Saturday, October 26, 2013

Tired

I am an inconsistent blogger now, and I am okay with that. The reason I started blogging was to journal a season that was so painful and so heartbreaking that I often wondered if I would lose my will to fight to move forward. There was a lot of painful growth I went through, a lot of re-examining and rebuilding a new marriage that II and I went through. I had to re-learn who I was and nearly everything I thought I was, wanted, or was focused on for my life and future. My thought in putting my journal online was that I was not the only wife who ever endured this nightmare. I had never seen a raw, honest blog about someone who survived, no matter what the outcome was, and truly focused on themselves and not the circumstances. I wanted to put my journey out there so there was something for that void, in case any other person ever needed to read those words to figure out how to pick themselves up and walk forward again.

Then, this became my journal of lose and grief. It seemed to fit, because it was still part of who I am and in so many ways my devastation and reconstruction was enmeshed with Micah and his life and death. I kept it here because I still needed to journal and I wanted Micah's life to be REAL, especially when I knew all too well that it was fleeting.

I don't know what the purpose of this is anymore. I have always tried to view this as merely my journal, while not private still anonymous, and write for my own purposes and not to an audience. I have only ever veered from that course when the psycho ex-nanny and her boyfriend's mother came here to directly attack me. Even then, I did not air her dirty laundry, and there was far too much of it I could have aired, but I refrained and only directly put them in their place for acting like heartless monsters. Otherwise, I have never written this for others, and I write it as genuinely here as if someone were sitting with me in person. I don't understand embellishing and falsifying your life for a blog. II assures me most bloggers do (this after I discovered the next door neighbors blog and remain baffled at the inconsistencies of what I see daily in person and what she writes online as if it is true).

When I joined online communities years ago, I made a commitment to be genuine and myself no matter where I was or what I did. I decided that I would be the same person, no matter the medium and those who "knew" me would recognize me even if they met me at the grocery store. I have been very successful in that promise to be true to myself online. Thus, I am unsure where I am supposed to go with journaling at this point.

I'm not leaving. I'm not taking down what I've journaled for the last six years. I'm just realizing that my journal entries are sparse right now because I have entered a season of my life that demands SO much of me elsewhere. After kicking and screaming and mourning that I had to leave full time stay at home parenting, I have embraced having goals towards a future. Yet, when I'm not working, not homeschooling C, and not working on my own fast paced schoolwork, my time is limited and I spend it with my children and husband. I'm amazed at how fast my babies are growing up. I'm also amazed at how tiring this second Bachelor's degree has been for me. I've started the process for graduate studies and my goal is really to get scholarships and funding so that I can move to PRN work during my grad studies and not have to continue to work 24 hours per week. I feel like balancing work and school leaves far too few moments with my babies and too much that II picks up around here. Daily, I remind myself that this season is finite and when I reach this goal, I can slow down.

Maybe it's really bad of me, but I often tell my children to not settle down and get married and have children until they have the educational part of their career goals completed. I hate to say that, especially since I was deliberate in holding off on this education to have the large family first. Yet, I am so much more tired in my mid 30s than I ever was in my early 20s. I have had no more than a three day break in my studies since January and I am simply tired right now. I have done two classes at a time, to try to push this last degree, eight week sessions so 12 hours per semester including through the summer. Right now, I am only doing one class because I agreed to cover the clinic while my co-workers all went on vacation. Yet, we had record census and thus I am even more tired than I was before right now.

These are the things that consume my life now. They aren't life altering. They aren't conflict ridden. I don't feel like I am in the point of turmoil I was in for so long, nor am I in that idyllic dream that I lived in for the years I homeschooled but lost my own identity. I journal at points in my life when I need to process and to contemplate. Right now, it feels like I am too busy living to process and contemplate things. I expect my journaling will simply be slow through this season, and honestly I realize I am okay with this reality. Parenting six teens and pre-teens is EXHAUSTING (don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise). Add two caboose babies who need to still be cuddled and cherished and not forced to grow up too soon, work, school and a marriage that I actually put solid effort into these days. My life is too busy for me to live it right now. It's certainly too busy for me to contemplate it much, which maybe that's good. I've discovered the hard way that I can hit exactly 5 hours of not being so hectic and busy living with this zoo crew before grief will wash over me and it all comes back. I'm not ignoring that whisper. Hell, I've finally found a place where I can SPEAK at work about Micah and not fall apart, because I dearly want him recognized for being my son forever. I just know that grief is there, it will always be there. I face it in snippets, in those moments when I can and do step out of this life. To parent day to day, the numbness is safe for me. I talk a lot to other parents when I encounter them, and they all assure me this is the reality of the rest of my life--always there, always lurking, always part of who I will forever be. Life is what has happened while I wasn't making plans but just focused on living. This is my reality now. I expect it will remain like this until I finish my doctorate and can enter nurse practitioner work without additional schoolwork always lurking.