Today is a day for introspection, something I almost never have time to do anymore. I read the blogs yesterday of Phresh and Daisy, and it got me thinking. Here are two people who genuinely enjoy…something. For Phresh it’s guitars and dive bars and falling in love. For Daisy it’s clean cotton sheets and the caress of a warm breath on her cheek.
For me? Lately I’m not sure anymore. I feel dis-satisfied. Disenfranchised. Dis-something. That is, when I feel much of anything at all. My goal and dream was to own my own business like my father, to be free.
My father isn’t happy. It’s sort of sad really….because the wife he adores (and who adores him) are so disconnected they rarely even speak. He works until midnight most nights while his wife rattles around the empty house like a bean in a tin can. They circle each other in an uneasy orbit, magnetically drawn and dynamically opposed.
Of course I don’t want that. Who would? At least I don’t think I do. And yet, day after day I sit here, taking more clients, struggling to meet another impossible deadline.
I got my period today. Another month of endless days and nights have gone by. Smoochie hugs and smoochie kisses. Days of “Mommy’s busy right now” instead of reading stories, days of staying up too late and getting up too early. Days of relentless keystrokes and unceasing insistent ringing of the phone. Is it worth it? I look around and see nice homes and seemingly wonderful family lives. Days of vacations and leisure, families connected and loving. Is their grass really greener ? Or is it just human nature playing tricks on me like it does on everyone else, making me believe that what I have is never enough?
I started my business so I could be home with my daughter. But does it count if all she sees is Mommy at the computer? She pretends she’s “working” and types on my keyboard. She talks to no one on the phone about “getting that job”. When we ask her to do something she doesn’t want to do, she says “I’m too busy now.” I see myself reflected in her. All my flaws are being coded right into her psyche.
Daisy’s blog is about how wonderful the simple things are. All I have are questions. What do I really enjoy anymore? And when did I get so jaded? It’s not like my life is terrible. My daughter is smart and beautiful and so unexpected it makes my heart ache. My partner is a great guy who puts up with my irritability and keeps me on track. We have accomplished so much in these last few months. Some days it just seems so pointless, always striving for some elusive goal that once reached becomes irrelevant because the next goal looms.
But today….today I’m just tired. And depressed. So maybe this is just a hormonal thing after all. But if it is only that, a scrambling of endorphins and enzymes, then why have all the days blurred together? When my period started, I was shocked. “Already?” I thought.
28 days and nights.
672 hours.
40320 minutes.
They are gone, forever. Into an eternity when a billion years from now someone on a distant planet will see a tiny pinprick in the sky and say, “1.2 billion years ago, a woman on that planet sat at her computer, thinking that life should be something more than endless marching minutes falling off into the abyss.”
