I’ve always been a free spirit, but I’ve also done my best to live up to my responsibilities. I worked hard, paid my bills, got married and had 2 children, even though I was pretty sure motherhood wasn’t really my bag. And that’s when the decision-making power in my life was pretty much removed.
I don’t think people fully understand the total immersion aspect of raising children. Those dolls they give teenagers in high school are barely a good start, a mere glimpse. Nothing can really prepare one for the continuous, day-in-day-out, year-in-year-out lifestyle of parenthood. I’m convinced, if people really knew, we’d have far fewer babies.
I did what I was supposed to do, and I did it with gusto. After all, this was the most important responsibility of my life – I committed to do the very best job I could. I gave over my whole life, my whole being to my family, my children, and it felt like the right thing to do. We were happy, for a minute. I have the photo.
Then, as is the case with so many families, everything fell apart. I’m not going to go into the details of how it fell apart. After 12 years of marriage, I had to leave him. I took the children out of state to California where I had some family. He died 2 years later, nobody even knew he was sick until it was too late.
I did what I was supposed to do. I raised our children on my own. I dealt with all the anger and confusion over their dad’s death, and did my best to keep them safe and put them on the path toward healthy adulthood. Ten years of my life spent trying to be both mother and father without much outside help, it felt like twenty. They are finally grown and on their own and, at the age of 50, I’m about to find out how well I did with them.
I live alone now. My spirit has needed a great deal of healing time. At first, I thought I just needed to BE without having to worry about anyone else. I thought if I could get through the day without having to hear “Mom!” I would be happy. I thought all I needed was to be able to do what I wanted without a discussion or argument and my life would be complete.
I was wrong. What I require is even more basic than that. I don’t want to be told what to do – not by a man, a boss or even my own concept of parental responsibility – ever again. I don’t want outside events like a job loss or rent hike to dictate what I have to do or what my life is like. I don’t even want to hang out with people who have a bossy manner; they might not actually be telling me what to do, but their careless words shear through my skull just like the sound of a baby crying.
I have absolutely no patience with people who say things like, “You should just…” particularly when it comes to the overwhelm experienced by many young mothers and even long-term family caregivers. I find most of these rude people have never been there themselves or they couldn’t be so flippant with advice or unrealistic in their expectations of others. Worst of all, when I try to explain to them how disrespectful they’re being, they are shocked as if they were only “trying to help” and they want to know, “Why are you getting upset?” No amount of explanation will ever help them to understand just how judgmental and demeaning they sound when they over simplify one of the most stressful experiences a person can go through with, “All you have to do is…” For me, it’s a total deal breaker, no matter who they are.
I am so determined to live by my own terms that I have taken steps to reduce this kind of influence in my life. I live a couple hundred miles away from any family members now. I didn’t do this to get away from them, it was really just another directive from a Universe that likes to tell me what to do, but it makes it easier to hear myself think. I still talk to them regularly, but on a daily basis, mine is the primary voice I hear. I won’t be staying here, but I haven’t decided where I want to go yet. I won’t budge until I decide it’s time.
I am creating the career that I want. In fact, I’m pursuing the writing career I had to abandon when everything fell apart. It’s been hard shifting gears and I’ve had a LOT of people say, “Why don’t you just get a job?” Well, I’ll tell you. I don’t want a job. I want a career. In fact, I want to be able to work on a laptop from anywhere in the world and there’s absolutely no reason why I can’t. I’m certainly not going to give up without trying, no matter how many people tell me I can’t. I really hate being told what to do.