Selfish Drabble

Two of my best friends have started their blogs again. One of these people was the reason I’ve started trying to keep track of things again. I feel like I’ve been in limbo for so long.

If I read back over my posts on facebook, myspace, and xanga, I feel slightly ashamed.

I am a horribly selfish person.

I try not to be. I try to be giving and loving and better, but what it boils down to is that I am selfish. I’m not the bad kind of selfish who says “Mine mine mine!”

I’m selfish in that I want to be everyone’s best friend, or most important friend.

I’m selfish in that I want people to reassure me that they love and think of me, the way they do others.

I’m selfish in that I want to know everything, and to be acknowledged.

Some people wouldn’t count that as selfish, but I do.

I look around my friends and I see so many fantastic people, and I battle with myself. “Do they still think of me as a friend? I’m always making the first effort.”  “Why do they never do these sweet things for me like they do for literally all our mutual friends?”

And then I punch the selfish whiny girl inside me and say “Shut up!” I force myself to remember that life is different now, that we can’t always hang out like we did, or that I’m a more bitter, stressed out person than I used to be. I know my friends love me, but I wish I could get their honest opinion…and while I know that some would give it, I know that I also won’t believe it if it’s good until I win this stupid battle with self hate.

Yes, not self loathing, self hate.

This may not make any sense, but I wanted to post this. Maybe I’ll expand when I actually know what the hell is going on inside my noggin. Maybe not.

Shut down modes and living in limbo are not fun.

 

The Best Part of Me

Speaking of doing right by my children…

I am a non traditional mother. In many ways. I was a young mother. I was 20 when I had my first child. Unmarried (Although I had been with this man for three years, and he was also the only man I have ever kissed. Also untraditional). I do not hold to many of the cliches that many people seem to associate with parents.

I was the first of my close friends to get married and to have a baby (not in that order). Many have had younger siblings and were actually full of advice for me. My first son was the first newborn I ever held. Still, there was so many things I was unprepared for, things that I never even thought about.

I felt like such an inadequate mother for so long. It didn’t help that my family life wasn’t perfect. My husband and mother didn’t get along, and tensions were strained all around. I developed post partum depression (But that’s another blog entry). Between that, the tension, and my usual self hatred, I honestly don’t know how I got through that, let alone got through it with a newborn depending on me. Stephen worked third shift full time.

The summer of 2008 I was unmarried and with a newborn. Two months later my husband and I both attended college. We brought my son onto campus and alternated watching him while we went to class. We had plenty of friends who helped. Stephen had to drop out due to something tramatic in his work life (two armed robberies during his shift and while actually being choked against the wall and then finishing the shift alone anyways) while I was able to go another year and a half.

My other son was born barely a year and a half after my first one. I had to learn how to adjust.

It’s taken me a long time to get over my inadequate feelings and to a place where I can say “I am a *DAMN* good mother!” I really am. I may not buy into the gimmicks of having all the toys, but I give my children plenty of things to play with. I may not take them to all sorts of child friendly activities and events (which I do feel mildly bad about), but I provide them with numerous opportunities to go places and have fun. I may be on the computer a lot, but only recently now that they are learning to play together and on their own.

I am able to scrounge a 3 course meal out of a nearly empty fridge and cupboard with more useless items than a baby bag with no diapers. I make my children laugh and think and use manners and give them the ability to figure out themselves. I don’t give them the illusion of love, I give them the real thing.

I will never be a perfect mother. I am still learning how to balance a family with a career (not that I really have one) and my hobbies. I am still learning how to raise these children. I will tolerate advice. I will love advice, personally! But when you and I differ on our philosophies and neither side hurt the kids, and you proceed to say that I am a “bad mother”, then NO. I will not tolerate that. I won’t believe it. I may not be the way you thought I would be as a mother, but who cares?

I dare anyone to come spend a day with my children and tell me they are neglected. That they are unloved. That I am not doing a good job.

Yes, I need to work on aspects, but some things are beyond my control. When you get so many adults in one house and everyone has different ideas on what a child can/should do, there’s going to be some discord. When I had my own place the children ate healthier, were more polite, and less prone to tantrums. And it will be that way again (soon I hope).

My children are the best thing in my life. I may never realize any of my dreams, but I honestly do not care as long as they grow up happy. They are the best part of me, a dream I never knew I could have.

 

 

Cycle

Start small. Baby steps. Easy into it.

That’s the advice everyone gives, whether they are telling someone to start something up or end something. So, since that advice seems to be pretty common, I’ll go ahead and use it. But as a starting point:

My marriage is not perfect.

For the last two years, we have been fighting a lot. Things only got really nasty in the last year. I’m not sure how things are going to turn out. I honestly don’t want to be with anyone else, and I love my husband dearly, but I am breaking the cycle that my family and friends and life in general have thrown at me.

I refuse to let people blame me for things that are not my fault. I will not put up with constantly being a scapegoat for the things that go wrong with their life. I know that we all snap sometimes, or take things out on others, but when that happens, apologize. Likewise, be mature enough to realize the real cause of what is upsetting you. All my life I have let others put me down when the problem was not me. I probably always will, to an extent But when it gets to the point where I am crying and cringing trying not to upset you, fuck that. I’m so damn sick of that.

I haven’t told but maybe one person this story, and I’ve never shared my thoughts on it. But there was about a month long period where I was not allowed to change the station in the car. We left it on one station and neither of us were able to change it, so that it would be fair. That’s not the bad part. It’s fair enough.

But what prompted it was because I was listening to a song, and turned it up two notches because I really liked it. He promptly turned it down three. When I said why, he said “I will always turn it down one more than you turned it up”. I wanted to smack him so much. That is the sign of an abuser. And I will NOT be controlled like that. That is something that my brothers, my mother, hell, even some of the friends I’ve had would do. That is UNACCEPTABLE.

And if that causes me to lose my husband, then so be it.

And if he and I work it out, then we will be so much stronger because of it.

I told him I hold him to a high standard than my family, and therefore it hurts more when he fails.

I am a damned good woman. And I only deserve to be happy with my equal, a damned good man. And if that happens to be my husband, then I would be the happiest person in the world.

I don’t know what 2011 holds in store for me. I don’t know what changes–good or bad–the year of the Dragon will bring. But I am going to have no regrets, and I will do right by my children.