The past few days I’ve locked myself up in the internet, like some fabulous closet where only the glittery stream of information gets in. I don’t want to come out. Out there are bills that cannot be paid and normally well-behaved children who don’t want to this week and a spouse that loves me to distraction and is hurt that his need for me is such a burden to me. I don’t want the children to find the bottom of my patience when it should be bottomless; I don’t want to find my husband’s needs to be the last straw to a long pattern of bearing everybody’s burdens.
I hate to say it but I too was too afflicted with the gotta make everyone happy disease. There isn’t any reason why they shouldn’t be happy, but two points still remain, still are, will always be — why does that happiness have to revolve around my sacrifices, and why doesn’t anyone spend their last lost precious drop of resources on me?
It’s the grouchy maker, the martyr creator, I swear it’s this belief that it’s okay, it’s expected that Mom takes not only the brunt of the burden, but all even down to every last ounce of the load. And what do they know of it? They’re children. They’ve never seen anything else in their lives. And spouse is gone all day every week day and sees life through the prism of his computer games and his music frames. Somebody had to make the sacrifices to keep us all from spinning madly, some off-balance out of kilter buzz saw, spitting sparks as it wobbles destructively through the universe. But I’d say that thirteen years of crazy-making is just about enough, thanks, really no, it’s time for a different pattern. If only the old pattern wasn’t so thoroughly broken and forgotten and erased down through the years. How can I retrace what I used to be, relearn who I used to be, if so much of it has leaked through the cracks of my cobbled together life?
I used to be somebody. So long ago. I used to be somebody. Where did that somebody go?
sagibaro 