This is morning, it's when I spend the most time thinking about what I've given up

Sometimes I feel invisible. Here's just one example: An email was sent out to a group of people asking if someone would step up and do the job of someone who would not be able to. I happened to be online at the time the email came in and I answered right away that I would be more than happy to cover for that person. I hit reply all, so that everyone would know and everyone could relax and not worry about stepping up to help. About a day later (today, in fact) another person on the email list piped in that he would do the job. Next thing I know, a flood of people replied how awesome this guy was to offer to help. I was like--WTF? I'm just so sick of people and the stupid games they play. Why can't anyone act normal? I know that I don't give off an air of liking to be dismissed and yet...there I was being dismissed by these people for no reason. Joe f-ing Blow is so awesome and I am---invisible, I guess.

Then I email my parents to see how they're doing and I filled them in on what's going on here. I also jumped up on my soapbox and did a little political ranting because I am just so incredulous about our precarious state of affairs as far as the economy is concerned (I believe the government will go bankrupt at some point), and the response I get back from them went something like this..."glad to hear you're doing well, life is filled with disappointments, the better you get used to it, the better off you'll be."

Ok. I didn't mention a thing about being disappointed. Hell, I'm ANGRY, not disappointed. I never get the feeling that they know anything about who I really am. For Christmas this past year they sent me a granny bathrobe and a gold pin thing that you see old ladies wear on the outside of their jackets. I am NOT KIDDING. I've never seen anything like it in my life. When I opened the gift, me and the kids started heart-attack laughing over it and I couldn't stop. I laughed so hard that I knocked off a Hallmark angel from the table next to me and the head of the angel broke off. I figured that was a sign that perhaps I shouldn't have been disrespectful of the gifts I was given because I really loved that angel. Immediately I stopped laughing.

Anyway...if I had to assign a theme to my childhood years it would be that "life is filled with disappointments" line. My childhood was great, but what was pounded into my head from an early age was this: be seen and not heard, don't question anything, dream small, aim low, follow the leader, be a good child of God, be good, color inside the lines, keep anger in check, fighting is pointless, live INSIDE the box, give other people control over your life, surrender. It was like living with someone's hands around my throat squeezing the life out of me bit by bit. It's taken me forever to knock those bastard hands off from around my neck. Forever.

I am running on anger now. It's behind everything that I do. It bubbles up just beneath the surface and is the motivating factor that keeps me moving. I want to break things. Then I want to stomp on top of the pile of things that I have broken for good measure. I keep the anger stoked by reminding myself of all the different ways I am asked to deal with asinine people and situations while keeping a straight face as I'm dealing with it all. I have to keep the fire alive or I am liable to give into a paralyzing sadness where I won't want to do anything.

Some of the anger is self directed because I'm finding out late in the game that I have been had by people I've trusted all of my life. I refused to believe evil exists and now I see it everywhere. I am having a crisis of faith--not in God, because He remains a constant, but rather in people, in humanity. It's like I've been sleepwalking my entire existence and have finally woken up and now I am on the war path. My mind is alert, questioning, and above all else, angry.

So I wake up angry, all day long I am angry and I even go to bed angry. It's with me all the time. Sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and it is still there with me in the quiet darkness reminding me that I need to stay vigilant lest I fall back into that mindless, listless sleep again where I can be deceived and not even know it.

There is a reason I am alive right here, right now. There is a plan for me written somewhere and it's important that I wake the f*&k up and stay awake to find out what that plan is. My anger keeps me on the path to searching out my destiny. It my fuel. It keeps me going.

A Good Mother

I've been a parent since I was 23 years old--more years than I've been without kids. In a lot of ways, the time has flown by in a blur, but in other ways, it feels like forever, if that makes any sense. While my friends were out having fun, I was raising children. Having children was the most sobering thing in the world to me. Being carefree was a thing of the past. I stayed serious and determined because I did not know any other way to be. I learned to put myself last and that came easily because all mothers should strive to be selfless, right?

I can see myself from the outside looking in and this is what I see: I see someone who has been waiting patiently for a time when I no longer had to be last. It's like I was willing to be last as long as I knew that there would come a time when it would be over--knowing that made everything bearable. It was a light at the end of a dark tunnel. It was a star I was inches from touching. It was a pot of something splendidly wonderful at the end of a sun-kissed rainbow.

I'm not sure what this says about me. I'm afraid it says that my heart couldn't have been fully into parenting if I was simply waiting for the time when it would end.

I mention this because I have days when I'm not sure I will ever get the chance to have a life outside of being a parent. I was fortunate to be able to stay home with all of my children all of their lives and this is what I know better than anything. While other women were establishing careers which paid them for their hard work, I was home playing Chutes and Ladders with my kids. I was repeating nursery rhymes a million times. I was pushing them on swings and building sand castles. Their lives became my life.

Whenever I start to get excited about gaining part of the old me back again, something happens and the date gets pushed back even further to the future. I get sick of the fact that it appears my life is about living with the decisions other people get to make for me. My oldest child is moving back home again and I think a good mother would be happy about that, but all I can think about is how much more work that will be for me. I think of the extra laundry, the extra meal preparation, the extra person I will have to always consider before thinking about myself because that is how I am wired now. I feel resentful and hateful. I'm convinced that a good mother would not feel this way.

And the hardest part of all, the most confusing thing to me. is that mostly I am happy with my life and I don't know how to reconcile that with the fact that I long to be free of taking care of other people. My children only know me as a mother and I'm sure they never stop to think that maybe there is a part of me I've sacrificed for them that I'd like to reclaim at some point. I don't think they want anything for me except this and I can't say that I blame them since I've made it perfectly clear that it's ok to think of me last.

I wonder, sometimes, how long I will have to wait.

I've always been good at waiting.

Chrildren

I have moments when I think that I will never be more than what I am right now and that thought makes me sad because I feel as though I have the potential to be so much more. I tend to look at my life and count the things I have not done. I tend to feel disappointed about all the things I'll never be. But every once in a while I will know with unfailing certainty that my children are the biggest and best representation of how I have succeeded in my journey here on earth. I think if I don't do anything else, that they will be enough.

The very best parts of me live inside them and I look for those things when I am struggling to feel at peace inside my own head. I've been told a time or two that happiness is not something that can be found outside ourselves but I know this to be false because I find happiness in them all the time. I did not get every part of their growing up right because it's impossible to know everything when you are learning as you go.

I just wanted to say that my life's happiness is tied up in loving them.

I got that part right and knowing that makes all the difference during those times when I'm thinking that I should be so much more.