Oh, here it comes - the middle-of-the-night blog, the bellyaching I'm bad at everything blog (granted, it is almost 5:00 am and I've been up for hours). It's all the stuff I'm feeling but not supposed to say blog.
It's not been a time of shining moments for me. Part of the never-ending pendulum swing of life, this is definitely a down cycle. I can't remember a time when I have felt so stuck, so miserably failed, so out-of-touch with my own self and my former goals and dreams and desires. I feel utterly tossed away, I feel as though I am accomplishing nothing and am grasping at the threads of my own identity.
I find myself gazing wistfully at women with small babies in carriers, in buggies, in arms. I look at them and remember that at the most fulfilling and wonderful time - when I didn't care about anything else but being a mother. It was a simpler time, so much simpler that my voracious quest to conquer a world which I am no longer sure I even want to be a part of. I spend my days now spinning my wheels, feeling unsuccessful in every realm of my life, not knowing what to try to get out of it. I do keep trying, but it still feels like I can hear those wheels a-spinnin', feel the grit of the gravel as it spits up from the spinning tires that don't seem to be driving me anywhere lately.
I'm feeling like a bad mother.
It was easy to be a wonderful mother of a baby, new and pink and vanilla-scented. But now I have this little person who wants my attention most of the day, who demands and deserves hours of my time - and I feel like I don't know how to give it to her. Where before my days centred around her and her amusement, her edification, now I often feel myself wandering away from things with her, intent on finishing cleaning the kitchen, trying to get to yoga or to do some writing or bills, or cooking or cleaning or dragging myself back from the precipice of my own slide into...what? I don't even know what I'm sliding towards.
I watch how Ez plays with her and I am amazed by it. He thinks of the most creative little games to play with her, they play dress-up and house and hockey and games full of imagination...and patience. I hear them roaring with laughter and often, when I go upstairs and try to join them Nahanni is the quick to shout at me to get out and I feel a wave of inadequacy pour over me. I never make her laugh like that...Why don't I think of those games?..Why doesn't she want me here?
I struggle nowadays to find ways to entertain her, especially since I am simaultaneously trying to figure out my own return to life, my own return to myself. And I am really struggling with my own identity - just who the hell am I anymore? I feel like I used to have very specific identifiers for myself and my life - I am a successful actress, I am a doting mother, I am a fiery, roaring fabulous woman...
Well, was.
Now I really feel...doused. Yes, I am still an actress, but not what I was. I am still a doting mother, but not...what I was. I am still a fabulous, fiery woman -- somewhere. But those identifier cards don't seem to be there like they were. Now I'm 'just another woman with a kid' as one friend aptly put it. I no longer have a newborn at which to coo, I'm not pregnant or nursing, I'm not working on camera, I'm not even really writing lately. I had a flurry of motivated activity that has all fallen to the side and I feel stuck right back in the hinterland of non-me that I was in a while back. Granted, I had that brief respite when I booked onto that show (that show which will never be mentioned and I hope goes down in a burning wreckage of bad reviews and low viewership - yes, it's spite, but still, I'm bitter). I'm not going to try and sugarcoat it - this period has been really, really hard.
I adore my little daughter and I am proud of her beyond measure. Of course, I see where all the work I put in is visible in her incredible language skills (Mommy, look! I'm being ambidextrous!) and her excellent manners and her sweet, gentle disposition. I try to take her out and do fun things with her still, but I just...feel at a loss in general. I wonder what kind of example I am right now, what she feels from me in this gritty time in which I am trying to reclaim my lost self. Does she wonder where her real mom went?
I sure do.
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