How do you look at life? Are you a ‘glass is still half full” kind of person? A “glass is half empty” person? Or are you a “Who the hell drank my water again?” kind of person?
I’ve always considered myself a realist. I don’t look for ways to improve things. I try not to dwell on the bad. I look at What Is and deal with it appropriately.
Or, at least, I used to.
I’ve really been having a tough time lately. I don’t know if I’m MORE depressed now than I have been in the past…or if it just feels less justified now. It has been a year and nine months. I should be getting back to *normal* by now. Not that I’m always sad – I have plenty of good days. But sometimes, it just doesn’t take much to send me into my dark mood. For example, someone who used to read my blog, I’m not sure if she still does, lost her baby. I didn’t know it for a month. When I found out, I cried. And then when I got home, I cried some more. I have to ask myself “Why?” Why do I feel so involved in the sorrow of someone whom I’ve never met? I think a lot of it has to do with knowing how much it hurts. Knowing how she must feel. And the feelings all come flooding back. I can’t work. I can’t interact with my family. I think that I crossed a line somewhere between empathy and just plain unhealthiness. It’s completely normal to feel sorrow for someone – but not to stop your life because the pain seems like it’s too much to bear. It’s not even my pain, but a reminder of it.
I dwell on it. I let it consume me. I let it dictate my life. I let it define me. I let hover over me and take away my happiness. I get wrapped up in the sadness and let it envelope me and smother me. And I don’t want to anymore. I don’t want to be unhappy anymore.
I have to get the sadness out of my life. I have to stop inviting it into my home. Now, I don’t mean that I’m going to ignore when my friends (or acquaintances, co-workers, family) are in pain. I don’t mean that at all. That’s the NORMAL kind of sorrow that we really all need to be able to deal with.
But it’s time for some changes.
I already stopped watching horror movies a long time ago. I have seen so much REAL death in my life – I don’t ever want to see it again – Especially gratuitous death and gore.
But then, every night I watch the news and it makes me cry. Every night someone’s teenager is shot in the city or a baby is found in the river or a teacher is accused of sexual abuse. There’s a war in which people’s children are dying every day. EVERY DAMN DAY. I just can’t take it anymore. So news – as much as I love to yell at your weather people – you’re done for a while. No nightly news at all.
There are the indulgent websites. You know the ones. The addictive, scandalous kind. Where you hear about hundreds – if not thousands – of women hate their husbands. Or husbands who hate their wives. Or the worst – moms who hate their kids. I got involved for a while – but no more. No more entertaining myself with other people’s problems and shortcomings. These sites are fun for some, but they just have too much hate and sadness for my life right now.
Then there are the Internet Throw Downs. What actually spurred these changes (I’m slow) was an argument that ensued at Suburban Turmoil a while back. Lindsay said something to the effect of “I don’t think being a SAHM mom is as hard as being a WOHM mom.” That angered some SAHM’s who don’t think their job is very easy and they said some things. Things which I felt I needed to clarify for them – like the misconception that it’s fun for me to drive two hours a day to spend ten hours with people I really dislike doing a pretty thankless job. But in my “edjumakating” them – I ended up making it very personal and it got into a war of “Who’s life is harder?” Probably three days into it, someone made a comment to the effect of “Is this a contest or something?” And I opened my eyes. I’ve never thought that SAHM’s had it “easy” – I would sure like to be one – but only because I think I would enjoy that job much more than this one. (It does not, however, PAY as well as this one – monetarily, of course.) And there I was, trying to PROVE to these STRANGERS that my life is SOOOO hard. And I felt STUPID, because really, it isn’t. I may not LOVE my job and I may REALLY hate driving here – but that doesn’t mean my life sucks. I spend so much of my free time dwelling on what’s wrong that I don’t get to enjoy the good things.
I think about my mom at my age. When she was 25, she had three kids: 11, 9 and 8. She had to leave us home alone so she could work all day. She sometimes got food stamps to feed us. She was battling alcoholism. We rented all the time - she moved us from place to place – maybe because of money, maybe because of her own demons. A couple times, she bought houses only to have them foreclosed on when she could no longer afford them.
Her life must have been HARD. The Man and I make most of our bills on time. Sometimes things are tight. Sometimes we have a little extra cash to blow. The kids are healthy and we have stable jobs. Jobs, which I might add, that let us get away with a lot. I may not consider this job an ‘escape’ – as I often would like to escape from here – but it’s a pretty cushy job. And they leave me an awful lot of room for slack.
The Man is very guilty of missing the silver lining. He spends most of his time dreaming about what we don’t have and moaning about what we do. We had a long conversation last week and I brought it up to him. “What good is the future if you can’t be happy in the present?” And since that conversation, he’s been (just a little) less reluctant to get out of bed in the morning. He’s been trying hard to be happy with the time we get and stopped complaining (mostly) about the time we don’t get.
I realize this post is getting lengthy and losing focus, so let me reiterate: It’s time to get happy. It’s time to work when work needs to be done and play when the opportunity arises. It’s time to love going home instead of hating to come to work. It’s time to live it up on the weekends and work hard during the week. It’s time to get over the martyr syndrome and accept a little help. It’s time to stop inviting the sadness into my life and start spreading happiness to others. It’s time to stop bitching about everyone else drinking my water and just go fill the cup up myself.
It’s going to take practice, not inviting this stuff into my world, but I think I can do it. And I think it will do both my family and me a lot of good.
I’ve always considered myself a realist. I don’t look for ways to improve things. I try not to dwell on the bad. I look at What Is and deal with it appropriately.
Or, at least, I used to.
I’ve really been having a tough time lately. I don’t know if I’m MORE depressed now than I have been in the past…or if it just feels less justified now. It has been a year and nine months. I should be getting back to *normal* by now. Not that I’m always sad – I have plenty of good days. But sometimes, it just doesn’t take much to send me into my dark mood. For example, someone who used to read my blog, I’m not sure if she still does, lost her baby. I didn’t know it for a month. When I found out, I cried. And then when I got home, I cried some more. I have to ask myself “Why?” Why do I feel so involved in the sorrow of someone whom I’ve never met? I think a lot of it has to do with knowing how much it hurts. Knowing how she must feel. And the feelings all come flooding back. I can’t work. I can’t interact with my family. I think that I crossed a line somewhere between empathy and just plain unhealthiness. It’s completely normal to feel sorrow for someone – but not to stop your life because the pain seems like it’s too much to bear. It’s not even my pain, but a reminder of it.
I dwell on it. I let it consume me. I let it dictate my life. I let it define me. I let hover over me and take away my happiness. I get wrapped up in the sadness and let it envelope me and smother me. And I don’t want to anymore. I don’t want to be unhappy anymore.
I have to get the sadness out of my life. I have to stop inviting it into my home. Now, I don’t mean that I’m going to ignore when my friends (or acquaintances, co-workers, family) are in pain. I don’t mean that at all. That’s the NORMAL kind of sorrow that we really all need to be able to deal with.
But it’s time for some changes.
I already stopped watching horror movies a long time ago. I have seen so much REAL death in my life – I don’t ever want to see it again – Especially gratuitous death and gore.
But then, every night I watch the news and it makes me cry. Every night someone’s teenager is shot in the city or a baby is found in the river or a teacher is accused of sexual abuse. There’s a war in which people’s children are dying every day. EVERY DAMN DAY. I just can’t take it anymore. So news – as much as I love to yell at your weather people – you’re done for a while. No nightly news at all.
There are the indulgent websites. You know the ones. The addictive, scandalous kind. Where you hear about hundreds – if not thousands – of women hate their husbands. Or husbands who hate their wives. Or the worst – moms who hate their kids. I got involved for a while – but no more. No more entertaining myself with other people’s problems and shortcomings. These sites are fun for some, but they just have too much hate and sadness for my life right now.
Then there are the Internet Throw Downs. What actually spurred these changes (I’m slow) was an argument that ensued at Suburban Turmoil a while back. Lindsay said something to the effect of “I don’t think being a SAHM mom is as hard as being a WOHM mom.” That angered some SAHM’s who don’t think their job is very easy and they said some things. Things which I felt I needed to clarify for them – like the misconception that it’s fun for me to drive two hours a day to spend ten hours with people I really dislike doing a pretty thankless job. But in my “edjumakating” them – I ended up making it very personal and it got into a war of “Who’s life is harder?” Probably three days into it, someone made a comment to the effect of “Is this a contest or something?” And I opened my eyes. I’ve never thought that SAHM’s had it “easy” – I would sure like to be one – but only because I think I would enjoy that job much more than this one. (It does not, however, PAY as well as this one – monetarily, of course.) And there I was, trying to PROVE to these STRANGERS that my life is SOOOO hard. And I felt STUPID, because really, it isn’t. I may not LOVE my job and I may REALLY hate driving here – but that doesn’t mean my life sucks. I spend so much of my free time dwelling on what’s wrong that I don’t get to enjoy the good things.
I think about my mom at my age. When she was 25, she had three kids: 11, 9 and 8. She had to leave us home alone so she could work all day. She sometimes got food stamps to feed us. She was battling alcoholism. We rented all the time - she moved us from place to place – maybe because of money, maybe because of her own demons. A couple times, she bought houses only to have them foreclosed on when she could no longer afford them.
Her life must have been HARD. The Man and I make most of our bills on time. Sometimes things are tight. Sometimes we have a little extra cash to blow. The kids are healthy and we have stable jobs. Jobs, which I might add, that let us get away with a lot. I may not consider this job an ‘escape’ – as I often would like to escape from here – but it’s a pretty cushy job. And they leave me an awful lot of room for slack.
The Man is very guilty of missing the silver lining. He spends most of his time dreaming about what we don’t have and moaning about what we do. We had a long conversation last week and I brought it up to him. “What good is the future if you can’t be happy in the present?” And since that conversation, he’s been (just a little) less reluctant to get out of bed in the morning. He’s been trying hard to be happy with the time we get and stopped complaining (mostly) about the time we don’t get.
I realize this post is getting lengthy and losing focus, so let me reiterate: It’s time to get happy. It’s time to work when work needs to be done and play when the opportunity arises. It’s time to love going home instead of hating to come to work. It’s time to live it up on the weekends and work hard during the week. It’s time to get over the martyr syndrome and accept a little help. It’s time to stop inviting the sadness into my life and start spreading happiness to others. It’s time to stop bitching about everyone else drinking my water and just go fill the cup up myself.
It’s going to take practice, not inviting this stuff into my world, but I think I can do it. And I think it will do both my family and me a lot of good.
