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Billie
Joined: 29 Apr 2000
Posts: 1206
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 Coming Clean
How I've really been
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I haven't written in so long, I'm not sure I even know how any more. It used to be that I wrote when I was struggling with something(s) and if you didn't hear from me for long periods of time, it was generally because things were going relatively smoothly.
For some reason, I've broken with tradition. Over the past six months to a year, I've been struggling with some things--general feelings of malaise, a sense of being disconnected from my husband, and some doubts where my daughter is concerned. And for some reason, instead of turning to writing as I used to do, or turning to my friends and talking through these things, I turned inward. Not exactly isolating--I'm far too social to do that--but definitely keeping these struggles inside and trying to handle them on my own.
One interesting and unintentional side effect of this is that I've become less social at work, and have hunkered down and really concentrated on getting the job done. Consequently, I just got my highest rating ever, the highest rating my boss has ever given any one. So while certain aspects of my personal life are less than stellar, my professional life is thriving.
I guess I should just be grateful that not everything is going to hell at once, because I know that sometimes happens to people. And I should especially be grateful since we just went through a round of layoffs, and there may be more in the new year, and my good year at work makes me better positioned to survive a layoff.
While I'm pleased with my success at work, the truth is, my personal life is much more important to me than my professional life. I knew I needed to do something about my malaise when we went on a family vacation in August. We went to a family camp near the Canadian border. It had all the elements of a perfect vacation: beautiful scenery, campfires, family, interesting new friends, activities, good food. The camp planned all the activities, did all the cooking, even took the kids every mornings so DH and I could have some time together or do grown-up things. It was as low stress a vacation as a person could get.
And yet...yet, I felt tense and irritable the entire time. I never got that sense of well-being that I expected. I didn't even enjoy the time alone with DH. I found I was either annoyed by him, or indifferent to him, alternating. And, truth be told, he seemed to feel the same way.
The fact that I couldn't even be happy and enjoy my husband and my kids under ideal circumstances made me realize that I couldn't try to handle this own anymore. It's one thing to be stressed out when life is stressful, when you're running here and there, trying to meet all your commitments and failing. It's quite another to be lethargic and unhappy on vacation.
So when we got back from vacation, I called the therapist we used a few years ago when DH and I were fighting about his travel and scheduled an appointment. When she asked what brought me in, I said, "Chronic crabbiness, interspersed with periods of acute crabbiness." She said, "Hmmm, I don't think that's anywhere in my text books."
I really like this therapist. She's warm and funny and practical and real. She's feels a lot like a good friend. If I had to pay my friends $100 to spend an hour with me, that is. 
She makes me feel saner than I sometimes suspect I am, not because her work is making me more sane, but because she treats everything I'm experiencing and struggling with as perfectly normal. When I confess to her that I am much less crabby at work than I am at home, she doesn't gasp in horror and immediately call social service to take these poor innocent children away from their ungrateful and undeserving mother. She is far more accepting of my shortcomings than I am. She tells me that I am empty, sucked dry by the many demands of my life, and that I need to take care of myself, to make sure I get filled up. She told me that children, while rewarding, are also incredibly demanding and draining, that it's not unusual for a working mother to be more stressed out at home than at work.
I've decided to see her every other week for a few months, or as long as it takes until this chronic crabbiness fades to intermittent crabbiness. I think if I were another woman, I might be depressed, but in me, it manifests itself as irritability. This irritability is like a low hum in the background, always there, and it can flare up at the slightest provocation: a red light when I'm in a hurry, a child who refuses to wear his jacket, a missed bus, a child yelling at me from the toilet to come wipe his bum, cat pee on my rug, a husband who isn't home when he said he would be, a toddler having a sit down strike because she doesn't want to go to bed.
There are dozens of provocations a day, it seems. I used to have a good sense of humor about these things. I used to find humor in many of life's slings and arrows; now they just piss me off. I don't like it. And I don't like who I have become.
I told my therapist that, given the many stressors in my life (two corporate jobs, traveling husband, three kids, pets, etc.), what I'm feeling may be normal and understandable, but it's not OK. It's particularly not OK to be that way with my kids. I used to be a warm, loving, tolerant mother, and it seems most days I struggle to be any one of those things, much less all three.
And lastly, I told her I want to explore my feelings towards my daughter. Many days, I think we are just fine. She's happy and healthy and I love her and she loves me. But there are also times when I'm not so sure we're fine, when I worry that she's not as attached as she needs to be and that I'm not trying hard enough to foster attachment, when I think that I am too impatient and crabby with her, that I'm not the parent she needs.
Recently I filled out a survey as part of an international adoption research project. After many questions about her behavior, they asked how attached I thought she was. I put that she is adequately attached.
Then, they asked about my attachment to her. That question was so hard to answer. I wanted, in the worst way, to be able to say "very strongly attached" but I just couldn't without being dishonest. In the end, I put "adequately attached" and I think that's true. We are adequately attached to each other, enough to get through each day, to ensure she gets what she needs in terms of love and attention and care, and to ensure that I get what I need in terms of rewards. But adequate isn't good enough for me when it comes to my children. I want the best there is.
I've been seeing this therapist every few weeks for the past three months, and definitely feel better. I'm not sure it's anything she's done; rather, it seems like I had already hit bottom and was on the upswing when I started seeing her. But if nothing else, our sessions are me time, a rare opportunity for my life to be all about me for an hour, and so I enjoy them.
That is not to say that everything is hunky dory now. Even though I am much less crabby, DH and I are struggling (not in a marriage-threatening way, I don't think, but in an we're-not-really-being-great-partners-nor-enjoying-each-other way). He has been traveling so much the past six months, and we just don't reconnect the way we used to when he returns. We seem to be drifting apart, and at times I feel like the only part of our lives that overlaps is the children.
Despite posting very little in the past six months, and not really being inclined to write, I did try to journal through some of my feelings. I didn't post them, because they felt too private, and I wasn't sure I was adequately expressing myself, and it's really difficult for me to expose my shortcomings as a mother and wife. But that's never stopped me before, has it? I have always tried to be honest about being my experiences as a woman and mother, so in that spirit, I will post these back-entries.
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 Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2008 7:33 pm
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