Lots of thoughts in my head today, but for some reason I don't feel like divulging them right now. I woke up today in exactly the same mood I went to bed in yesterday. I actually was awakened at 2:35 this morning to H coming into my room to sleep with me. When I didn't move right away, he just sprawled out at the foot of my bed. I sat up and grabbed him and snuggled up with him, but I didn't fall back to sleep. Around 3, Phoenix and my sisters two dogs (who arrived yesterday and will be permanently staying with us because at my sister's ex-husband's house, they're not allowed in the house much) got up for a tail-wagging summit in the hallway right in front of my door, which was open from H coming in. Then around 3:30, baby S woke up hungry, and so I heard my sister get up to make a bottle. I still didn't fall asleep after that. Just laid there, brain on overdrive, thinking about the day yesterday. Thinking about my job, my relationships, my family, my financial situation, everything. It's like I couldn't turn it off. I couldn't use my coping skills - which are usually turning on the TV and watching a show or a movie - because of the three year old asleep in my bed. It was hard being forced to reckon with all the things that I blatantly refuse to acknowledge in such a lonely moment. It didn't matter that I was in bed with a kid and two dogs, I was alone. The middle of the night is just the loneliest time. There's no one to talk to, there's nothing to DO, it's too quiet.
I hate feeling like I have no control over what's going on in my life, and that's exactly how I felt yesterday, and how I woke up feeling today. I've used the crap out of my coping skills today at work by sitting and watching the entire season of Outsourced and the most recent episodes of Parenthood I needed to catch up on.
I think I just don't want to think the thoughts that my brain is producing. I love my family oh so dearly, and it's never lost on me that I'm so lucky to be so close to them. I love my sister's kids like they are my own and it absolutely breaks my heart to see them being carted back and forth between houses. It kills me to see my sister get so tired of them that all she does is yell and scold and threaten. Little H is acting out in every way possible, and it's quite obvious that Z is on pins and needles sensitive to everything that is going on around him. The baby usually needs a bit of adjustment time when she comes over before she gets giggly and smiley. I cannot control their behavior, and I cannot control the positivity of their environment. I can't make my sister clean up their bath toys and their clothes from the bathroom floor after their baths every night. I can't make H eat his dinner, and I can't make my parents use their money more wisely so that the stress level in the house isn't always at danger level red all the damn time. I am living in this clusterfuck almost entirely based on decisions that I had no part in making. I have made conscious choices not to get married and have kids because I know I don't have the patience and fortitude to give up my own alone time and my own money yet, but somehow I'm acting as a parent when I'm at home and when the kids are there, and I don't like having to do that! I actually made the choice not to sit down with the family for dinner last night because I didn't think I could stand to watch my sister yell at her kids for not eating, or not eating enough, while the rest of us crowd around the table just thrilled to be able to be there for those kids. I just couldn't do it. The boys were asking me, "Beffie, aren't you going to eat with us?" And I said no, because since I'm a grown-up, I can make my own choices. And yet I feel like the choices I'm making have no effect whatsoever on my quality of life. No matter what I do, there will always be a big production, song and dance included (without prior choreography) and there's nothing I can do about it.
I think these are things I'm going to continue to struggle with because I have to keep living at my parents' house. I wish, beyond all wishes, that I had the ability to make the tough choices and decisions that others make every day. I am ridiculously frightened of being unable to control the results of the choices I make, and so I make the easy choices. I don't know when the day will come when I will put aside my fears and just choose to do something for no other reason than simply because I want to do it. But I hope it's soon. I don't know how much longer I can live like this.
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