In which I babble about twitter

I had originally intended to write a really wise post today about how I focus too much on being productive and on everything I do - both with my kids and for myself - has to have an objective, purpose, tangible outcome.

But 1) I don't feel especially wise today and 2) Deciding to write *about* something always seems to be the death knell of that particular idea.  Just me?

So instead I'm just going to babble.  And call it "embracing my own imperfection."

Cool?  Cool.

I've been trying to be quiet on twitter lately.  This is not an all or nothing proposition for me.  I just need some boundaries and some space.  I think, for me, there are a few big dangers of being on twitter all the time.  First, I get needy and desperate to please.  I mean, I do that without twitter, but I can do it faster and more publicly with the extra platform.  Second, I get sucked in and waste all the time I could be using to bake cookies, play with my kids, or lie on the floor and stare at the ceiling.  (What?  It's productive.)  But third, and this is what I've been grappling with maybe the most, is that sometimes I feel like I use up all my words.

Deep down inside, I have a fundamental fear that I don't have anything to say.  That I don't have anything worth saying that anyone would want to hear.  It stops me from talking, it stops me from writing. But somehow, it doesn't usually stop me from tweeting.

Something about the 140 character limit makes me wittier.  Gives me snark that's not really mine.  Makes it so easy to condense my entire day into an extremely charming one-liner.  One that people like.  One that gets me pats on the head, giggles and retweets.

But I shouldn't be condensing.  I should be expanding.  I want to be taking the little things and fleshing them out into big things, seeing the nuances, sharing the meaning that emerges from the tiny details.  Instead I am squeezing it all into a tiny package, albeit a cute one, and then there is nothing left.

When I write in my journal or on my blog, I don't get used up.  I don't run out of things to say.  I get replenished, fed, built up.  I have more words, not less.

I need to say less to say more.  I think.

But I do really love twitter.  You think I'm cute and funny there.  And I'm not ready to give up being cute and funny.

So I guess it's all about balance in the middle ground.  As usual.  Dang it.

Magic from within the chaos

I sit down on the couch, with my feet on the edge of the coffee table, my red marble notebook against my pen.  Slits of morning sunlight come in through the mostly closed blinds, which is good because BG is climbing on the glider to turn off the light so her dolls can sleep.

Baby sister is cruising around the coffee table with a smile on her face, grabbing everything that doesn't belong to her, ignoring the huge pile of baby toys around her feet.  I glance up from my book nervously, waiting for her to grab the toy that her sister is currently playing with.

I manage three more words before the screaming starts.  "No!  No, baby!  You can't play because you're a baby!"

And then my oldest daughter is repeatedly hitting my youngest daughter in the head with a wooden magnetic Melissa and Doug dress up doll.

"BG!" I yell without getting up from the couch.  "STOP!"

Everyone freezes.  The baby turns and looks at me as if to say "What the heck??"  before she starts to wail.

"It's mine, it's mine, it's not fair," trills my three year old, and I wonder for the millionth time how she got the exact wrong message from that Llama Llama book as I set down my pen so I can parent.  Again.

There was a time in my life when I used to write in coffee shops.  When I would bring a notebook and buy a latte and sit at a  table and just write for no reason. No goal.  No project.  Just me and the notebook and the pen, spiraling deeper and deeper into the idea the longer I sat with it.

That was before leaving the house meant pumping, prepping snacks, and coming home to a huge mess, two cranky children, and a crankier husband.

It was longer ago than that really.  It was before there was a kitchen to clean, work lunches to make, papers to grade.  Before there was a husband to snuggle with and watch TV at night.  Before there was anyone else who depended on me, who shared this life with me, who craved my presence.

It's not a time I wish I could go back to.  Really.

But sometimes, as I sip my reheated coffee, turn on Thomas, and try to position my notebook around my sleep nursing baby, I wish there was a way to reclaim that magic from within the chaos.

Linking up with Just Write

This is me showing up

So, lately I've, uh, been a little vulnerable up in here (up in here).

I'm not ashamed of it.  I know that it's courage.  I know that it's a good thing.  But for goodness sake, if I lived in that vulnerable place all the time, I'd lose my mind (up in here).

This is a problem for me.  Because I've decided that writing is Important.  Really important.  And I want to keep showing up and doing the work, even when it doesn't feel good.  I want to keep writing as if I don't care whether anyone is reading.  (Except I do care.  And I'm okay with caring.  So, uh, read it please.)

So.  In the interest of showing up and writing and being real and authentic, and also of keeping us all out of the pit of despair, here's some truth.

I'm having a cup of tea right now.

My baby can sign "more" and "all done," although the latter looks more like she's just raising the roof.

My big girl can spell and type her first name.   I didn't even think I taught her that.

I'm wearing jeans that I bought at Target without trying on, and they're really too big.

I mopped my kitchen floor today.

There are already strawberries on it again.

I brushed my hair and put on BB cream and lip gloss and mascara three days in a row.

Rutgers has a 4-1 record.  What?

Life has been happening and is pretty okay really.

Shhhh mama

It's 9 AM on a Sunday.  I am sitting on my couch with a blanket on my legs, a baby propped up on one shoulder, and my three year old nestled into my other armpit, her elbow occasionally jabbing me in the ribcage.  We are watching SuperWhy.

"Mommy, do I have bones in my wrist?  I have bones in my wrist.  They make me wiggle.  Wiggle wiggle wiggle!"

Wiggle wiggle wiggle.  Jab.

"Shhhh.   Watch the show honey."  Snuggle snuggle snuggle.

We've been up since 6:30.  Thank God for the TV amiright?

Sigh.

The monologue in my head goes kind of like this.

You watch too much TV.  

You should be reading to her, playing with her.  You're breaking her, you're letting her down.

You should be cleaning the house.  You should be folding laundry.  You've been up for 2.5 hours and you haven't accomplished a damn thing.  How can you complain that you don't have enough time and then sit on the couch with the TV on and the computer in your lap for 2.5 hours?

You should be changing the world.  Your friends are changing the world.  You need to do something that matters.  You don't matter.

You should be saying witty and charming and funny things online.  You should be coming up with wise and tender solutions to other people's problems.  You need to make people love you because otherwise, why on earth would they?

You shouldn't be online at all.  You should be able to unplug.  You shouldn't care what anyone thinks of you.  You are shallow and empty and needy and superlame and maybe addicted to the Internet.

The baby starts nestling into my tank top and I left my shirt to let her nurse again.  BG bumps her head against her sister's, and the little one starts giggling and unlatches.  I spray everywhere.

"Mommy, Baby Sister has milk on her head.  Why does she have milk on her head?"

It's 9:20 on a Sunday morning.  I've made milk and fed a person from my body.  I've changed diapers, poured cereal, cleaned up spilled juice.  I've watched Sesame Street and read three Olivia books.  I've put my feet up and been silent and sat with discomfort, both from the self doubt and the elbow in my ribs.

Shh, mama.  Just watch the show.  Snuggle snuggle snuggle.

The problem with

So the problem with pouring your heart out to strangers is that at some point they stop being strangers.  And they become People Who Really Matter.

And then suddenly instead of being really safe, every word you write is terrifying.  Is vulnerable.  Is going straight to the ears of people whose opinions of you are important, who you care about more than you're brave enough to readily admit.

And the day after you send those poor little words out into the world on their own, without being able to follow them and hold their hands and explain them and shield them from judgment, you have to look your friends in their virtual faces.  And you know that they've read it all, and you aren't sure if you're hoping that nothing has changed or that everything has.



Or maybe that's the best thing about it.

I haven't decided yet.

There you are

My dear sweet self,

So.  I've kind of been beating the crap out of you lately.  And I'm sorry about that.

I know you want to hurry up and be better already.  To just be at the end.  I know it's discouraging and frustrating and defeating.  You want to be smart, to be successful, to have fun.

That's valid.  All of it.  You're allowed to want that.

But here's the thing.

None of that is a prerequisite for your worthiness.

You are already okay.  You are already safe.  You are already enough.  In every. Single. Way.

I know you want to find yourself again.  I know that what you're most afraid of, deep down inside, is that you're disappearing.  That the part of you at your very core, the part that makes you special and unique, the part of you that is a real person and not "just a mommy" is gone.  I know that you're afraid that you aren't special, that you - the real and true you - doesn't matter.

It isn't true.

You've been looking for you in the wrong places.  You've been looking for you in the bottom of a bag of yarn, in a glass of wine, in a tube of lipstick, in games and jokes and manicures and playdates.  You've been looking in other people's places.

You just needed to look in the quiet.

Which is a scary place.   I know.

You are still there, where you always were.  And in your own words,

Part of you is still dark, and really always has been, and may always be a little bit, but really that’s okay.  What makes you dark is also deep and gentle and beautiful.  It makes you the person you are.

You saw it there once before.  And you believed it before.

I know you want to be better.  You want to be healed.  You want to be happy.

But the truth is, you need to love the you that is.   You don't need to fit into anyone else's mold of what it means to be okay.

You don't need to find you really because, at the core of you, you've never for a single moment been lost.

You've been so overwhelmed lately by the noise and the quiet.  You've been starving for validation.  You've been dancing and hustling and panicking, desperate to be seen.

I see you now.  I hear you.  You are enough.

With all the love in the world,

Me

Funkity funk

I'm kind of in a pit.

It starts with the darkness creeping in around the edges, with the sense that I can stay in control as long as I can, y'know, stay in control.

Except I can't.  Ever.

I'll have one day where I have a meticulously organized to do list, and I get to everything on it.  Where I have things for the kids to do at every moment of the day, an idea of what to redirect them to every time things start to falter.  My house will be clean.  My dinner will be super healthy.   I'll laugh at myself, but it will be the nervous laugh of someone who knows that things falling apart is the norm, that being successful is the anomaly.   I'll overperform and please and perfect my ass off, believing that if I can just keep it together I can, y'know, keep it together.

And invariably the next day will be a bust.

I will wake up and not want to get dressed.  Not want to get off the couch.  Leave the TV on for too long.  Stare at twitter for too long, waiting for someone to see me and validate me and fix me.  I will sink and spiral and feel totally overwhelmed and defeated and ashamed that I've been defeated, ashamed that I am unable to do anything, unable to do anything because I am ashamed.

I am on the outside of all of this looking in.  I see what I am dong.  I see it and I feel the darkness creeping in and I am pissed about it.  I am afraid.  I feel like a dumbass for doing this.

I feel bored.  I feel discouraged.  I feel tired.  I feel unfulfilled.  I need a break.  I need a hobby.  I need some intellectual stimulation.  I need a win or two.  I need to feel like I'm special, like I matter, like I'm appreciated, like I belong.

I don't want to hear that it's just my brain chemistry, that it's just the disease, that it's not real.  That's an oversimplification and it doesn't really get the facts right.  The truth is, we live, we sense, we interpret, and we process, and there are a million places that can break down before we get to the chemicals.  There are a million places I could be broken or wrong or completely right and that could be making me sad.  So to say "oh, all of that is just depression" reduces my entire world to a disease, and that kind of labeling is very shaming.

But what I know to be true is this.  I feel sad and overwhelmed.  I don't feel like that's right.  I don't believe I have a real reason to be overwhelmed by my very easy life.  I"m mad about this.  Mad at myself.  Mad at the world.  Mad at my imagined perceptions of other people's perceptions of me.

I'm in a pit, in a funk.  And I just want to find my way out.