I don’t have very good balance. I sprained my ankles a lot as a kid, and now (consequence? cause?) I cannot stand well or long on one foot without falling over. I do just fine with both feet under me, or trading feet rapidly when walking or running. I’m not constantly falling over. But ask me to stand, one foot alone on solid earth, one foot elsewhere? I wobble immediately. Very quickly, if I don’t reach out, I lose my balance and fall over.
I am one foot, standing alone, while my mate is at work. I am attempting to balance — not just to stand, but to juggle, hopping along, alone — parenting by myself for hours and hours at a time (with no one around with whom to trade off, fluid, balance in dynamics) with writing a blog, with sleep, with creativity, with sanity.
I am falling down.
It’s the sleep that does it. Or rather, the lack thereof. Night has become my time to write, my time to talk with other adults (even in a pixelated pseudoworld), my time to read, my time to blog. And as the night wears on, I get tireder, and I get slower, and what should take five minutes takes fifteen, what should take fifteen takes an hour, and I blink grit in my eyes (not out of, just move it around, scratching my weary, screen-fogged, exhaustion-dried cornea, another ache in a thick catalogue of discomforts), and realize it’s 2 am, and shut the computer, and still take two hours to get to bed, to close my eyes, to sleep.
This worked OK when The Man wasn’t working. When — blissful foggy long-ago memory, two weeks back — he was here in the morning, to take the wakeful child, to leave me to sleep, to catch up on in the day what I overspent in the dark. It even worked when I climbed into bed at 1am, shut my eyes at 2am, and had them opened by the rolling, wiggling, waking child at 9:30am. 7.5 hours not so ideal, left me tired during the day, maybe more snappish than acceptable, scooching past bad-ass mom toward bad, ass of a mom. But sane. Sane.
Now. Now. Ah, now. Two nights in a row, up late, articles to write, people to chat. Showers to be had (bloody showers, messy showers, showers I’d rather not have with a child at my feet), fan fic to be read (fluffy fan fic, fantastical fan fic, fiction to fuel my daydreams, fiction to quiet my own incessant narrator). Asleep at 4. Up at 8. Crazy in 48 hours.
I could feel it happen. I could feel the wobble, the building wobble, the wobble that leads to more wobble, to wilder movements. With the detachment of disintegration — as my brain felt/thought a dozen things at once, pulling the ultimate me in a dozen different directions — I watch it happen, and I cringe. And I cry. And I — the crazy I — cackle. And I scream in rage and pain and fear and anger, tears winding convoluted paths down the contorted features of my too-inhabited face.
It’s not fair. It’s not fucking fair. I’m not asking for much. A little time, spent solely on myself. A little intellectual outlet, thoughts beyond “how do I tell him one more time not to kick the cat without kicking something myself?” A little purpose, a little art, a little craft, a little creation of my own, a little something to show for myself. My virtual, actual, I was here, scratched in the screen before me.
Of course, whispers the dark, the dank, the deep inside me, drawing me in, drawing me down. Then have a little more. And a little more still. Go on. A little more. A little more time, a little less sleep. The seduction of a siren’s call, and elsewhere sirens going off in the still-sane quarter of my brain.
But I want to write. I want to fall, to fly. I want to do, something worthy, something meaningful, something I can point to and say that, that is what I do — no, I don’t get paid, no it’s not a “real” job, but it’s real, see me, see me, damnit, not just the mommy-shaped slot you’ve stuffed me in. I want to write, because the words, the fucking beautiful words I can never quite get right, they are back, they are here, and I don’t have to be insane to write, see, they left me before when I started treatment, I thought I’d lost them forever, but they are here, they are here, I can write, until…
Oops.
One foot, alone.
I fall.
Arwyn
In my bathroom hangs a plaque with a picture of a yin yang and the word BALANCE. I can never get it to hang straight. This probably says something deep and meaningful about my life.
Yes.
I want all of you creative mommies to have that time without sacrificing health and sanity.
This post makes me want to babysit for the whole world.
I don’t want children of my own — at least not at this stage in the game, and I’m 38 — primarily because I’m too attached to my creative self, and I know if I had to sacrifice the time I devote to my own selfish pursuits and suddenly turn around and give it all (and then some) to a child, I would be a miserable person. A horrible, withholding, neglectful parent. I believe in good parents, so I choose not to be one. I love children, when I can give them back.
So I viscerally FEEL for women who love to, who NEED to write, paint, etc. and simultaneously are committed to raising decent human beings.
Makes me want to start a think tank on this sort of thing. I was so pleased to see a local indie movie theatre doing a weekly “Movie and a Baby” matinee, when all moms can feel free to bring expressive kiddies of all ages into the theatre without worrying that somebody’s chatter or wet-diaper wailing is ticking off the couple in the third row. There should be more stuff like this — more ways for good mothers to stay connected to the “outside world”, and to the things that light them up.
I so understand the need for some time for yourself. For myself. Pulling it from places I shouldn’t, never quite getting it right.
I hope that you’re able to find some equilibrium eventually, that you’re able to adjust to the new reality of The Man and his job. It’s not much fun, though, that’s for sure.
Oh, honey. I’ve so been there. My very-short-term suggestion is to spend the next week consciously catching up on your sleep. Set a bedtime, relax yourself into it. Care for yourself. Make some playdates during the day, get to the park and let B. run himself silly while you veg on a bench… but take care of yourself. You can have it all, just not all at once.
((hug)) On days like that the mantra I try to say over and over to myself is “balance over time, not necessarily every day”. Can you send the boys on a long date on the weekend so that you can have some alone time?
No, it’s not fair, not fucking fair. You’re not alone.
What about trading babysitting with some friends? You take their kid for the day.. then they take yours. Or maybe you can sign up for a Mom’s Day Out program — most of the local churchs have them around where I live. Good luck, I think you can find a babysitter if you search!
<3 Yes, yes, yes. My circumstances are not the same, but I understand. <3
I am also a time-shifter (hence my comments here, at a very late hour here, physically here at my computer, I mean). I learned this while going to school at night, while working at day, while being a mom, while being a partner, while being a daughter. I don’t know whether to call it an addiction, with all of the dirty downs and glorious highs, or a passion, pure and noble and full of self-sacrifice. And every day I tell myself that I will stop, have a routine, be normal, but somehow I fail.
I think you are strong, I think you balance well, but that you are not just standing on one foot, but juggling pins, scarves, cats (wink), maybe other things all at the same time. It’s hard to tell someone so amazing to stop, but easy to tell her to take care of herself because we need people like her to be around for a long time. Maybe not a cycle of so-called normalcy but a world of taking care of your needs, (some short nights, some long ones) and building support around them.
Thank you all for your kind words. They’ve meant a lot to me over the past few days.
I’m getting more sleep, though somewhat at the cost of blogging. But it will balance, I will find the balance again. I believe that, have to believe that, choose to believe that. And it does mean so much even just knowing there are those out there who care. Thank you.
Hi Arwyn, I just wanted to drop you a line after happening upon your blog from a link from a link from a friend. I very very much sympathise with so many of the sentiments that you express here. I too, have been known to time shift as you do, to grab the chance to read, to think, to – make a difference…
I too have experienced the fustrations linked to crabby mom emotions, and my sometimes descent or is it dissent into what might appear to be bad parenting. Although I have no good answer except to say that it is important to follow the strings that allow your soul to resonate with its life purpose, it is also good to realize however subtley it may be happening, that parenting is also now, one of those life purposes and it may resonate on a lower frequency kind of like elephants hum that they are able to communicate with each other from miles away using a frequency that is not audible by humans…and, for those times that you do stay up late, recognize, too that when your brain goes slower like that that lack of sleep it really is functioning at half capacity – some say lack of sleep is able to cause an almost state of drunkenness – but also what happens I believe… is that you begin to deplete your vitamin Bs… which are very much linked to mood swings and such like… Do the research. If you pull a late night, I would also remember to dose yourself in the morning with that and perhaps some excess calcium and magnesium (also linked to moods?) Which may help get you back on track later… and for the flaxseed – yum factors include the omegas which are healthy for brain functionings also. My prayers are with you that you may find the space and time to be creative at the same time continue on with the parenting flowingly…
PS. Please note that I am not accusing you of “bad parenting” but that this choice of words is sometimes what starts to crawl through my own head when I have pulled a late night and then have moments where lack of patience reigns and I regret it later.
Well, I’ve just been writing a blog post on balance (or lack thereof) — “Balance and how you can’t do it all, at least not all at once” — and I remembered you’d written something pithy about the topic. Glad I was to find it again, and quote from here. Thanks!
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