feelings

This is me on Friday. Feeling better and with my back to normal appetite. Jeff always gets a kick out of me taking pictures of food so when he saw my hamburger he grabbed the camera and claimed my burger, "picture worthy!"

This post has been on my mind all week. Ever since I re-read my, "this is our sick day," post. I have already been back to that post, and deleted the parts I was embarrassed about even writing. The whole post is not  anything to be proud of but I figured, for the record, it is what it is and I can accept that it was a hard day
week and move on.

But the whole topic of feelings has been on my mind for some time. Feelings are so complicating to me and I spend more time than I would like thinking about them and trying to understand them. Trying to justify them. Trying to interpret them. Trying to express them in a manner that is beneficial and healing. Trying to appreciate them for what they are and not undermining the importance of them.

I am a really happy person. I hope that comes across in my blogging. I really love life and all the different aspects of it. I love getting old too, really. I am happy though, sometimes, to the point where I don't allow myself to feel any other way. I am so blessed with so many things that often, even when things are really hard and I naturally feel stress or frustration or sadness, I feel guilty and I make myself be happy. It works every time actually, quite well.

You see I have a short list of go-too's if I am not happy. Go for a run. Excuse myself to my bedroom for a small while and  cry. Make something yummy and take it to a friend. Read. Nap with my kids. Go on a date with my husband.... You get the idea.  So when I don't feel happy it's always like, "ok I feel really crummy right now!" "But wait, I have it so good." "I don't have any right to complain or feel crummy." "I am so selfish and ungrateful!" "I need to cut it out, now!" "Suck it up Andrea!" "I can't even believe I was letting myself feel so down." "What is my problem?" And then I am happy again, instantly.

So this is the problem. Or is it? Maybe it's the solution? I just know that for me I think being happy all the time is exhausting.

So I go on my run or to my room or wherever and I talk myself out of whatever I am feeling and I convince myself that I am happy again and then I can move on with my life for however long until I feel overwhelmed again and it starts all over. In the meantime, everyone in between instance one and instance two think I am this amazingly happy person. Just like I think that same thing of everyone that I encounter on a daily/weekly basis. We all do it, "how you doing?" "Great!" "How are you guys?" "How is the business?" "So good!"... Really?

I think for me I have always been the happy one so I am a bit afraid to know what would happen if someone thought maybe I wasn't in a happy mood. Not a friend, obviously friends let friends have bad days. But an acquaintance or in this instance, someone who just reads my blog occasionally. Like if I dropped my son off at school and his classmate's mom asked how I was doing, like she commonly does, and what if I said, "I am completely drained!" what would she even think? What if she thought I wasn't a good mom or what if, and this is the big one for me, what if she thought I had too many kids and I couldn't handle it! I would never want anyone to think that so I always act happy. Always put together. Always good. Always up for whatever.

I guess it's the label I am afraid of. In the previous sick post I said I didn't want to be THAT MOM and after I re-read it I was mortified that I used that phrase. The truth is, if you are a mom, then you are THAT MOM, by someone else's judgement or more likely by your own judgement. We are all that mom at sometime in our mom hood and who the heck cares. We are all trying our best and sometimes we all just need the benefit of the doubt. I think as mom's and just as women in general we are so hard on ourselves that we just assume others are hard on us too.

This last week I am pushing my double stroller, with 3 of my young kids inside (yeah 3 of them in a double stroller), and we are running because we are going to be late picking up my son from school and I totally try and take a shortcut across the grass, like I often do, and we totally bite it! Like Adelle flies off the  front of the stroller, Gage slides under the bar and onto the grass (nope, he was not strapped in, remember I was running late) and Emmett is still in the stroller but he is on his knees in the grass and the stroller is on top of him. Yep. That was me. I was THAT MOM. That one who was running late. That one who didn't strap in her baby. That one, that one, that one. I was admittedly that one who needed help at that moment soothing my startled kids and leave it to another mom to walk up and help me. I wanted to die. Thankfully no one was hurt. Gage didn't even peep. Adelle was more concerned about her shoes getting dirty and Emmett when I got him out looks at me with his big, beautiful, eyes and says, "that was munny (funny)."

So for me, when my kids are sick, I feel completely defeated. I feel like I have lost the whole healthy battle I try so hard to fight. It's a yucky feeling to feel defeated. It makes me feel tired and like I have failed. I feel like I should just give up and who cares... and that's what I was feeling last week when I posted about being sick. When I feel like that I say things and do things that I normally wouldn't do and then I re-read them and I think, "why didn't I just find something to be happy about and blog about that instead?"

This is all a bit of a jumbled mess but it's an interesting topic.

I met someone at church today for the first time. Never met this woman in my life but she knew my husband when he was young. My husband introduced us and she says to me, "yes I read your blog," and my first thought was, "oh fun so she knows how dang darling my kids are and what fun we have," and then my very quick second thought was, "oh my gosh! I wonder if she read that sick post..." and then the negative thoughts started in.

Happy is a safety net for me I think. It's a wonderful place to be and, don't get me wrong, I am very much there a lot of the time. But then there are the other feelings too and while I try not to dwell on them, they do exist and it's ok. I am sure they have a purpose.

I am going to stop now but I am still thinking on this....