Health & Well Being/Parenting & Family

Busted Lady Business

Posted on by noemikjames / 7 Comments

We interrupt your regularly scheduled program to talk about… my busted lady business!

Oh yes, you read that, right. This is a post about my vag.

I don’t know how common vaginal or uterine complications are after vaginal delivers but my guess is I’m not the only one who has been dealing with busted lady business after pushing a couple of human beings out of her lady bits. Unfortunately, most women aren’t talking much about this stuff because, well VAGINAS, but I think prolonged vaginal/uterine issues should be a part of the vaginal births dialogue. Maybe if women knew the potential consequences they would be better prepared to manage them.

My daughter was big (nine pounds) and I received a third degree tear when she was born. The resulting scar tissue made sex uncomfortable and sometimes painful. I went to five pelvic floor therapy appointments–and did some work at home–that were somewhat helpful but the discomfort continued.

My son was also big but I guess I was stretched out because I only received a one degree tear despite the fact that he emerged with his elbow up by his head. When we finally resumed sex after my son’s birth, the pain seemed to be gone. I was thrilled! I assumed that the second birth had stretched the scar tissue enough to alleviate the discomfort I was feeling.

Then we started using condoms and the pain came back. I assumed the latex was irritating my scar tissue (despite the mountains of lube I use every time we get busy) and that once we settled on a more permanent form of birth control (and could ditch the condoms) the pain would subside. Unfortunately that was not the case, and eventually I realized that I had developed a fissure (read: open wound) on my perineum, right where my scar tissue had been.

My OB-GYN suggested the fissure was yeast-related and it made sense since it got really bad when we were battling thrush. I took yet another round of Diflucan (my third at that point) and treated it topically, but it never really went away. Around this time I met with my pelvic floor therapist again and she told me I should stop using Al.ways In.finity pads–which I LOVE because I can’t use tampons (more on this later)–because they irritate some women’s skin and might be causing, or at the very least exacerbating, the issue.

I was really bummed to abandon my Al.ways In.finity pads even before I tried the alternative–pure cotton pads the size of pillows. The minute I pulled out one of those gigantic cotton pads I knew I needed another way to manage my periods–I couldn’t wear some pants with these pads, they were so bulky! Tampons hadn’t been very comfortable (the pressed against my perineum) ever since I had my birth (foreshadowing here) so I ordered a Lunette Cup (think Diva Cup, but another brand) with a coupon I had from BlogHer.

It came and I tried it out and was disheartened to find that it fell out pretty much immediately, no matter how many different ways I inserted it. In my obsession to make the menstrual cup work, I fell down the rabbit hole of reviews, discussion threads and posts offering advice. I ended up in an email exchange with a Lunette customer service representative (who was amazing and responded to my emails at all hours of the weekend, despite my assurance that she could wait until Monday to respond). At the end of our exchange she asked if I had a low cervix. I wasn’t sure what was considered “low” and she said if your cervix is only a finger’s length from your vaginal opening during menstruation (it lowers when you have your period), it’s considered low.

Well, that explained why my menstrual cup was falling out: My cervix was less than a knuckle’s length away from my vaginal opening! When I told her this she promptly suggested I contact my OB.

I did and just recently had my appointment, where I was not surprised to be diagnosed with pelvic organ prolapse. It seems I have a combination of two situations, my bladder is falling down onto the vaginal wall  (cystocele) and my cervix is somewhat prolapsed. Of course I had been consulting Dr. Google about how to treat a low cervix and the most common treatment of a prolapsed uterus is a hysterectomy. Obviously I wasn’t going to do that, and I was expecting my OB to tell me I was just shit out of luck, and that I just couldn’t wear a tampon or menstrual cup and that sex and some exercises would sometimes be uncomfortable because of the prolapse. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that there is a relatively simple surgery available to “repair the structural integrity” of my vagina (my phrasing). Evidently they build a “hammock” (my doctor’s phrasing) to hold up the ceiling of the vagina and that should help with many of the issues I’m having.

I’m seeing an OB that specializes in this sort of thing on Wednesday. I hope we’re on the same page about surgery because I’d really like to be able to wear tampons or a menstrual cup now that I have to wear pure cotton pads and I believe some of the discomfort I feel when I have sex and do vigorous exercise is also related to my pelvic organ prolapse. I also wonder if my constant low-level hemorrhoids could also be related.

So that is the saga of my busted vag. Obviously it’s not severely damaged, but it is has been an ongoing issue that I would love to resolve so I can move on with my life. I spend one week a month having my period and am trying to have sex once a week, plus I work out 2-3 times a week, so I am dealing with some version of this busted vag business on a pretty regular basis.

On a related note, my OB stressed that I shouldn’t consider the surgery if I might have another child and I was surprised by the conviction (and relief) in my voice when I assured her we were done having children. I’m so ready to get the inside of my body back in shape so that I can leave the negative physical effects of having children behind me.

Have you dealt with any lingering physical issues after having babies? Have they gotten better over time?

Health & Well Being/Minimalism

A League of its Own

Posted on by noemikjames / 14 Comments

I get the feeling sometimes that when I write about how messy my house is, the people reading nod their heads and think, yeah, my house is messy too.

They think they get it. They think they understand.

Except they don’t.

No really. They don’t really understand. The messy they visualize and the messy I’m talking about… they are completely different. The messy I’m talking about is in a league of its own.

Sure, I’m not a hoarder. Sure, there people with dirtier, messier houses than mine. But honestly, I doubt that anyone reading this blog really understands how gross my house gets. How gross my house is 99% of the time.

When I say that you can’t see the floor in the master bedroom, I mean, quite literally that YOU CANNOT SEE THE FLOOR. Not one part of it. Anywhere. It is covered in shit: clothes, boxes, paper, receipts, more clothes, clean clothes, dirty clothes, more clothes, socks, underwear, random articles that don’t have a home, books, pictures, hangers, the list goes on, maybe forever. That is how much shit there is on my bedroom floor. And under that shit is dust and sand and cat hair and layers of sediment. It has probably been swept three times in the last two years. Okay, maybe five. But honestly, it could be three. When I get into bed I have to clean my feet because they are black from walking around my house, and covered in sand and other debris from walking around my room.

When I say that my bathroom is disgusting I mean just that. It’s dirty to the point of unsanitary. You would be appalled to know that all four of us use it on a daily basis. And yes, we only have one bathroom, so we’re all using it all the time.

The shower gets so gross that recently it took FOUR Mr. Clean magic erasers just to get the scum off. I didn’t realize that my shower doors weren’t actually frosted, it was just a uniform layer of filth caking the glass. There is mold permanently growing around and in our sink basin. The toilet wreaks.

My car recently started smelling so bad that I was finally forced to clean it out. In excavating through the junk I found an entire lunch that my MIL had given to us to feed to Isa just rotting under the seat. Who knows how long it had been there. I drove it with the smell for over a week before I finally broke down and looked for what was so rank. An entire week of driving a car that smelled like a dozen shitty diapers.

So when I write a post like yesterday’s and say that I think the way my house looks says something about who I am, I’m not talking about what it means if my toilet isn’t sparkling or if there are a few books and toys and shoes in the back seat. I’m talking about living with a level of mess and filth that the people reading this probably can’t actually fathom. I’m talking about grossness on an incomprehensible scale.

When I say that I NEED to this, to life a minimalist life, I’m not being facetious. I really do NEED this. We can’t continue to live this way.

And when I say I’m ashamed of the what I’ve let my house become, it’s not about a few dishes in the sink or missing a weekly toilet scrubbing, it’s about actually wondering if CPS could take my kids based on how messy our house sometimes gets.

That is the kind of disorder I am talking about.

You may wonder why I am writing this. Why would I share this with the world?

I need to be honest about this. I need to put my truth out into the world or I will never own it, and things will never change. In AA the first step is to admit that you have a problem and are powerless to stop it. This is my admission: I can’t manage my life. Eventually, my stuff will consume me. I need to admit that to myself more than to anyone else, but I can’t know and accept it as truth, not really, if I don’t put it out there.

I would also love to think that, in admitting this terrible secret, I’m letting someone else know that they are not alone. That when I say my house looks like a disaster area it actually does, and I’m not referring to a few toys are strewn about an otherwise pristine living space. That I get it, and I don’t judge. But honestly, I don’t really believe that anyone reading this is living in a home that resembles my own. I don’t believe that anyone reading this could stand to live in the conditions I endure.

This thing I’m doing, this attempting to live a minimalist life, it’s not about cleaning my bathroom more. It’s about having a bathroom that I might actually be able to clean. It’s not about vacuuming my car’s interior once a month, but getting the level of crap down to a point where my daughter’s legs can hang in front of her car seat. I have so much work to do, but I really hope to get it all done.

Because when I say that my house is dirty, and someone nods their head in understanding, I want to think that we’re imaging the same level of disarray, instead of accepting that what she considers messy I would probably consider clean. I want to think that I’m more like everyone else.

Health & Well Being/Identity/Life/Minimalism

“The way you do anything is the way you do everything”

Posted on by noemikjames / 13 Comments

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIt’s only been a week since I decided to change the way I live and already I feel a weight has been lifted.

I’ve been moving through my house, getting rid of stuff. This preliminary run-through is the easiest–there is a huge amount of stuff in my house that so obviously needs to go. I’m not quite sure why I needed to commit to getting rid of a significant portion of what I own to dump these first things–it’s so clear that they are simply not needed. It’s almost like I required permission to give them away. My old mindset required I keep them–they are functional and I might need them some day… But now that I know I’ll be getting rid of a huge portion of my current belongings, these things seem glaringly unnecessary.

It’s amazing what a change of perspective can do.

After only the first few days of this first phase of simplifying my life (the “Culling of the Crap,” as I call it) my house–and my mind–feel different: Lighter. Calmer. I am more committed than ever to drastically overhauling my home, my attitude, and my life.

I read an article not long ago that really stuck with me. It began with the phrase: The way we do anything is the way we do everything. Basically the idea is, “the habits we practice in one area of life, become our life.” You can’t let you house fall into disarray and have the rest of your life together.

At first I bristled at this idea. My house may be a shambles but my life certainly isn’t. But the more I read, the more I realized that she was right. My house is a disaster area, and my life kind of is too. This part of the article really spoke to me:

Perhaps take a peek at the area behind your car seat. Is it filled with mail, receipts and left over lunch bags? When we drive around with a bunch of stuff that we know needs to be dealt with, it drains our energy. When we open the car door and immediately groan, it’s going to affect our mood. You see, if you’re not dealing with little things—opening mail, filing receipts, or even throwing away daily garbage, chances are you’re not dealing with other little things in your life like returning calls promptly, volleying back emails, and following up on your to-do lists.

Yes, as I kept reading, I recognized myself, and the truth in the author’s words. It made me feel ashamed, but it also planted the seed that brought about this drastic change. I don’t want to be this person. I don’t want to live my life this way.

I want to change. Desperately.

It’s going to be hard. So, so hard. I’m going to back slide. I’m going to make mistakes. But I will continue moving forward and one day, when I read an article about how the state of my bathroom reflects who I am, I’ll be proud instead of ashamed.

So I’m moving forward and every day I get rid of something else. These are still the easy decisions, and basically if I even consider getting rid of something right now I just do it, because this is the first pass and if I think it might need to go now, it will definitely be going later.

I just need to keep reminding myself that this is about simplifying MY LIFE, not just my possessions. This change is going to affect every aspect of my daily existence. It’s going to be such a positive change. So when I start to feel panicky about how I’m going to decide what should stay and what should go, I remind myself that I’ll figure it out.

And it will be so, so worth it.

Identity/Writing

Why I’m Here

Posted on by noemikjames / 1 Comment

Why am I here? In this space? Writing under this name?

{And where did I get that name anyhow?}

It seems I didn’t make these things clear. And I want to, as much for myself as for anybody else.

I’m sure I didn’t explain it very well, because I didn’t really know myself. I might not know even now, but the more I try to write about it, the clearer it will become.

Even now as I try to pin it down, the shape of it alludes me. I see glimpses flashing in and out of my periphery, the shadows of a caged bird in attempted flight. It’s all quick movements and bright colors, disconnected ideas that fail to create a cohesive whole.

I guess I’ll describe what I can and hopefully, the picture will present itself.

At some point along the way–probably when I was officially done having children–my old space started to represent the past. Those years of TTC and pregnancy loss and family building were a bridge between the young woman I was before and the person I am now. As I journeyed away from that transition, I realized how long and far it took me from my old self.

I hardly recognize the woman who wrote the first posts on my original blog. I have changed so much, not just in the conceiving of my children but in the conception of myself as their mother. The years after my daughter was born were just as transformative–maybe even more so–than the struggle to have her. Trying to conceive, pregnancy loss, prenatal anxiety, and the struggles of new motherhood broke me down to my foundation. And then they built me back up.

I did a lot of growing in that space, and I made a fair number of mistakes. Some of them considerable. I exposed myself there in ways I wouldn’t be comfortable with today. While I recognize and understand the motivations of my past self, they don’t apply to the woman I am now.

It felt right to step away from that space–and my old self–and start fresh somewhere else. I needed a definitive action that symbolized a new beginning. Starting this space was a promise to myself to honor all the sacrifices my past self made so I could be the person I am today.

My old space was the past. This space is the present. And the future.

This space is the declaration of a new intention: to live more mindfully of myself and others, to approach my decisions with a clearer purpose, and to recognize the motivation behind each and every action.

This space is my promise to myself, to live with integrity and intention.

I want my writing here to reflect that. I want to understand the purpose of a post before I begin writing it. I want a clear vision of what I’m trying to accomplish so I can better recognize if I succeeded in the attempt. I want my writing to benefit others, and not just myself.

Those ranty, venty posts? They are for me to blow off steam. And they affect others, but not in positive ways. When I use this blog to regulate the pressure building inside me, I release my negativity into the world. I don’t want to do that. I want my contribution to be positive. I want my words to meaningful.

That doesn’t mean I only want to share the good stuff. I personally believe there is a lot more value in sharing the difficult, challenging aspects of life. But I think sharing our struggles can be valuable or not so valuable, depending on how it’s executed. I can share that I feel overwhelmed in a way that is productive for both myself and others, it’s just a lot harder to do than to write a stress-vent about how hard things feel right now.

Writing with a clear intention is challenging. It requires a lot more thought beforehand and considerably more editing afterward. It requires I know what I want to say before I say it. You’d be surprised how frequently I used to write without even knowing what I wanted to say. Now I do that writing in a personal space, not in public for everyone to see. I come here when I’m sure of my message, and how I want to convey it.

That is my final reason for opening my new space: I want a place where this kind of intentional writing–and only this kind of intentional writing–can be found. I want this space to be a collection of posts that I’m proud of, posts that I’m willing and eager to share. I may not use my real name, but I want to feel secure in the knowledge that someone I know may someday read my writing. If I ever contribute to other sites I want to feel confident listing this URL for readers to click back to. This space is my attempt at creating a more professional writing identity. I may not be there yet, but I hope to some day.

This space is a promise to myself, a commitment to my dream of becoming a better writer.

Why then am I not writing under my real name? One of my prerequisites for posting here is that I’d be comfortable with any adult I know reading my work. Comfortable might not be the most accurate word… there are things I write about here that would be awkward for colleagues or acquaintances to read, but I want to be okay with awkward, if the subject matter is compelling enough. What I’m absolutely not comfortable with is my students reading in this space. I just don’t trust middle school students with this kind of personal information, and the reality is, if I write under my real name, sooner or later my students will find it.

So I write under a pseudonym. It’s not ideal but it’s necessary and it’s a decision I considered for a considerable amount of time.

The name I chose is special to me. Noemi and James are the names I had decided on for our hypothetical third child. James was my grandfather’s name and it would have been my name if I were a boy. It has a lot of significance in my family. Noemi is a name I fell in love with when we were trying to name our second child, who was a boy. The K is for my actual first name, a little piece of reality at the center of my fabricated identity. I have fallen in love with this name, though I understand it’s hard for others to embrace it.

So that is why I am writing here, and what I’m trying to accomplish. I hope this post makes it more clear, because I do want people to understand my intention. After all, that is the whole point.

Why do you write in your space? Do you better understand now why I’m writing in mine?

Minimalism

The Making of an Amateur Minimalist

Posted on by noemikjames / 12 Comments

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

So that post I wrote last week? That was my rock bottom, at least as far as the state of my house is concerned. I just can’t handle it anymore. Something needs to change. Something big.

Little changes aren’t going to work. These issues are entrenched. They are symptoms of much larger issues in my life, of my ways of coping and my habits of consumption. No mere system of staying organized is going to help me; change needs to happen at my very core.

I started reading a book about becoming a minimalist. That word wasn’t in the title–in fact it seemed like a simple little book that I didn’t really expect would offer any new or helpful ideas–so I was surprised to find it was almost entirely about living a minimalist life. At first I didn’t think much of it–how could I ever become a minimalist?–but the more I read the more I realized that all the reasons I thought I couldn’t make these changes were the exact reasons why I had to.

I need to own less stuff–significantly less stuff.  I need to fundamentally change the way I buy things. I need to alter my understanding of what is necessary. I need to drastically simplify my life.

So I’m changing my attitude, and in time I will change my actions. I know this is going to be hard–sometimes it will feel impossible–but I also know that I have to do this. If I don’t there is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY anything will change. I will continue buying too much stuff. I will continue spending too much money. I will continue owning more than I need and more than I can manage.

The amazing thing is, adopting this attitude will address two of my biggest issues: money and clutter. If I can do this, my life will be 100 times better. I’m sure of that.

It’s going to take a long time to get there, but I truly believe that I’ll arrive at my destination because I know, deep in my soul, that I have to. Every time I have to make a difficult decision about what to keep and what to get rid of, I will remind myself of what keeping stuff ultimately does. Every time I think not buying something will make me unhappy, I will remind myself of how unhappy buying stuff eventually makes me.

Of course I’m starting small. A major overhaul like this is going to take a looooong time. It will most likely take years for me to completely change my habits. But I need to start somewhere, and I have a plan for my first steps. For the next six months I will do the following:

1) Plan my consumption. I will not buy anything at all during the month (except consumables that are REPLACING something we already have and use and have run out of). I will write everything I want to buy down, along with its price and where I can buy it. I will rank prospective purchases in order of importance/desire and at the end of the month, I’ll go over them all with my husband. He is already a minimalist at heart (I didn’t realize this until now!) and he will help me decide what we really need. He will also help me determine what will go out if a new item comes in. (See below.)

2) One in, one out. I will be instituting a one in, one out policy. This applies to ALL THE THINGS. It’s straight forward enough when it comes to clothes (if you buy a shirt, you get rid of a shirt) but I’m hoping to do it for other stuff as well, like kitchen utensils and furniture.

3) Culling the crap. For the next six to twelve months we’re going to need to seriously reduce the stuff we already own. We’ll be getting rid of WAY MORE than the stuff that is leaving to make room for something new. We need to bring our total number of belongs down considerably, in ways that it makes me uncomfortable to think about. Already I’ve marked a LOT of my kids toys for donation, stuff I never would have considered letting go of before I made the decision to change our lifestyle. It’s going to be hard to get rid of some of this stuff, but I know I have to. Keeping it around is making me way more unhappy than saying goodbye to it will.

{One concept in the book is the Power of One, the idea being you don’t need more than one of any specific thing. The author suggests trying to live with just one sweatshirt for a week to see if you can get rid of all your other sweatshirts. I thought he was fucking crazy. I have something like seven sweatshirts and I will be hard pressed to get rid of all but one of them–at least right now–but I know I can start small. When I talked to my husband he suggested maybe just one sweatshirt for each of the hooks on the sweatshirt rack (there are currently 2-3 sweatshirts on each hook). That seems doable and I’ll be going through them tomorrow. I’m sure in a year I’ll be able to live with even fewer sweatshirts, and some day the idea of having two might be preposterous. But I’m certainly not there yet.}

4. Immerse myself in a minimalist lifestyle. I’m going to need to keep drinking the Kool Aid to stay on track with this stuff so I’m going to search out blogs and books about a minimalist lifestyle. If you have a recommendation, please let me know.

I’m sure there are those of you who think I’m crazy, or that this is just a fad I’ll eventually abandon. A small part of me worries about that too, but honestly, I really do think I am ready to make this change. I hit my rock bottom. I have come to understand, with absolutely clarity, that I have to change. I recognize that the way I’m living does not make me happy and I really believe that these changes will improve my quality of life. I’ve tried everything else and nothing has worked. I have to do this.

I will do this.

{I plan on writing more about this journey as I hit pot holes and celebrate small victories. I’ll be using the badge above to mark these posts and curating them on a separate page. I hope in the end I’ll have a record of my transformation for others and for myself.}

Have you ever considered drastically reducing your stuff? What do you think would be most challenging about doing so?

Identity/Writing

Where I am

Posted on by noemikjames / 6 Comments

I have not been participating in this community in the ways that I want to. I want to be commenting more. I want my presence on friends’ blogs to be felt, and I know it’s not when my words are missing. The blog reader/commenter I am currently is not the blog reader/commenter I want to be, and I’m brainstorming ways to  make sure I comment every day–it’s a top priority for me right now.

I am sorry have been absent. I am still reading, and my words will return soon.

I was a little disappointed in myself for my last two posts. I have wanted to avoid that kind of ranty, venty type of writing in this space and I’m trying hard not to publish when I’m feeling that kind of overwhelmed desperation. I’m still let myself write about those kinds of things, but I’m convincing myself to do it in a journal, to keep my words away from this space until they can be more productive. I don’t know quite what came over me when I put up those posts.

Actually I do know. It was panic. The state of my house, and my life, has been weighing on me and I was struck but how I am perpetually in this place of frantically treading water in a terrifyingly strong current. It is no way to lives one’s life, and yet I’m not sure how to swim out of the current. I guess I keep expecting the water to slow, or even eddy in a quiet pool, but clearly that is never going to happen and I am recognizing that I have a responsibility to myself and my family to change directions and swim with all my might to the shore, or else I’ll eventually get pulled under.

So I sat down and I wrote. Like I used to. And the words came, fast and easy. And it felt good to get it out there.

But it didn’t necessarily feel good the next morning, when I realized my words were actually, out there.

Writing here has been hard–harder than I expected it to be. I struggle with what topics to tackle and how to approach them. I struggle with finding the right words.

I might not ever be the writer I want to become. I read articles that are so well written, that make me think and want to comment, that change my perspective or feel validate and understood and I think, I am not sure I could ever write that well. It’s an uncertainty I’m not accustomed to, not because I assume I can do whatever I want as well as I hope to do it, but because I have never pushed myself to achieve such a nebulous goal.

The big things I’ve tried to accomplish had definitive endings: I knew when I had arrived at my destination. I trained for a marathon and then I ran one. I applied for a graduate school program and earned my Masters in Spanish Language Education (while working full time, managing the emotional turmoil of TTC and an ectopic pregnancy and then having my first child). Those goals were clear and I had physical proof that I met them. But this goal of becoming a better writer, it’s ambiguous and undefined. It’s subjective.

It’s a matter of opinion.

And whose opinion matters most?

It probably should be mine, but human beings are social creatures and we all know it’s more complicated than that. I’m just not sure. I can’t really imagine that I’ll ever feel like I’m as good a writer as I want to be, or as a good a writer as I feel I need to be to start using my words in more ways than this one.

Moving to this blog and the personal change it represented for me has been so much more complicated than I expected. I don’t regret doing it, because I know something had to change, but I’m disappointed that it hasn’t been a more positive experience for me. (And please know this is all internal, and has nothing to do with anyone’s participation here. You have all been amazing and I am thankful that you read and comment each and every day).

I miss writing more. I miss the words flowing like they used to. I miss processing life through my words. I miss writing just to write.

I miss knowing who I am in my own space.

Heck, I miss knowing who I am, period.

Change is hard. It will get better. I’m try not to get disillusioned and most of the time I succeed.

Most of the time.

Health & Well Being/Identity/Parenting & Family

Inevitable Failure

Posted on by noemikjames / 31 Comments

I have been entertaining a terrifying thought of late: What if I can’t be the person, or parent, I expect myself to be? What if it is simply, and inexorably, not possible?

As I read the comments on my last post, I was struck by the certainty of their message: You should be able to do this. You can make this work.

It was in being struck by their certainty that I learned I am paralyzed by my own uncertainty. I didn’t realize it when I wrote that post, but I have finally arrived at a place of being categorically unsure of my own ability, as a mother, as a teacher, as a spouse, as a woman. Up until this point I always assumed that if I tried hard enough I could make it work (whatever “it” might be). But now, with two children, I’m grasping the startling truth: I may actually be incapable of some things. And they are really important, non-negotiable type things.

The prospect is terrifying.

Now that I’ve had this realization, I’m kind of shocked it took me so long to recognize–or  accept–the truth. I have an entire lifetime of empirical data supporting this hypothesis but since it wasn’t the hypothesis I was trying to prove, I never perceived the patterns. I was so sure that I was the master of my own destiny, that I could mold myself into whatever I felt–or society dictated–I should be. The fact that I hadn’t actually managed to do those things with any regularity–or at all–didn’t seem to register. I was so busy trying to mold my findings to fit my preconceived beliefs that I never registered the data that was completely contradictory.

My house has always been messy. I use that word, because it’s socially acceptable, but it doesn’t even begin to describe the reality. My house is a disaster area. Truly. It looks like something horrible has happened. My kitchen is disgusting. Really. That is the appropriate word. My entryway, that people see when they come over to pick up there kids, is a shit hole. It’s covered in sand and dirt and cat hair and trash. The state of my house is abysmal.

I have always believed that if I just tried hard enough I could keep my house clean, or at least presentable. I figured that if I cared enough, I could manage it. I assumed I just hadn’t found adequate inspiration. My mother is impeccably neat; there is no way her daughter could be incapable of at least a modicum of cleanliness.

But I have been this way for 16 years–my entire adult life. My living space has always been a disaster area. I have NEVER been able to keep it neat or clean. My classroom is similarly disorganized. I have tried numerous systems and none of them has ever worked, not even for a short period of time. I have literally NEVER been able to keep my room or classroom or apartment or house clean. NOT EVER.

And now I really want to be able to do it. I want to invite people over, or at the very least have my daughter’s friends over for play dates, which means their parents have to come to pick them up. I don’t even need my house to be presentable most of the time, I just want to be able to make it presentable when I need it that way. At this point I can’t even manage that. I thought I could just let go of society’s expectations and have people over anyway, but even when they are just in the entryway helping their kids with their shoes, I can see the way they look around, I can feel their judgement radiating.

I get it. I really do. I would judge me too, because a functioning adult should be able to keep their house together. They should be able to do a WAY better job than I’m doing.

And then there is the cooking. There is no one thing that is more important in this life than buying, preparing and eating healthful foods. I can’t do any of those. I have NEVER been able to do them. I fail miserably in this area of my life. The way I feed my children… it feels criminal. It feels like I am abusing my children every time I offer them something to eat.

These two things are the pinnacle of womanhood. Keeping a clean house and feeding our families–that is what women are meant to do. Sure we’re trying to change that, to redefine womanhood and what it means, but it’s going to take a long time to erase or rewrite the expectations that have defined women for entirety of the human race.

So what happens if a woman can’t do those things? What happens if I don’t just miss the mark, but am not even facing the right direction?

The truth is, I am struggling. Mightily. We both are. Just to make this work. Just to get through each day. Most of the time we are not the parents that we want to be. I don’t respond the way I should to my children. I get frustrated. I get exasperated. I get angry. I sigh. I grumble. I yell. My daughter’s new signature phrase is, “Are you mad at me?” Evidently she has reason to suspect I am about 100+ times a day.

I’m trying to do better. I’m trying really, really hard. And I’m failing. Every. Single. Day.

I don’t know if I can be the parent I want to be now that I have two kids (to be fair, I wasn’t succeeding most of the time when I only had one).

I don’t know if I could have been the woman I wanted to be even before I had kids. I’m pretty sure there is no hope for me now.

I’m sure there will be those who will assure me that I can do it. That I just haven’t tried the right system, or put forth adequate effort. I don’t begrudge them their beliefs–I used to believe them too. But what about the 16 years of empirical evidence? What about all the times I’ve tried, and failed?

And maybe I can figure it out, at least well enough to get by in a society that sets certain standards. The effort required would be gargantuan. Every day I would be fighting against my nature. It would require intense discipline and dedication. It would be utterly exhausting.

I look around, peering into the lives that surround me and no one seems to be failing in these ways. I pick up my daughter at immaculate houses where healthy meals bubble on gleaming stove tops and I drag my tantrum-ing four-year-old into my car with promises of this or that if she’ll just stop, only to negotiate piles of crap all over our house while we wait for the butter noodles to be done for dinner. This is my life, and it doesn’t look like the lives of the women around me, or the ones I’m friends with on FB and other social media.

I have a plan to try to remedy the situation, but honestly, I’m approaching it with a half-heartened sense of obligation and almost no hope for success. I’ve tried all these things before. I’ve read the books, headed the advice, and nothing has ever changed. I’ll try again, because what choice do I have?

But I can’t change who I am. Can I?

Health & Well Being/Parenting & Family

The Bill Has Come Due

Posted on by noemikjames / 14 Comments

{More on loneliness to come next week. Thank you all for your insightful comments on those posts.}

It feels sometimes like the stakes are higher since I had kids. Physics teaches us that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, but since becoming a parent I’ve found that the reactions seem grossly out of proportion.

This weekend I visited an old friend in Atlanta. It was an amazing trip and I was so glad to be there. I got 48 hours to recharge, both physically and emotionally. I slept more in those 48 hours than during a typical work week. I got to hang out with other adults, engage in thoughtful conversations, eat in amazing restaurants, shop in actual adult stores and even read quietly in bed. It was just what I needed to fill my cup and restore my faith in myself as a friend.

Then I came home and had to deal with the fallout of being away. My husband was harried and stressed from his first 48 hour jaunt solo-parenting (fair enough) my kids were over emotional messes (fair enough) and my house looked like a tornado hit it (fair enough–and it should be noted that it didn’t look that great before I left). I’ve spent the whole week trying to give my husband the time and space he needs to recharge while triaging my kids’ panicked abandonment issues. My daughter has been having an especially hard time, being extra-whiny and demanding more than it is physically possible for me to give.

I spent my 30 minute commute today singing my sobbing daughter songs and assuring her that I’d be with her every minute of the weekend. It was the second time I had to do that this week. Even my son–who has previously seemed unaffected by my absence–has had a hard time falling asleep, requiring extra snuggles before he’ll finally lie down and drift off. My husband has barely spoken to me and there is a strange film of anger and resentment coating all our interactions.

Basically I filled my cup, only to have it emptied at two or three times the normal rate and I’m worried I’ll actually be worse off after paying for the consequences of my absence than I was before I left.

I spent the first half of the week grappling with some pretty intense mommy guilt and wondering if I needed to end my commitments to personal endeavors like the magazine or my creative non-fiction class so that I can give more time to my kids and partner. I already work 40 hours a week, maybe there just isn’t enough time left over to devote to myself, at least not now, while my kids are young.

Since the mommy guilt subsided, I’ve been left with the heavy realization that I just can’t do the things that are most important to me personally. It just is not possible to juggle work, my marriage, my kids and my own interests. Something has to give. I already spent less time than most with friends, but even my monthly magazine meeting and managing the two columns seems to be more than my family can absorb. I’m already getting less than six hours of sleep a night (usually five) and I can’t seem to nap on the rare afternoons when I’m so exhausted that I’m willing to sacrifice my lunch hour to do so. I’m drinking coffee every morning–something I’ve never done before–and eating horribly. My house is more of a disaster area than even I can stand and my marriage endures days, sometimes weeks, of almost complete neglect. I guess my point is, I have been attempting to include writing in my life, and commit a certain amount of time to myself, and it’s making me miserable. So I guess I’m miserable either way, committing the time to myself or just giving it to my family.

This is sounding more dire than I intended it to. My attitude about all this is one of quiet resignation. I know this time in my kids’ life won’t last forever, I know there will be more opportunities (in maybe five years?) for me to focus on myself. But right now, and in the foreseeable future, I just don’t see how I can manage it.

That means I will be sacrificing a good ten years (counting the past five) of my own personal growth to my family. During that time the majority of my own interests will be put on hold. That is a very significant amount of time, especially considering it’s in the “prime” of my life. We should really be having more conversations about this cost, because it’s substantial and it might have been easier to hand over this decade of my life if I had realized the bill was coming due.

I’m trying not to do the math and figure out how old I’ll be when I can commit to myself again. I’m trying not to think about how entrenched I’ll be in a 15 year teaching career and how hard it will be to make changes. I’m trying to tell myself that I can fill my cup reading a good books and writing here when I find the time. I’m trying to tell myself that I can do anything if it’s not forever.

But sometimes, I’m not so sure.

Connection/Friendship/Identity

Loneliness {Part 2}

Posted on by noemikjames / 3 Comments

In her book Lonely: Learning to Live with Solitude, Emily White categorizes loneliness in four ways. On one axis are emotional and social loneliness. Social loneliness relates to the absence of a network of close friends or confidants and emotional loneliness involves internalized emotions and the inability to share your thoughts and feelings with others. Researchers initially identified these two types of loneliness while studying two groups of women in the Boston area. Housewives were identified as suffering from social loneliness—they had a husband with whom they could confide but lacked a circle of friends they could call on for support. Women in the group Parents Without Partners were dealing with emotional loneliness because, while they engaged in a large supportive network they lacked someone with which whom they could share their most intimate thoughts.

On the other axis are trait loneliness and situational loneliness. Situational loneliness is dependent on a set of circumstances—a divorce, illness or recent move—while trait loneliness is a pervasive feeling that exists despite the external reality. People experiencing situational loneliness are lacking a network of friends due to some identifiable factor outside of themselves, they can point to a cause for the loneliness. Trait loneliness (often referred to in the book as chronic loneliness) is harder to pin down because it is woven into the perception of the person experiencing it.

In her book, White often calls on the experiences and insights of others. One man explained his loneliness this way: “Even with close friends, even with people I’ve known for decades, who I still know, it’s just sometimes…something’s not there.” Another women said, “When I think about loneliness, I think about just feeling like I don’t have intimate connections that touch on all the different aspects of myself. And it’s not that I don’t have intimate relationships. It’s that I don’t have ones that cover all of who I am.” White describes this kind of pervasive loneliness this way:

It’s feelings of distance and disconnection, of not being fully engaged and present, that lonely people highlight when they talk about their loneliness—and these feelings emerge despite the fact that lonely people often have support networks and significant others in place.

Learning that loneliness is characterized in different ways, and that loneliness isn’t only situational, was incredibly eye opening for me. While I have become situational-ly lonely in parenthood, and especially in the last few months, I recognized the feelings above from much farther back in my past. The lack of connection described in the book is something I’ve always grappled with. While I’ve created strong bonds with some of my closest friends, I frequently feel like I can’t share the things that are most important to me, or that they aren’t sharing those important things with me. As an adult I’ve been starting to wonder if maybe I am defective in some way, that I can’t participate in relationships the way others can.

While White can certainly point to specific events and circumstances that triggered her loneliness, she believes there is a genetic component to it as well. White thinks that loneliness would have found her regardless of the ten year gap between her and her sisters or her parents’ divorcing before she entered grade school; she is certain that she is predisposed to experience loneliness.

I’m starting to wonder if I am too.

I’ve returned many times during the reading of this book to my marriage. I have spent a significant portion of my time with my husband fearing that he doesn’t love me. I have no specific reasons to worry–he has never been unfaithful or said anything to suggest he doesn’t love me–and yet I can’t shake the anxiety. My head seems pretty convinced that he cares for me, and greatly, but my heart is not so sure.

I’ve chalked this discrepancy up to our disparate love languages. I rely on touch to know I’m loved while my husband cherishes quality time. The problem is that he’s not much of a “toucher” and I’m incredibly distractable so we both struggle to give the other person what they need. I’ve focused on this with my therapist (who has also worked with my husband and I in couples counseling so I respect her opinion on our relationship) and I’m feeling more confident in our marriage than I have in a long time, but it took a lot of cognitive behavioral therapy for me to get there. It definitely feels like this was a bigger issue for me than it would be for other people and I wonder if it’s my own predisposition for loneliness affecting the way I experience important relationships.

A friend and I recently had some frank discussion about who I am as friend–my expectations of myself and others–and what this person had to say was alarming. That insight, plus what I read in White’s book, has me looking closely at how I experience relationships with other people. I’m starting to believe that maybe I process connection differently than most of the people around me. Perhaps that is why I’ve felt I lingered on the periphery of social situations all my life. Maybe the feeling of disconnectedness that has always haunted me is actually a genetic lens, coloring my life without me realizing.

{Continued soon…}

Connection/Friendship/Identity

Loneliness {Part 1}

Posted on by noemikjames / 4 Comments

Lonely is not a word I identified with much. I’ve always had friends and things to do. I meet people easily, consider myself social and have felt I belonged in various groups.

As I got older, the easy camaraderie of sports teams, school, dorm floors, and graduate school cohorts became a thing of the past. The groups I belong to broke up and faded away. My close friends moved across country.

I was already finding it difficult to maintain meaningful relationships even before becoming a mother, but since having children I have really struggled. Still, I never really considered myself lonely. I had friends, even if they were far away. I had a loving husband that I spent time with. My family remained close and I saw my mother frequently. The staff at my work are warm and supportive. How could someone who was almost always around people be lonely? The word didn’t seem to fit.

And yet I’ve always had the feeling that I don’t quite belong, that while I’m a part of the group, I remain on the periphery. In swimming I was the one who never got the qualifying times needed to compete at a higher level. In drama I couldn’t sing and wasn’t in the spring musical. In high school I was either the AP student hanging out with the partiers or the partier hanging out with the AP students. During senior year my two best friends actually started dating and I became the awkward third wheel.

In the dorms Freshman year I was the one who lived in a triple down the hall from my two best friends who were roommates (though we later would live together for two years). I couldn’t participate in my university’s study abroad program so I had to go to Spain with students from a couple of small colleges in Texas and on the East Coast. My first teaching job was at a district about 30 minutes away, making it harder to socialize with the staff after the school day. Even within the tribe of women struggling with infertility that I met online, I was the one with the fewest losses and the least amount of time spent trying to conceive. I didn’t even have to use ART to eventually get pregnant.

I admit that at least some of the feeling of being on the periphery, or not really belonging, was in my own head. My swimming friends would probably say I was at the epicenter of our social group, but I wonder if I worked so hard to stay there because I was so worried they’d all leave me behind (as they did in the pool). In high school people saw me as belonging to many groups and having tons of friends, whereas I saw myself sitting at the edge of them all, not really belonging to any of them.

And sometimes things happened that cemented my belief that others didn’t feel as close to me as I felt to them. Once I logged onto Facebook to find all my work friends on a rafting trip that I hadn’t been invited to and knew nothing about. I never found out if I was purposefully excluded or they had simply forgotten to include me. Seventeen of my colleagues were invited to a fellow teacher’s wedding recently and I wasn’t. I also haven’t been invited to a couple of weddings of college and high school friends that the “rest of the group” went to. So while I do believe that some of that feeling of not belonging is in my head, I have the evidence to argue that it’s not entirely imagined.

I have always attributed this feeling of not belonging, and my struggles with cultivating and maintaining close friendships in general with depression. When you’re depressed it’s hard to really put yourself out there, both physically (actually going to social events is draining) and emotionally (it’s almost impossible to share your deepest thoughts when they are so bleak). I assumed the emotional distance I felt between myself and those who were physically close was a direct result of depression, just another one of its shitty symptoms manifesting in a life that was, in so many ways, already dictated by the disease.

But now I’m reading the book Lonely: Learning to Live with Solitude by Emily White and I’m wondering if that perceived distance is actually loneliness. I never considered myself lonely because there were usually people around, and not just any people, but people I considered friends. I didn’t think you could be lonely under those circumstances, but evidently you can.

{Continued tomorrow…}