Sometimes this single mother stuff is just hard. It just is sometimes. And I wonder it just must be so much easier to do this with a partner; it has to be. Right?
I've had 4 days off...so very lovely. And Tate was a dream most of the weekend, if not all. I mean he had his weepy moments but no meltdowns....absolute bliss. But on Saturday I was absolutely exhausted. I mean exhausted. The entire day. I felt like I was in a sleep deprived fog. ( I do now attribute that to a taken too late in the evening on Friday Zyrtec) I was miserable. And that's when I started feeling sorry for myself.
And I realized that noone, noone will ever worry about Tate like I do. Noone will ever be or feel as responsible for him as I do. Even when we're not together I'm the only one thinking about him constantly. When I'm out and someone is babysitting I know I have to come home, and be the only one who will wake up with him in the morning. And on the two nights we have spent apart I was up at 7:30 for good (with wake-ups continuously from 5:30am on) partly because I couldn't wait to see him again and mostly because I didn't want my parents to have to take care of him too terribly long in the mornings.
I just wonder when do I ever, ever get to stop worrying about my child? When do I get to have someone else, just for 1 minute, share some of the millions of concerns I have floating in my head about raising this precious boy on this amazing Earth? And I know worrying about your child for always and forever is not a fate of the single parent only....all parents have that blessing. But I mean I wish I had someone to share my worries with...from what school should I send him to to should we do the flu vaccine this year to does he have friends to is he being bullied to what color should we paint his room? It's hard, really hard sometimes to be the go-to person all the time. The buck always stops with me. Oh I can talk to friends with kids and get their opinions, but they are not invested like me in Tate's well being. They may love and care about him, but honestly where he should go to school is not of any real interest to them. And my family is amazing, and they do 110% love this child with no abandon, but they will always, always defer to me. And though they give their opinions they won't argue with me about my choices (do I really want them to?), but you get the point.
This weighs on me heavily. I love this little boy so much. I cannot imagine my life without him. And I want to much for him I can't even enumerate it. And that much love, compassion, joy, passion, worrying and caring is exhausting.
So, in the midst of all this worry and exhaustion I laid down with Tate on Saturday. I put him in my bed around 12:45 and joined him at 1:15. He woke up at 2:15; I looked up at him groggily and told him to please play quietly.
HE DID!!! He sat there on my bed reading books and playing with his trains. Well I think that's what he did...I opened my eyes again around 2:45 and he was still sitting there happy as a clam.
Have I mentioned how much I love him? I was in bed again that night in our room and asleep by 10pm. He woke at his normal 6 Sunday morning and I thrust my phone at him to watch some Thomas while I snoozed for 45 minutes and this morning he slept (or didn't wake me) until 6:30!!
So tonight I'm still tired. And though I wish someone would walk up behind me right now and offer to take the trash to the curb, feed the cat, empty the litter box, make Tate's lunch, empty the dishwasher, load the dishwasher, brush my teeth, gather our stuff for tomorrow or simply rub my shoulders one quick time, I'll be ok.
And I'll have it all done in 52 minutes.
That's what we single mamas do.
The impossible.
All done with love.
E.T.A. All done! Yep!! In 42 minutes no less. And I uploaded some Flip videos to both iPhoto and Flip Share, checked the mail, put on my pjs, wrapped my hair and said hi to my neighbor at the curb as we passed in the night.
Now I'm going to go check on my sleeping baby then crawl into bed myself. I deserve it!
3 comments:
Well said & so true!
This won't really make you feel better... and really, it deserves a post of its own... but today a woman came to see me. She and her husband are getting a divorce and she just found out that he has been leaving their twin daughters with his new girlfriend while he goes home to his own apartment to sleep.
And she thought, whatever their differences, that he was at least a good, if not outstanding, father. But now that their marriage is falling apart, she is finding out that he's not even so good in that department.
Which made me think... it's ALWAYS up to us. Partner or not. Of course it would be nice to have someone to share... but that puts your child at risk, too.
I know this doesn't really help but it's been weighing on my mind.
Yes, very well said. It is and always will be what we do.
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