As women, I think we feel this pressure to “have it it all” or at least have what we do have all together. We want to be content and competent and loved and valued. These are all good things. They are not, however, easy to achieve. We talk about the elusive work life balance. We talk about “having it all, but maybe just not all at the same time.” What does that mean even?
Here is what I have all of:
All the exhaustion:
I am tired ALL THE TIME. I can’t even remember a time when I wasn’t tired. It was before having kids for sure. I thought once they slept through the night, I’d be rested again, but nope. And bonus, everyone keeps telling me that once menopause starts I’m going to start having insomnia. Seriously? What a genetic load of garbage. So basically, by the time I’m actually able to relax again with my kids out of the house, my body will actually reject sleep. I can’t not tell you how I really feel about this because I’m a good Christian girl.
All the confliction:
If I am at work, I am thinking about what I should be doing for my husband or kids. When I am at home, I am thinking about what I should be doing for work. I am always thinking about how I should be serving more (in my church, my community, my world). I am thinking about how the time and expense of my writing “career” is taking away time and financial resources from my family. I am confident that I am missing out on my kids lives in ways that will irreparably damage them. I don’t even use Pintrest, because I already have enough guilt in my life. Thank you, unrealistic expectations.
All the feels:
I occasionally see this phrase and think this describes me exactly. I feel things so deeply. I cry just about everyday. Not in a bad way, but in the maybe I’m not completely emotionally stable way. I tear up reading novels to my students in class. Novels I have ready half a dozen times by now. I get choked up during movies I am only half paying attention to. I think about my son at college and I get choked up thinking about the man he has become. I cry in grief, in joy, in pretty much any context. I wear my heart on my sleeve, and I feel all the feels.
All the chaos:
I dreamed of having a lovely family life where my children were polite and calm and we took walks in the woods and always helped each other. We’d be those people at all those town fairs or the ones taking day trips on the weekends. I should have known better. I came from an eccentric, crazy (read: AWESOME) home, and about the only thing I was able to bring to my new home was the crazy part. We are more of a “watch movies in our PJs” than “stroll through a quaint Christmas village” family . We are more loud voices and bickering than homemade Valentines and family service projects. Our separate lives mingle together more like a Jackson Pollack than Seurat.
This is my family <or life>. I found it all on my own.
It’s little, and broken, but still good. Yeah – still good.
– Stitch from Lilo and Stitch
So, no, I don’t really have it all. I don’t want it all. I’m still trying to juggle the plates I’m already spinning. I’d rather drop a few of the less important ones, than keep going at this pace. I want less rather than more. I want less commitments, less stress, less frantic, less inches in my waistline. (But more doughnuts!)
