Atelophobia

I’ve been struggling with this my whole life, this fear of never being good enough.

As I am, where I am, right now, I struggle with it.

Not daily, I mean, I am not consumed with this sense of inadequacy at all times. I know I am capable of being a good cook, maybe even a great cook. I am capable of being a good friend, maybe even a great friend. I am capable of being a good mother, wife, daughter….maybe not so much sister…I don’t know, maybe I am a good sister, some of the time, but I have to say I try bloody hard to be a good mother, wife and daughter. I just find the sister thing works with one sibling and simply isn’t enough for another sibling.

Reality is, if I had no siblings, I would be doing just fine within my family sphere, of being enough. Enough of a daughter.

Sigh.

Where was I?

Right, I have been a mother for almost 17 years of my life. And I have to say, for a good chunk of that time, it wasn’t a conscious effort. I had Jakob when I was 22, I was young enough to not know better, young enough to not be consumed with these feelings of inadequacy because I had no one else to compare myself to. Everyone around me, my peers, my friends, none of them had kids because they were all on the path of career or simply trying to keep a girlfriend or boyfriend, forget the whole insane idea of marriage and babies, right?

So why is it that now, as I approach 40, with three kids on me, I am finding myself questioning my ability as a mother, as a productive member of society, as a rational, thinking and feeling member of humanity?

I find myself surrounded by other mothers, many that graduated from Stanford or Oxford, or had jobs as lawyers, bankers, pilots…and we are all in this same boat of suddenly being, “just Mom”.

I find myself trivializing my college degree, one I actually earned in my 30’s, a feat many looked at as being incredible, but that I look at as, “Well, I did nothing with my degree” vs how I felt when getting it, like “Damn, I am the most productive and thought provoking contributor in this class full of teenagers who couldn’t give a fuck!”

When did I go from looking at my life achievement in terms of a pay rise or a quarterly bonus, free drinks, gifted TV’s from my boss or even shoes…to where I am looking at my day as I try to fall asleep at night, restless, and feeling like I accomplished nothing at all and that I am, for all who don’t know, a frail and failing fraud.

My two littler kids go to the same school, for the same time slot, 9-12 in the morning, Monday through to Friday. I don’t sign them up for any crazy activities but the one kid has speech therapy on Thursday afternoons and the two of them have swimming lessons on Friday afternoon. At some point soon I will sign them up for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu on a Wednesday. My eldest kid travels between homes, he’s co-parented by me and my evil ex. I say evil because despite nearly 14 years passing by since I left his evil ass, the man still can’t seem to figure out where the high road is and how to get there, so as recently as last month I basically left him where he’s at, still searching for that high road, which apparently is impossible to find when you are riding a high horse, the irony of it all.

Anyway. So basically, Wednesday my eldest comes for dinner, and then we see him most weekends, two out of every three. So kinda, Wednesday is also an “It” day.

So my days go something like this:

Get woken anywhere between midnight and 5am, at least once, if not twice, by either one kid or two. Hope to make it through to when they fully wake sometime between 6 and 7am.

Then we get into breakfast battles. He wants pancakes, he wants egg, he wants yogurt, he doesn’t want bananas, he doesn’t want the pink one, he wants the green one, he doesn’t like the….and it goes on and on from there.

Breakfast battles done, all fires out, we go into the teeth brushing battle and then the get shoes on and get in the fucking car battle. The school is only 5 mins away from the house, but believe me this feels like eternity. He wants the window open, but its raining, but he wants to feel the rain, but we would get wet, but its cold, but he likes the cold….and on and on from there until we get to the school and I am free of them.

I walked away from school the other day and I saw the headmaster, the guy is so good at looking cheery, but holy crap he looked tired! I thought, here I am, I feel like my day is over before its begun and I only have these two small kids to worry about, this guy here has a whole day of screaming kids, all 9 classrooms of them! Fuck my life, I got it easy!

Honestly, even if I try to run ONE frikken errand between 9 and 12, which is drop off and pick up time, I end up being late. Any errand, be it picking up groceries or dropping off a painting to be framed or going to an ATM to withdraw money…you somehow end up being stuck in traffic and in a nail biting, hair raising race back to the school to ensure you don’t have 2 kids looking like you abandoned them because you arrived 3 minutes after pick up time.

So this basically means that Monday to Friday, I can’t really expect to do fuck all through the morning because, remember, lunch still has to be prepared before they get picked up at 12 and if I leave it to our lovely helper (yes, yes, I know, first world problems) they will likely get rice vermicelli boiled in chicken stock with a few shreds of bok choy. I love the woman dearly and I appreciate the help I get, but she wouldn’t know her ass from her elbows when you explain nutrition and nutrient density to her. Overcooked pasta and a bottle of tomato sauce, that happens to be her forte. She cooks way too much pasta, way too early and then believes a simple reheat in the microwave is fine, using the entire portion…and then thinks you can just stick that in the fridge and bring it back out and microwave it again, and again, and again…and on it goes. So after having known the lovely lady almost 16 years (yes, I have known her since my ex husband and I first employed her when Jakob was 4 months old, she has worked between homes and then just for him and now, since a few months ago when he let her go, rather unceremoniously, I hired her for sheer lack of a better option). I know, like I said, first world problems, and I don’t hate cooking for the kids, well, sometimes I do, purely because I love to cook, I sometimes live to cook, and these two heathens don’t know a good meal when they see one, or eat one, for that matter, so its hardly a task I gain great satisfaction from because its like this hurdle I have to jump every fucking meal.

I love my kids, don’t get me wrong here.

But you have to understand how much I love to cook. I love to cook. I love food. I love to watch others enjoy the food I cook. And when you see some little monster spit out the food you took serious effort trying to come up with because he hates this, he hates that, he hates….pretty much everything but plain pasta! You will understand. Its really only the one guy, Sasha, my middle child…the me in my family…he’s the one who gives me food grief and makes me go on almost Everest level adventures in culinary art to conquer his palate. He doesn’t like meat, would practically filter feed it out of a spoonful of food with one tiny morsel of mince in it, but he loves squid, but only if its in a ring shape or a tentacle, but nothing like slices that he can’t recognize.

He eats octopus too.

And eggs. Lots of eggs.

If you let him, he’d eat eggs for every meal.

But I don’t, I am not that kind of mum.

But he’s particular about the eggs. Not keen on fried eggs, not keen on hard boiled eggs, not keen on overcooked scrambled eggs, not keen on overcooked omelette, the list goes on.

Yogurt used to be his go to, but now its a problem. He wants only strawberry yogurt, its gotto be firm, the teaspoon has to be only so full, any fuller and he might have to chew even if there are no bits in it!

The kid doesn’t drink water either.

No water.

Unless you mix it in apple juice. So I have had to shift to buying expensive coconut water, just to try to feel like I am not being this horrible parent. Teachers side eye me, other parents do too, but FML, this is the kid I got, my middle child, my Sasha. He’s perfect the way he is, even if he drives me round the bend and can’t say the letter “F” right unless its in the word “fire fighter”, he’s getting there.

The youngest little guy, Micah, he’s an animal. He’ll eat anything.

Even if he doesn’t like it, all you have to do is tell him to eat it and he will just deal with the slight dislike and eat what he’s given.

He shares too. He is super good with saying “Sorry”, “Please”, “Thank you”…all things Sasha almost refuses to say, but he’s also got a fire in him, a temper, a frown, and a cheeky grin for when you tell him off.

Ah, I am getting side tracked here.

What I am trying to say is…

I have no time.

I feel like when I do have time, when I do manage to do something for myself, its like its the only thing I managed to accomplish that day.

It may not make sense to you if you aren’t in the same position, but let me break it down for you.

Monday, I managed to go get a painting framed. I had been planning and planning to get it framed, it had been in my hands since Christmas, but finally, I crossed that bridge. I carried it from the parking lot under the mall, several blocks, in my outstretched arms, trying not to trip, all the way to the framers that I thought were closest to where I parked.

This one errand, picking the frame, agreeing to the cost of it, figuring when I could pick it up, without really thinking of how the fuck I would pick up and transport a frame as big as this one is going to be, this already made me 5 mins late for kids school pick up.

After they got back from school I took them out to the playground, I took them to the supermarket with me, I let them pick out their own drinks and there was peace until we got home, then they got back to fighting, overturning tubs of lego, screaming over train tracks being separated, fighting over trains, insisting on batteries for other trains…until I gave up and popped the TV on, played “The Little Prince” while I got down to prepping them dinner.

I skipped my training that evening purely because I couldn’t muster up the energy to go.

Tuesday began with one kid peeing the bed during the night, the other coming to my bed as well, then expecting hand holding and complaining he wanted milk that I refused to give him. Tired in the morning, the day started again, more fighting over breakfast…school, pick up from school, and then I managed to get away so I could do lunch with 3 other mothers, close friends, and for a brief moment during the day, I felt like I was me, not me the mother, not me the wife, but me. Me the friend, me who had a personality and could laugh about stuff and could enjoy a spicy meal cooked by some total stranger. Just me.

Get back to more mayhem, more he said he said, he did he did (yes, I have all sons), and I prepped dinner for them, then despite having changed into clothes fit for the gym, because that was the plan, I wanted to head to the gym and do some sprint training, I gave myself a pass and drew a bath, chucked magnesium salts in there and just soaked in it while two small kids banged on the door insisting they wanted a bath too.

I wanted to color in my “Mindfulness Coloring Book” for grown ups, but I found the color pencils in the house are all busted or likely to be busted upon sharpening, this is what small kids do when they color with clenched fists around pencils and then fling the box of pencils all over the room. So I promised myself that tomorrow, I would get some decent coloring pencils and then my chance to meditate would be complete.

Wednesday…more of the same, except finally, I went back to training. 7:30pm training happened after I had prepped dinner for all three kids, I spent time talking with my eldest over early dinner, then gave him money for a cab back to his fathers house, if I had been home I would drop him, but he’s almost 17, he’s totally responsible and capable of making it back to his Dad’s for 8pm, and we live just 10 mins away anyway.

Training is my one piece of heaven. Apart from my occasional lunches with my friends, training at JAB is the only other thing I get to do that is for me. Its where I get to be me the person, me the individual and not me the mom, me the wife, me the daughter, me the sister.

I walked into training feeling down and depressed and I walked out feeling elated and confident.

Exercise, it has to be said, is the most under utilized anti-depressant out there. People talk about it, but reality is, the conversation we have about depression isn’t open enough. And lets face it, when you feel depressed, the last thing you have energy for is pulling yourself together and getting the fuck out there and exercising. Its tough. But once you feel this sense of elation, this boost in your feel good hormones, you understand how vital a part it plays and how much relief you get from it.

Today, Thursday, started with the same shit fight over breakfast, but instead of rushing to school, I had to rush them to “Sports Day” at a completely different location 30 mins away. Ah, sports day. Who knew that preschoolers running around doing silly things like racing around cones with a scarf on their head could be this exhausting.

Sports day ended with some bouncy castle action and a packed lunch of bananas, madelines, milk and cookies. Shoot me.

Quick drive home, a short chill out, and then it was time to take Sasha to speech therapy.

Speech therapy always involves a nail biting, anxiety inducing search for a parking spot at any one of the highly sought after metered parking spots near the therapists office. Of course, those meters only offer a 30 min option and the therapy session is 30 mins, but it means that you park, head to the therapists office, preferably early, then get him in there, then rush out, re-up on the parking meter, rush back, then hope for the therapist not to fill you in on the progress for longer than 10 mins lest you end up overshooting the 15 mins you added (coz the meter doesn’t allow you to add another 30, you can only ever up the number to 30, so if you were at 5 mins when you recharged, you can up it another 25mins! Its an annoying countdown and yes, they have those fucking meter sharks wandering that area on the regular, I have been ticketed before, assholes! Like, why the heck can’t they ticket someone parking on the sidewalk! Why me???)

After speech therapy I made it home with Sasha…wishing I could just curl up with my Mindfulness coloring book for adults…but then I decided, you know what, I need to write.

I fucking need to get these thoughts out of my head and into some bin in cyberspace.

I am an individual, a college graduate, Dean’s list wherever I managed to make it to college, I worked some interesting jobs in my life, I have earned some good money in my time, and here I am. Mom. Struggling to find the time to run a jewellery business. Struggling to find the time to practice the piano. Struggling to find the time to learn how to solder. Struggling to find the time to learn how to paint watercolor. Struggling to find the time to write.

Struggling to actually come to terms with who I am and how this, this here me where I am now, this has got to be enough. This has got to be something I am proud of and that I have got to be able to reassure myself that I am going ok.

I’m training hard, I am succeeding in my training, I am strong even if my wrist feels like I am turning 40 and my knees concur.

I have a keen eye for beautiful pieces of jewellery, and in the few instances when I get a chance to sell my jewellery, I am very successful. I need to learn to take comfort in that.

I am patient with my kids and I do get genuine joy in our interactions, I know it may not sound that way right now, but I do. I see so much of myself in each of them, and even in that stubborn non-apology or that cheeky grin when one says, “Nooope” when you smell a rotten stench and ask “Have you done a poop in your pants?” Well…what can I say, I may not have ever imagined that my life would be like this…but its been just swell.

Asshole ex and all, I honestly do have a good life.

My biggest struggle is internal. Its learning to accept who I am now, to know that I won’t always be who I am now, that one day I could be someone different, but to not word that in such a way that I believe that one day I will be “more”.

I won’t be more, because that implies that right now, as I am, I am less.

Less than what I could be. Less than what I should be. Less than what I am meant to be.

As if what I am meant to be is somehow way better, more whole, more complete…

Its been a long and drawn out process, coming to terms with the every day of my life. For someone who never expected to live past 30, its phenomenal I have made it to 40 and that I have, if anything at all, become more me than I could have ever imagined. Is this what aging is about? These not-quite epiphanies, these slow realizations about self, a quiet confidence that is built by reluctant hands.

I think that must be it. From the acceptance of gray hairs and the awareness of the ache in my knees after a phenomenal snow boarding season, a season of fears conquered and laid to rest. I know it. I am actually in the final half of my life. If I live till 60, I only have until my kids are grown, they may not even be married when I die.

I think I am becoming more aware of this and in that I am trying to hang on to these moments. To not beat myself up about the money I could be making (although that would be nice), to not palm off the food prep onto a woman who makes great dal and curry but who wouldn’t know how to throw a shepherds pie together unless it had coriander in it. I am also, and this is the big part for me, accepting other peoples imperfections. I wouldn’t say that is the case for everyone, but for example, my helper. A few months ago I was ready to fire her.

Seriously, fire her.

I had enough, I was fed up, I felt boxed in, I was tired of being taken for a fool.

But here I am, still working with her.

She’s come around, of course. She has stepped up, stopped being a lazy git, is actually cleaning and caring more about her job than she had before, and I think, deep down, I care about her just as much as I have always cared about her. I have nursed her through hospital stays and surgery, and she has nursed me through hangovers when Jakob was a kid and I was still being a 20 something year old. The woman has seen me grow up, she has seen Jakob grow up. She deserves some credit for being so dependable in her will to stay with my family.

Sure shes a 48 year old who could easily be mistaken for a woman 20 years older, but she’s had a hard life.

You don’t know the half of it.

And no, its not my fault, she just has one fucked up family of her own and a lot of heartache. Everything from a cheating spouse who died from a heart attack mid argument with her to a son who became a father at 17, to the same son being a bit of a layabout and her having to support his 3 kids…and now…well, heck, her sons wife, that woman even sold their kid to some pervert pedo when the kid was just 12! So here my helper is, supporting the cost of lawyers, court fees incurred while trying to change the custody of her grand daughter over to the great aunt and away from the idiot parents…Ugh. Its a mess. Somewhere years ago there was also the suicide (by poison of some kind) of the woman my helpers husband was bonking. Its the worlds worst telenovela when you are poor. Its like a cycle of poverty you can’t break out of. Even though she earns a good wage in comparison to Sri Lanka, its always like throwing her money into a money pit when it goes back home. For years she refused to go home, finding ways to renew her employment visa by taking a short trip out to the nearest country and then coming back. Thats how much she dreaded dealing with the system of leeches back home.

So yes, we have been through a lot together, and I honestly find that it would simply be harder to try to hire someone else. I have been burned by the last one I hired, a full on liar and a thief, so yeah, fuck it, no more. Just learn to live with the status quo. I get more than enough help from her to keep sane. I cook, she cleans, I still do my share of the parenting and she gets to be the one the kids run to when I am pissed off with them!

Life is short.

It may be too short for me to keep my sister in my life.

I honestly tried, I visited her, I supported her, I thought her and I were doing great actually.

But sometime before Christmas she had a bit of a shit fit on whatsapp and things have never been the same since. I looked at her in a completely new light after that, but really, at my own life and how I manage it, and I figured, nah, I don’t need this shit. Over it.

Toxic people come in all walks of life. Sometimes its that drinking buddy. Sometimes its that friend you thought you knew. Sometimes its that work colleague. Sometimes its that boss. But sometimes its a member of your family.

People always tell you to suck it up, “blood is thicker than water” and all that bullshit, but dude, no one can beat you down, hate on you and essentially spit in your glass-half-full and think “You just gotto suck it up and keep me in your life to keep doing this over and over coz we are family”.

Nah, my kids, they are my family.

My brother said, “What if your husband left you or died, I know your life is good now, but you know, you will need your family” and I thought, wtf? If my husband left me or died, I would have enough on my hands worrying about my kids. How the heck would my siblings help me bring them up? One lives in Singapore, the other in India, neither are countries I want to live in. My parents are old, I love them, but they wouldn’t be the ones I turn to for help with my kids. I would have to muster all my courage and inner strength to be Mum and Dad for my kids.

I don’t treat my sister like shit. I get that she feels like she had it tough, but its not like I had it easy, we all had the same fucking parents. Get a grip, get over it. But its not even the parent thing, the reality is, from what she said in that one batshit crazy whatsapp rant she had, is that she really resents me. Contempt.

Thats the word I was looking for.

She had contempt for me. She thinks I think I am better than her.

Therein lies the crux of the situation.

For years when I was divorced or less financially secure, it was easy for her to gift me things, to say life will get better, to show me how I too could be successful like her.

But as I settled into a happy relationship, more kids, a happy marriage and a content life…her own unhappiness has become a reason to compare and contrast, everything is a competition. I get that this is how we were brought up, my mother compared us to each other a lot, it was not a good way to bring us up, but its how we grew up…but the things my sister said…they could only have come from a place of deep unhappiness. And much as I would love to have sympathy, I can’t bring myself to empathize.

So instead I have simply taken a step back.

We no longer communicate. We live in completely different countries and lead completely different lives.

I reckon without me in her life to constantly compare her life to, she can finally be happy and feel secure. And that would bring me comfort.

So now, with all that off my chest, I am going to head back to the kitchen and prep dinner for the monsters before I go pick up some movie tickets for my eldest and I for a showing of Zoolander II for tomorrow.

Life goes on…

Peace 🙂