It’s Friday night, I only know this because I just saw on fb that my friend got married and I wondered what the heck night it was.
Lots of times weekends don’t mean much to me because my days look a lot alike.
I schedule things around when my husband will be home and when I can feel like what I envisioned it would be like to have a family.
I have always been an idealist, not by choice. But in my head there was a picture of what this would feel like and it has not at all. For years we’ve operated around the unpredictable schedule of television, and sports, various sporting events. So it makes it hard to plan anything.. vacation, holidays, school events etc..
I can’t stand going to school events alone. I used to be a very social person, and I know that I still am because if I’ve seen and talked to people I come alive. But I’m also surprisingly introverted when it comes to getting out there and meeting new people. I cannot stand small talk and since becoming a stay at home Mom conversations usually come to a screeching halt when I say that’s what I do.
So weird because I have so much to talk about, stuff I’d really love to talk about, but you hear crickets after announcing that as your job. Yet when I had my tv job I didn’t love (the producing) the questions were boundless. The questioning came with this form of excitement only someone not in the profession has. I’m sure we all feel this way, you know what the job actually entails and you don’t feel that level of excitement for it that those who are interested in learning do.
Yet I have so much to say about being at home, and I’ve just gotten used to being dismissed.
Anyway that wasn’t what this is about.
We live next to a Country Club and at night they have music and nice activities (We have not gotten a membership yet because well for one, I don’t picture heading down there alone) lol.
Tonight, like so many other nights I sit outside and feel lonely, and can hear the social life I thought I’d have, happening just yards away. It’s a really strange feeling. I analyze everything, and this has stumped me. There are so many nights I think it’s a sign “Get out there, go alone, join the club so you’re not alone”. Other nights… “I’m so glad I’m just here in my quiet house not having to make small talk” meeting new people is painful at best… because I’ve found, myself included.. few people know how to make good small talk, like the talk that gets you somewhere. Bonds form. Friendships form. Realness presides.
Tonight my only comfort in the feeling of missing out is I’m too tired for any of it and they’re playing country music and I haven’t liked country since the 90’s and early 2000’s. I do still love me those songs for sure.
I have always found it interesting how we think what other’s lives look like. Again, myself included. I would pull into this neighborhood (because I did before we moved here) and imagine I’d be down at the club for dinner, golfing on the league, and living it up with a bunch of new girlfriends and couples for when Alan was off work. My kids would take golf lessons, just wonderful things.
I think some picture that’s what it is like for me. I think they’d laugh like they do when they see our backyard is one of the tees on the course and I let them know that’s our yard, but you have to have a membership to golf it and we don’t hahahaha. I don’t know why I find this so funny but I do. Do you golf? Yes I love it! How’s this course? Don’t know, can’t play it yet lol
The wonderful part is, I have a sense of community from a couple neighbors who’ve really been great to me and the kids. Alivia’s best friend lives across the street. When I was little, my best friend used to live a couple houses down from me and that was just plain euphoric as a kid.
There are many nice things in my life, and when you get to know me you’ll get to know I’m not being a complainer, or ungrateful, I’m being honest about my current feelings, which change as well all the time. But to do this authentically I must say it all.
I’m lonely tonight and I can’t say I have tried to do much about that, for all the nights I’ve felt like that. Kids became my number one and I was no good at balancing me time in there. I didn’t intend not to be, it was just like a train that got away so fast I didn’t realize I had been on it for years and been to 100 different countries with the same lonely feeling. I was in survival mode at best when it came to ME.
It made me a really good Mom, I think a good wife. It made me not have energy and memory and time and effort for friends, which used to bring me great joy, but I think at this age we kind of all suffer from that. I can’t be like single Jamie in college and after when I had all the time to devote to that. But sometimes I wish I could for sure, it brought me such joy and I didn’t sit at home at night listening to people “living life” down the street.
I remember when I was having a really rough time in my first job, I was doing my dream job, albeit not at a dream place, or with many dream people lol so it was a tough time and I was 100’s of miles away from my closest friends who always meant the world to me, like gave me life world to me. And I had to lift myself one day by saying “Imagine what your life looks like to someone else”.
And I find this a very useful thing for everyone. When the day in and day out feels boring, or undoable, or tiring… Imagine what your life looks like to someone else.
At that time, to someone else, my life looked like I got my dream job on tv, and I was going for my dreams and the world was wide open to me. My life to someone else was when I was sitting in line at the bank, the lady in the car next to me started screaming my name cheering and saying her kids were gonna die when she told them she saw me and she was jumping and her van was shaking.
She didn’t know I was cashing a $248 paycheck for 2 weeks of work at 12+ hours a day. That I was wondering how I was going to pay for heat. That I missed my friends. That I couldn’t afford good tv so I watched Three’s Company each night to get to sleep and they were reruns of reruns I had seen as a kid lol.
She didn’t know I felt alone. She didn’t know I wondered where I’d go next or if I’d not feel alone anytime soon. She didn’t know anything other than what she thought my life was like. So on that day, and so many since, I use this to help lift my spirits, and you should too. I guarantee if you look at what your life looks like to someone else, you can re-appreciate the good stuff you might be missing.
It doesn’t mean you don’t know how hard things are, but it reminds you of the good things you might have just gotten used to or might’ve been overshadowed by the monotony.
I will tell you I write tonight for all those that think everyone’s doing something fun, everyone on social media has plans, someone’s having a date night when you wish you were, etc etc etc
I am not, I am sitting here wishing I wanted to do anything, but I don’t, and wondering when I will start to feel like I’m truly living. But also knowing full well that if I did have plans tonight, my ass probably would’ve been too tired to do any of it. Ain’t that the conundrum… always.
So whether you’re feeling great about your life, or needed the reminder to, or just plain feel like me or somewhere in between… you are not alone. I am not alone, WE are not alone.
And no one’s life is as it seems to us.
I will leave you with this… which is a blog in itself… when it came to putting me first I was so bad, that now I can’t even believe no one knows how to pick up after themselves (currently getting better at this though, like way better) the syrup top broke the other day, I love my husband because he fixed it…. with his makeshift top. Then left it on the counter. Literally steps away from the pantry. And this stuff happens daily with him and the kids. And then you have to point it out for them to do it. Which I can’t stand anymore either. I used to just do it myself…. parents who stay home… don’t do that to yourself. Trust me, it forms bad habits in others. Now I just ask them if they left it for the maid. Which we don’t have.
So that’s my picture choice for this one… working titles…”Alone with the prospect of cleaning and laundry on yet another night.” Or “Grateful for this life but it’s sticky” Or “My life looks nothing like you think” Or “Unfiltered syrup” or “Sorry if you hung out with me and I partied like Axl Rose, it was my one night out in months, sometimes years with girlfriends, and most nights looked like this” day in, and day out and day in, and day out. And, I “Didn’t know when I’d get the chance to do it again so I tried to take it all in, live it all up”
That’s too long. I think I’ll just call it Sticky.
Edit: So I add the picture when I’m done writing and it always goes to the top automatically. This gave me a good laugh that it placed itself as my signature. I feel you syrup, I do. Maybe you just wanted to be out of that pantry tonight! On the town with the yellow peppers in your flashy top. I feel you.
With Love,
Jay 