from here |
For a long time I’ve felt like part of my head has
been closed off, with a giant NO TRESPASSING sign to scare me away, and I’m
finally letting myself unlock that gate and start sorting through the junk
behind it (“Is this what’s hurting right now? What about this?”). It’s
interesting to discover things in there that I’ve been writing about on this blog
over the years; turns out my posts could have given me clues about what I’d find
if I’d been looking out for them. Like, oh look – all that panic you’re feeling about mothering a girl started in March last year! And hey, maybe the fact that
you’ve always felt different is the reason you’re so interested in stereotypes?
That last one’s making me hurt most at the moment; I
hadn’t ever noticed that underneath the frustration of not fitting into the right boxes, and not being able to easily assign myself a Love Language or two,
and not being the way I read/see/think that women/wives/mothers are supposed to
be, has been confirmation after confirmation that I’m different, and not
different in a quirky, enviable way, but different in an abnormal, outsider, something’s-gone-wrong-and-can’t-be-made-right-again
way.
I’ve realised that for as long as I
remember I’ve believed myself to be irreparably broken, and I don’t know why, and I don’t
know how not to. I feel like the song Lost Cause by Beck was written about and for me: Baby, you’re lost | Baby,
you’re a lost cause | I’m tired of fighting | Fighting for a lost cause. I listen to it when I’m down and every time I hear the
lyrics they feel deeply, depressingly true.
But I
recently did a personality test and found out I’m an INFJ, and the description matched
me so well that I cried with relief: I
FIT INTO A BOX! Hallelujah! I don’t even care what the box is, just that
it’s a box, and I fit in. I must be normal (or close enough)! And over the past month or so I’ve
been reading Naked Motherhood by
Wendy LeBlanc and The Feminine Mystique
by Betty Friedan and hearing my own experience of motherhood echoed in both
their words and those of the many women they quote. I’ve read emails from and
had conversations with friends who’ve heard their experiences echoed in my words in this post. Apparently I’m not the only woman in the world who feels this way about motherhood! Maybe there’s
nothing broken about me! Maybe there’s hope for me yet!
All of these discoveries have brought some healing, and are
spurring me on to push deeper into my head to get to the mouldier stuff buried
there. I want to clear it all out now. I want to know what life feels like
without all the extra weight and smelliness in there. Instead of Beck I’m listening to Florence and the
Machine (I discovered this song thanks to this sermon which has played a key part in this
journey [though it possibly should have come with a warning about how much it
would make me bawl]):
I found out a little while ago that ‘truth’ in Greek (aletheia) literally means ‘uncovered’.
And I’ve been thinking about God being light – “in him there is no darkness at
all” – and about how there’s something about telling the truth and revealing
what was hidden that is liberating in a spiritual way. Bringing dark things
into the light takes power away from them. I was reading a blog the other day,
and I kept bumping into things the author had written on mothering that sounded
sickly sweet and smug. “Who enjoys mothering that much?” I thought to myself. And “Who is this woman? I don’t think I could read much more of this.”
Then I replied to myself, “This is your blog, dude. The woman is you,
two/three years ago.”
There is truth on the internet, but there’s
also a lot of hiddenness, and it’s obvious to me now that if I only post about the light
side of mothering and keep the darker parts to myself, I’m contributing to the
problem. It’s far easier to present to the world the Me I wish I was rather
than the Me I am, though, so it’s tempting to keep the yukky stuff to myself.
And yet I don’t want my blog to be yet another place that makes struggling mums
feel like losers, especially when I’m struggling myself and so much of what I read makes me feel like a loser.
So. I’ve decided that I need to post more of the
things I’ve not been posting, even if they’re ugly and uncomfortable, to
balance out the internet (my blog, at least) a little more and to offer others
who relate the chance to have those same “Maybe I am normal!” moments
that I’ve recently enjoyed. So this week is Another Side week, where each day I’ll share with you some of how I’ve been feeling
about motherhood; feel free to avert your eyes if you’d prefer to keep thinking
it’s all kisses and giggles. I want to add a
ton of disclaimers (“I REALLY DO LOVE MY KIDS!” “I KNOW I SOUND SELFISH AND I’M
NOT ALWAYS THIS WAY!” “PLEASE DON’T
HATE ME!”) but I won’t.
And.... here we go.
Firstly, I love that the personality test helped! Secondly, I just read all your blogs in this series and was like finally someone is writing real stuff about life and thirdly I think it's safe to say that your lack of fitting into boxes was something I was always kind of jealous of in a she's like a cool character from an art house film kind f way.
ReplyDeleteThat art house character comment is maybe the awesomest thing anyone's ever said about me. Thank you. :) And thanks for the link to the test, too (even though you posted it on someone else's wall!) - it was such a massive moment for me!
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