Lost and Found

I've written over 400 posts on this blog since I started it, but I've written over 100 more that I never published.  Posts that felt too private or too public or too whiny or too childish to put out there.  But sometimes I go back through and read them like I would pick up an old diary, leafing through the old thoughts in my brain way back when, and remembering that even when I felt like I was low I always managed to float back to the surface from the way down deep.  Life's good like that, you know?

Anyway, I came across this post that I wrote 3 years ago, almost to the day actually, and I wanted to share it.  Three years feels like a lifetime right now because Ava would have been 3 and Aiden would have been 4 about to turn 5, and years have a way of seeming like an eternity, but so very much has changed since then. New schools, new jobs, new friends, new teachers, new everything.  I'm still just as insecure about my mothering skills as I was when I wrote this post 3 years ago, and maybe I'm starting to realize that I will never think that this is all as easy as pie. Maybe I will never look at the end of a day and think I did everything right. And that's ok. Three years later, my kids are still making me want to be better, every single day, and trying to be better is really all we can do I think.

So, three years ago, there was this ***

There is a place that I go in my head, sometimes, and it is dark and dangerous and I know that I can't linger for fear of drowning. Every once in a while, I am watching my children as mothers often do, and I think to myself, "I wish they had better than me. I wish they weren't stuck with me." It's a terrible thing to think, and in the instant that the words have formed in my brain I am already backpedaling and validating all of my parenting choices and giving myself little internal high-fives and back-pats for the good things I've done for my children that day. But it's too late, those words are already there, lingering inside my always-too-busy brain. And it's all I can think about...

I.Am.Flawed.

Sure, aren't we all? I know you're thinking that. But there is always, always, this tiny voice inside my head whispering evil things, "Your children deserve a better mother than you, someone with more patience, less of a temper. Someone who hugs more and yells less. You could be doing better, you aren't really trying your hardest, are you?" Am I? Some days I just don't know...

I always thought that when I became a mother, I wouldn't have a choice in the matter--I would always want to be the best mother I could be for them. But now, having children of my own, whom I love dearly but some days make me want to rip my own hair out and run screaming into the lake...I don't know. Some days I'm really not trying my hardest. Some days I am barely scraping by, pulling my sanity behind me like some ripped and ragged security blanket. Some days I'm not even trying to be a good mother, I'm just trying not to lose my mind. And that, in a nutshell, is terrifying.

But there is a light at the end of this post. Because I can truthfully say that even on those days where all I am doing is barely managing to keep it together, they are making me want to be better. I don't always succeed, but my kids make me want to succeed. They really do make me want to be a better person, a better mother, a better wife, a better friend. Because of them, I am constantly reminding myself of my opportunities to improve, to handle a situation differently the next time around, to not sweat the small stuff. Because I really want them to look up to me, to think of me not as a perfect mother, but as one who can make mistakes, apologize, and try harder next time. It's all I will ever want from them--not perfection, but a good heart filled with good intentions.