote that I fear that I worship at the altar of busy. I was busy most of the time. I felt like the girls and I barely ever had a night at home anymore. We had soccer, cheer, and dance going on, which equaled out to practice or a game pretty much every single night and on Sundays. Plus I have a never ending list of meetings that I attend, more often than not in the role of the secretary and half the time as a part of my job (meaning I can't back out of it).
I wrote, "Busy is a good thing most of the time. Busy keeps us moving, keeps us from dwelling on the life that we used to live. Busy keeps us focused on the future."
Busy kept me so busy that this blog post never did get properly written.
Life has slowed down in the past few weeks-soccer ended, cheer ended. Meetings and dance still exist, but everything is at a much more manageable pace. As the days grow darker, it is my instinct to draw inward, to allow our lives to get quieter, less hectic. I am an introvert at heart, and while I have learned that I don't necessarily have to be a hermit, I enjoy spending time at home, and the girls enjoy it too.
This weekend was not my weekend. Meaning that I had 3 days to do something that I wanted to do. Or needed to do. Or felt like doing. That's the crazy thing about shared parenting-for 10 years you just sort of take for granted that you do everything together. And then suddenly you don't. I don't have anyone anymore to spell me while I take a shower. I don't have anyone to help one kid with homework while I help the other. I don't have anyone at the end of a long day to talk to, to watch tv with, to even just sit beside while we read books.
What I have instead is every other weekend entirely to myself. To do whatever I choose. It's daunting. I know what that sounds like-you probably want to say to me, I could think of a hundred things that I could do with an entire weekend to myself. I am not complaining, I promise. But it's not busy-it's not the constant drone that all the other days in my week are, even with our lessened schedule. It's hour upon hour of deciding what I want to do-which is usually reading and sleeping and watching old movies.
Someday I will look back at this time in my life and envy myself, I think. All of this time to marinate in things that I enjoy, in books and movies and yoga and writing. It's a constant battle inside my head-enjoy this time, I keep telling myself, even as I physically ache for my kids. I sometimes can't believe how much I can miss someone. To the very marrow of my bones.
My children need time with their dad. They need time away from me. They need to spread their wings, even if just a little bit. My life-this year of transition-is about learning to really, truly be a grown up for the first time in my life. I am responsible for all of my decisions. I don't have anyone to fall back on, to swoop in and save me from disastrous choices. That is not to say that my parents haven't been helpful-they have helped me so much, I could never, ever repay them. But for the first time in my life, I have to figure out who I want to be. At 37, that is just strange. I have defined myself as a wife and a mother for so long, it is difficult to know who I am outside of those parameters. Much less to like that person and feel like I am at all useful outside of those roles.
It's all most challenging, in ways that I never would have anticipated. But I look back at who I was a year ago and I am so proud of how far I've come. I have screwed up and made mistakes, but I have swallowed my lessons, learned from my faults, and have been met with grace again and again. And yes, I am scared, and unsure, and quite certain that I don't know at all what I am doing. And that, for now, is exactly as it should be.
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