Life Angst

Remember on Sunday when I said I was going to make a list of all my instances of mom guilt?

It started out well. Sunday was the usual guilt: foods I let my kid eat, chores left undone, time spent on the Internet. And Monday I just had one item on the list, again something food-related.

Tuesday, to save time, I just wrote everything.

Yeah.

I skimped on my workout at the gym. For lunch I just ate a bag of cut-up cheese left over from the playdate, and my kid ate a Lunchable. I know, a Lunchable. The horror!

He followed up this episode of great nutrition with a dump-all-his-toys-on-the-floor session. I went up to my bed and read a book for awhile, not in a relaxing, indulgent I-Deserve-This way, but more of an oh-how-am-I-going-to-fill-four-more-boring-hours-oh-I'll-just-read-this-book kind of way. And of course while I was doing this Nathan watched TV. Yay me.

We went to Target. That featured such greatest hits as I spend too much money, when I don't even have a job and what the heck is the point of my life anyway? And Oh crap, I let my kid wander away again in a store.

I made pancakes and an omelet for dinner. My kid ate in front of the TV. Again.

Of course I should focus on the positive. Nobody was starving. My kid has fun toys to play with. At least I made it to the gym at all. And at the end of the day, I read my kid three library books, and we talked about the plot and the letters and he counted stuff and ... yeah, but he's not reading chapter books like So-and-So's kid, and Such-and-Such reads her kid books for an hour, and ... OMG I suck, blah blah blah negative.

And you know how it goes with the negative emotions. They snowball. And soon we're into I have no purpose to my life I'm just a mom with one kid and no job, I'm fat and I'm not a good wife/friend/mother/daughter/human.

Now it's officially A Funk.

I want to say it's just a mom thing. The world doesn't respect me! I have no purpose, by Society's standards. How am I supposed to find fulfillment in wiping my kid's butt and emptying the dishwasher and folding laundry (loads and loads of laundry, OMG the laundry)?

But it isn't just a mom thing. Funks aren't just mom-specific. I could have a totally different life and still struggle to see the point sometimes. That's life. You do what you gotta do, and sometimes what you gotta do is boring and monotonous.

It isn't just a mom thing. It's a human thing. And yes, motherhood is the context in which I'm currently experiencing my own personal funk, and that brings with it certain challenges. For example, please for the love of God can you spend half an hour where you're not 5 inches from my face?

But the bottom line is that I can't change motherhood or society or the monotony of laundry. All I can change is myself.

Except I'm at a loss. Ultimately I know my biggest enemy is that voice in my head that says You will never be good enough. You have to do more and be more and be exhausted and frazzled ... and even then you are not good enough. You are not good enough until you have achieved personal and professional success and you are physically fit and have fulfilling hobbies ... and even if you were to somehow achieve these nebulous goals, whatever that means, you will still not be good enough.

I'd like to just say, "Goodbye, Voice! You are done! Don't let the door hit you on the way out!" But of course it's not that easy.

Maybe this is yet another one of those cases where awareness is the first step to solving a problem. Maybe now I know that I have set the bar so high for myself that I'm afraid to do anything, because I know it won't be enough.

Which brings to, I need to do something. But what? Get a job? Go back to school? Find some new creative outlet? Go on a diet? Do volunteer work?

For now I will just go empty the dishwasher.

I always feel like I should end the serious posts with some pithy epiphany about a silver lining. Something like Oh I know I am so lucky and blessed and blah blah blah we should all have such problems. (See, eloquent, right?) But all of that is becoming so dumb and trite. And while it is, of course, true that these are the Problems of the Problem-less, sometimes the optimistic conclusion kind of undermines the gravity of the rest of the post.

So, this is the end of my post. I have some thinking to do.