There’s a quote regarding feminism that has floated around the
small corner of the internet I frequent, and that quote is:
We are the daughters of the feminists who said, “You can be anything,” and we heard, “You have to be everything."Courtney Martin, from Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters
Months and months before I ever came across this quote, I remember
saying to a friend of mine while discussing how overwhelming it is to be a
“modern woman” (wife, mother, housekeeper, personal chef, chauffeur, gym rat,
nutritionist, pediatrician, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.), I said to her, “…it’s
like, I think to myself, ‘I hate the feminist movement’ – fuck the feminist
movement. What has it given me other than the pressure to do and be EVERYTHING
and to do and be that everything PERFECTLY? It’s an impossible expectation, to
be a ‘true’ feminist… but because we should be able to be and do everything, doesn’t mean we should be expected to be and do everything. But
we are. And there’s the crux.”
So, really, I don’t believe “fuck feminism” – but I believe that
we, as women, have it skewed in our brains what feminism means and how it is
applicable in our Everyday Real Lives. I don’t think I know a single woman,
young or old, who doesn’t absolutely believe that they are continually failing
themselves, their careers, and/or their families. Whether single or married,
executive or waitress, someone with high self-esteem or low. We feel like we
are constantly failing at our lives.
…now this is the part where I start talking about myself a lot, so
I hope you weren’t expecting some great essay on the feminist movement and its
affect on the modern woman! Ha!
I recently took my eldest son, James, for his 8 year
check-up/physical/whatever-you-want-to-call-it. He’s grown two and a half
inches… and gained 14 lbs. My kid, he’s not a chubby kid – he’s a pretty
scrawny kid, actually. But now he has a little belly. A little, flabby belly
that flops over his pants… and a torso that has more cellulite than I think
anyone wants to see on their child (which I’ve obviously been in denial over
for a while now). So, naturally, my pediatrician expresses her concern, asks us
to cut back on treats (which, honestly, the kids don’t eat many of to begin
with), but mostly says, “Increase the exercise! In almost all instances where I
see a kid who is “skinny-fat”, it’s due to lack of exercise.”
This is so, so, so very true. My kid… he is kind of a wussy kid.
He doesn’t like to play sports, he’s not a big “go run around outside” person (he
likes to play outside – but it’s generally not super physical play)… his
passions lie in building amazing buildings and vehicles out of Legos. For hours on end. He loves to draw. He loves
to read. And, like all little kids, he loves tv and video games – but tv and
video games he doesn’t get much time with except on weekends thanks to how much
homework we have and the times we get home from work and eat dinner and all
that. He’s not very physically active. Even when we had him in martial arts
last year… it just wasn’t his thing. Our youngest is sooooo different – he
would live outside if we let him. He RUNS EVERYWHERE, he climbs, he jumps, he
wrestles… he’s a very physical kid. James was never this way, even as a
toddler/little guy. He enjoys going out and riding his scooter, he likes going
to the pool in the summer – but the intensity of that play is not very high.
It’s very relaxed play, if you will.
So now I have to find a way to get my kid active. And I will say,
he’s forever asking to do my workouts with me… but, and this is going to sound
selfish as hell… my workout time is MY time. And it’s about the ONLY “me time”
I get during the week.
See? Told you it was selfish and awful.
But I need to do something to make sure he’s getting that physical
activity in… and I’m not sure how to accomplish that in the measly 2 hours we
have in the evenings between getting-home and going-to-bed. So I looked through
our local rec center’s “magazine” that lists all the classes and programs, and
I found a Kids Bootcamp fitness class for children 6-11. Great! ….except that I
totally dropped the ball on enrolling him, because I had it in my head that I
didn’t need to PAY for something like that, that I could do it myself. Because
I need to do everything. Because I’m supposed
to do everything and be perfect.
This is just one more thing that “proves” what a failure I am as a
mother. And if I wasn’t such a failing wife/mother, we wouldn’t be in this
situation to begin with – because it’s only because of my failure at cooking/preparing well-balanced, delicious, and nutritious
dinners while simultaneously preparing and providing well-balanced, delicious,
and nutritious breakfasts and lunches for the following day that my child is
considered overweight by his medical professional and has cellulite covering
his little boy torso, and has such little upper-body strength that he can’t
pull himself up and out of a swimming pool, for example, without using the
ladder or going to the steps in the shallow end to begin with!! (Talk about a
run-on sentence…)
Obviously that statement is irrational and holds little place in
the realm of “fact”, but it doesn’t stop me from feeling that way. Ever. And
while I’ve done well to curb my negative inner-monologues regarding my body
image/weight, I’ve not done very well on the convincing myself I’m a good
person aspect. While I’m slowly learning to love the skin I live in… I don’t
really love my inner-self very much most of the time. I mean, how could I, when
obviously I’m such a glaring failure at everything I do? Right? (A somewhat
sarcastic statement there… somewhat) Shit, I couldn’t even keep on top of life
well enough to make some time to carve jack-o-lanterns for Halloween this year.
Do you know how awesome that felt? To have to tell your kid, “sorry, we ran out
of time for that this year”? We have 3 perfectly awesome pumpkins sitting on
our front porch that, I guess, will just remain there as Thanksgiving
decorations or something.
Life sure would be a lot easier if I could ever feel like the
constant pressure to “do it all” was gone. Even for just a day. Maybe a week,
actually. A week might be a better, healthier break. But I don’t know how to do
that… to stop trying to do everything would mean I don’t care. But I do care. I
care all the time about everything and every night that I don’t cook a “real”
dinner and let that load of laundry sit in the dryer for one more day and don’t
clean the bathroom and don’t vacuum the bedrooms and don’t make James actively
exercise, that is another bit of guilt that is added to the pile. A pile that
already looks like this:
Sometimes I’m really good at it. Sometimes I keep it all together,
I keep on top of it. Those are the times when things outside of my home life
are generally quiet. Work is slow or at least manageable, everyone in my family
is happy and healthy, my depression and anxiety are in a lull. Oddly enough these
times tend to come when my husband is overwhelmed and stressed and working
extra hours all over the place – perhaps it’s because I’m sort of forced into
the position of making it all work, as well as put in this place of, “Well,
you’re a stressed out mess, so it doesn’t do me any good to be a stressed out
mess with you.” …except the last time it didn’t really go down that way. I just
drank and slept a lot instead. (SOOO HEALTHY RIGHT?!)
I don’t really know how to wrap this up… I don’t know what else
there is to say. I’m finally getting myself back on track with better eating
habits and regular exercise, but I can’t seem to motivate to provide the same
for my son. And I feel in my very being that this makes me a terrible person and
a worse mother and, yet, that just makes me more depressed and less likely to
just charge forward and MAKE.IT.HAPPEN. It would also be helpful if every
goddamn thing wasn’t an argument or another “reminder” that I have to be on top
of… the kid is 8 years old and I have to remind him about 10 times every night
to wash his hair while he’s in the shower… and even then, at least twice a week
he gets out of the shower with DRY, UNWASHED HAIR. It’s INFURIATING. Mike and I
are constantly “reminding”, and it never gets better. The older he gets,
there’s more to remind him of… and just writing this right now is making me cry
because it is so overwhelming. Just
another joy of having a special needs child, who mostly just seems normal, but
you have to constantly remind yourself (more reminding!!) that his brain operates on a completely
different wavelength that anything you could possibly understand and how could
he possibly be bothered to wash his hair when he’s telling a story to himself
about an imaginary Lego world filled with all sorts of crazy characters?? Or
even just retelling Star Wars to himself for the ONE THOUSANDTH TIME?! What is
the washing of HAIR compared to these things??
…it makes me want to die a little bit. It makes me worry for him. How will we make it
through high school? College? ADULTHOOD?!
Now I’m kind of going off on another tangent that really won’t
lead anywhere, so I’m going to end this here. I’m stressed, I’m pretty angry a
majority of the time, I’m losing all hope in people more or less, I have a
grandparent who may not live through the rest of the year, I kind of hate my
job – but only about 70% of the time so I stay in it, I’m trying to come to terms with being a terrible human being,
and I’m trying to be a good parent and a good example on top of all of it.
I guess we could surmise that I’m neck-deep in a quarter-life
crisis. Maybe?
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