Number One

Welcome. I don't know if anyone will read this. I don't know how much it matters to me if people do. Time will tell I guess.

This is just for me. A place where I can let out the things that for the sake of peace and harmony in my family I am apparently required to suck up into myself so everyone else can be OK. I can't pretend that it is anymore, much as I'm sure I'm fooling my children, my husband, my extended family, and to a certain extent, myself. Well, most of the time I'm fooling them.

On days like today, when I couldn't hold back tears of weariness, frustration, and just a touch of despair while I was reading my son his nap time story, I'm sure he noticed. I feel awful about that. I don't want my children to know that their mother is fallible, that she has problems, that she is not, in fact, Super Woman. Moms are supposed to be able to keep it together for everyone all the time, keep all the balls in the air. I am successful 99% of the time. Just not today.

So I see this blog as a purging. A place where I will vent my frustrations, tell a little bit of my story, and appreciate but not expect feedback. After all, this is pretty melancholy. I'm not sure people will be tripping over themselves to come and be depressed by Miss Anne. But I hope there will be some encouragement here too, because I have a generally good life. I have hope. I have faith in Christ. Materialistically, I have everything I could ever need or want. I'm just searching I guess for some elusive sort of earthly contentment. Maybe I shouldn't be, but I am. I am an imperfect human after all.

I want my husband to still love me the way he did when we married.
I want to hear his breath catch again when he looks at me.
I want to be identified as more than just somebody's mother or somebody's wife, though those rolls do define me and provide fulfillment.
I want to feel beautiful.
I want to matter.
From the outside I look like I have it all. Big house, nice cars, money in the bank, vacations. I have those things, but they have not given me joy. They do not fill this pit that I seem to have fallen into.

I have great joy in my children. They are my life. My world revolves around them. I give all of myself to them and wish only that I had more to give.

But just once, I would like to feel like maybe I am worth something beyond that. I want to be loved as a woman again, not just as a wife. I want to be desired. I want to stop crying myself to sleep. Or, in reality, crying in the car in the garage after the rest of the family is sleeping so no one will hear me.

I am fighting this battle to stay afloat but I don't know what is sinking me. I cannot put my finger on why I feel this way, why my husband has essentially fallen out of love with me, why I feel like I need to arm myself with pleasantness and good cheer to hide my true feelings and self from the world. How did I get here, to this place where the future looks bleak? Except of course, for my children. They are the bright spot on my horizon. Is this just a season in my life, or is this it? Do I immerse myself in motherhood until my children leave the nest? And then what?

I never imagined myself in this place.