Too Sensitive on Saturday

Found at http://dantudor.com/how-to-get-physical-with-your-recruiting-letters/

It is Saturday.  I usually sleep in and my husband and kids bring me breakfast.  Today I slept, woke, meditated a bit on who I am, who I was, who I've become.  Then they came home and I enjoyed my donuts and chai.  I checked Facebook and the stats for this blog and listened to the end of Metro Connection on WAMU (NPR).  My husband informs me that he isn't going to tell me what to do, but that sitting in bed on a day like this was stupid.  My daughter says, "I wouldn't want to sit around like you, Mom."  I can see the strangely warm February sunshine lighting the trunks of the trees in the wooded common area that fills my window.  The Splendid Table has begun.  They are talking about oysters.  Husband is driving the kids out to Bell Branch Park.  Do I want them to return to take me to lunch, er, dinner?  Yes, please.


I am numb inside.  The day held such promise.  Maybe it still could, but their judgement sits heavy on my heart.  My throat constricts.  My vision of my laptop blurs a bit.  The oyster girl "has found passion in her work." Suddenly my daughter comes in the front door and up to my room.  She gives me a hug and kiss and tells me she loves me.  She's come up to get her sweatshirt.  She has no concept that she said anything to hurt me a moment ago.  This is my second chance to go with them, but I am not able to let myself.  Also, I am not dressed.  What do they really think of me?  I want to burrow into my blankets and hide.  There goes the focus on my laptop again.  The tears don't fall though.  My dad always said I was "too sensitive."  NPR is filling my head and preventing me from really addressing this.  I am sucked into the story of a couple starting their own sea salt company.  Their business is doubling every year.  At least somebody is making money.  How can it really be possible for my husband to make the salary he does and for us to not be able to move into a nice home, a home comparable to those of my friends I consider to be in the same cohort as we?  Materialistic competitiveness is such a lovely quality in a person.

This was supposed to be a good day.  This was supposed to be my day of rest.  The day I earn where I can do whatever I want.  And you RUIN it by JUDGING ME!  I had even been feeling that I didn't want to stay in bed all afternoon (as I have in the past; this is a completely new inkling).  I know that I could still follow through on this, that I should.  I should get up and dressed and at least sit on the stoop and soak up some sunshine.  It is 3:23PM.  No one does this thing that I do, staying in bed so long.  I am usually getting up at this point out of guilt and due to my husband's urgings to go get some lunch or an early dinner.  Part of me wants to thumb my nose at them and do what I want, what I was going to do and not let this ruin my day.  Another part wants to punish myself and them, since I know my husband will read this, by burrowing back into my bed and becoming an armadillo curled up against the world, blocking out pain and sunshine alike.

Am I ashamed?  I feel I should be, but of course we shouldn't "should" on ourselves, right?  The radio is now on to the amount of alcohol in wine.  I wasn't, I was having a good day.  I got an extra 1/2 donut more than usual and two beads that I had won by pinning them on Pinterest arrived.  Now I just feel heavy-hearted.  Oh, just shut up!  I turn off NPR.  Here I am in my silent house, the oasis I wait for all friggin' week and it is tainted.  It is poisoned.  It is accusing now, not safe.  I AM SO ANGRY!  Why do you need to tell me what I am doing is "stupid"?!  I earned the right to have part of a day to do what I want and you sour it with your judgement.  You don't know what i went through this week!  It was a goddam hard week!  And I was getting ready to get up anyway.  I wasn't sleeping! Now if I go out, I feel like I am giving into your judgement of me and doing what you want me to, that I am being manipulated into doing what is best for myself instead of getting to choose it on my own!  And you pass your judgement on to our children.  Thanks a LOT.

Yes, yes, there is the little voice telling me that I am taking one thoughtless sentence, blowing it out of proportion and handing it over to the Critic like a hand grenade.  Why would I choose to do that?  No one can make you feel anything without your permission, right?  So what is the benefit to me of proceeding to bottom-out again?  It's another confirmation of the Critic's belief that I am fundamentally sub-standard, that, left to myself, what I am and would be is less than what I've led people to believe I might be.  Do I need to be right that badly?  Why choose pain over peace when you have a choice?  Maybe the pain gives me a bit of an identity, a bit of specialness, a chance that I will be rescued and returned to the great potential I once had as a child, that I've used up to produce this (reminiscent of the gesture used on Hiccup in How To Train Your Dragon, indicating all of him).  What's my claim to fame now?  That I expose all the skeletons of my white, middle-aged, suburban, stay-at-home-mom closet to the world?  Like that is of any worth given the actual real pain and suffering in the real world?  Pretty pathetic.  "But it might help someone," she says, and if it helps one person then isn't it worth it?  SIGH.  I don't know.  How much is one person worth?  1 + negative 1 = 0    So I guess I've broken even now (I had one comment thanking me for my blog because it helped a woman's daughter).  I need one more to come out on the other side and justify this.

The native Americans who believed in burning all their personal items (I am thinking of the Indigo Girls song Burn All The Letters) would so totally pan me.  I am doing the exact opposite of what was dignified in their eyes.  I am prostituting myself to the public with the hope of ultimately securing some financial security and maybe helping a few people along the way.  I am SO not in the same category of person as the Momestary blogger, Glennon.  I took down any ads and references to supporting the site in hopes of retroactively regaining some dignity as I read of how she is turning down offers of thousands of dollars from numerous offers to advertise on her blog.  She has used her blog to really help a lot of people and is entertaining a lucrative book contract now, a goal of mine.  But she has the genuine integrity and Christian faith to back her up and to pass to others.  Right now, what I am doing is not necessarily going to make anyone be inspired to be a better person, or feel better.  Like this post, a great big "Pooooooooor Julie" pity party.  Nice.  Nicely done.

My husband warned me that no one will return to a site to read whiny posts.  So here's another that can remain unread or turn you off to coming back.  It seems I have very little dignity anyway, so I might as well hit the "publish" button.