And then this weekend we had the relations and had a wonderful time. And then Sunday I went to yoga and sweated again next to 40 other people and boy am I out of shape, my shoulders still hurt from all that downward dogging. (that just sounds so dirty, doesn't it?)
But all in all, I am really jonesing for the world to stop spinning for just a few moments.
Lately I've found myself fantasizing a lot about a life which isn't so hectic, one that allows me time to sit and reflect and to write and take care of my family and myself. One where I can fit in work and solitude and the things I want to do. The latest romance novel is about a woman who runs a b&b on the isolated coast of western Ireland and I find myself envying her the isolation.
And lately I've also been feeling like a big failure. I am surrounded by people who have energy for family and work and home and extra curricular activities, and I wonder what the heck is wrong with me, that all I want to do is curl up in my home and get some peace for a few hours. I think there's something physically wrong, that I am tired and sick and weak, because the idea of something mentally wrong is harder to take. Not that the physical sickness is easier, mind you, I make myself sick with worry about that too.
In the end I have come to realize that this is the first -- first -- time in my life I have ever not had regular time alone. For five months until my office roomie left, my alone time was about an hour a week -- naptime on Wednesdays. And I have been used to having up to two hours of alone time, minimum, per day. Some times more like eight hours. From the earliest time I can remember, I would have hours a day to myself.
And for someone who has scored 100 on tests of introversion, it's just not enough. I am perpetually exhausted and anxious because I have no mental regeneration time, no time to sit and reflect and be alone. I'm writing this now in the evening, The Man is working late and The Boy is sitting beside me, playing with my necklace, lying on my lap.
Other people I know are not like this. They feel regenerated from being with people, or they don't need as much time alone to feel whole. I feel like a failure because I cannot do all the things I want to do -- meals with friends, time with my child -- because my psyche is begging that I pay attention, that I finally after two and a half years of dedicating myself to a child who has some pretty demanding needs, pay attention to what I need.
This is the hardest part of parenting, for me. I hate how it drains me, I even hate how much of a better mom I am after we've had a babysitter. I want to be someone different. I want to be an extrovert.
But I don't think that there's anything I can do to change this. I think in the end I just have to accept it. I've made lots of jokes here about being an introvert, and while I had embraced that part of my person I never thought that it was as necessary to me as breathing.
Turns out? I guess so.
I'm trying really hard these days to accept this about myself, but it feels like it's standing in my way of being the person I want to be. Although I'm not sure it is; perhaps what I need to accept instead is that I'm not living the life that I'm meant to. And I'm working out what that all means -- should I be working in a different place, doing something different? Do I need to just try harder to get out of this alone time mindset? Is that even possible? I have a feeling that there is a life out there that I should be living, that I am not living right now, and that, were I living it ... I'd be much less stressed out, and much more blissed out.
There's a passage within The Life of Pi that I love, that talks about fear, about the way around fear is to "shine the light of words upon it". There's some fear about this for me, about what it means for my career and my parenting, and so maybe just talking about it a little will make it feel more personable, a companion in my living room instead of a tiger lurking in the corner.
2 comments:
You know, it took me several years of parenting to even realize that this was my problem. Time alone, as much of it as I could want, was always plentiful -- because, for me, even sitting on the subway immersed in a book is regenerative alone-time -- and it was ages before I finally understood that that time actually mattered. That without it I develop Serious Problems.
I had never identified myself as an introvert, you see. I like parties, I love to talk ::rolls eyes::, I have lots of friends (granted, these days a lot of them are virtual, but never mind), I enjoy spending time with people. How could I be an introvert? I would think to myself. Introverts are weird loner-y people, right?
But the difference between me and, say, my mother -- who is one of the most extraverted extroverts I know -- is that after a fun, enjoyable, successful party I'm tired. Not, or not just, physically tired from the cleaning and cooking and stuff, or mentally tired from the planning, but emotionally exhausted from the being with people. I want -- I need -- to go somewhere quiet and curl up with a book (and maybe a cat). Or at least to be alone with the washing-up.
And also that, given a genuine, guilt-free choice between going with my parents to the Translators' Association BBQ (which of course the choice isn't: "But I don't know any of these people. It'll be weird." "Don't worry, you'll like them! They're very interesting, and friendly. It'll be fun." "... Fine, then.") and staying home, by myself, with the same book I was reading on the plane all the way from Toronto to Calgary, I would choose the book. (And given a choice between a cocktail party with total strangers and sporking myself to death, I'd seriously consider reaching for the spork.)
But in real life, I went to the BBQ. Partly because my mom was so sure I would have a good time (I did, for about 15 minutes right before we left; the rest of the evening was deeply uncomfortable and weird), and partly because we had come all that way to visit my parents and it seemed churlish to insist on staying home. But mostly because one of my deep, dark, desperate fears is that I'm not like my mom -- my mom, whom everyone loves, who gives fabulous parties and whom you can always count on to be there for you and who can feed twenty people at the drop of a hat without blinking -- and instead am like my curmudgeonly, misanthropic, profoundly uncongenial father. Everything about myself that reminds me of him freaks me out ... and, you know? I think that's probably overkill, but it's really hard to overcome it.
Not to hijack your blog post, or anything ... :P
I, too, am an introvert in a big, big way. I never understood that about myself until I lived alone, away from my extroverted mom. I think us introverts are way cooler, further along the path to enlightenment because we not only take the time to ponder the universe, we crave that quiet alone-time to do it.
Wish I had some advice, but maybe you should take some more alone time for yourself? I bet you would feel much better, more energized, more the person you want to be/know you are.
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