Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Another year older

So last week I turned 37 years old.  I can hardly believe I am that old.  I still feel like I am 25, just trying to figure life and myself out.  This past year has had a lot of changes and I have had to reevaluate who I am and how I feel worthwhile without an outside job to go to.  And how I feel as a mother. Being home full time these last 6 months has been rewarding and wonderful on one hand and tedious and monotonous on the other.  I am not meant to be a permanent stay at home mom, at least not full time.  I don't have the patience for it.  I need to have somewhere to go that is just my own.  And, financially, I also have to find something.  I have been looking for months to no avail.  I am nearing the end of my state UI benefits and face trying to get Federal extended UI benefits to keep a roof over our heads.  I should be able to, but I really need a job as soon as possible.

I am slowly realizing what I need to make me happy and I am working toward that goal.  It is hard not to apologize for it or to put my needs last.  It has been my way almost all my life.  I feel like I have to apologize for who I am, what I want and what makes me happy.  I think that is part of being a woman.  We feel like who and what we are aren't ever good enough.  That, by making others happy, somehow we'll make ourselves happy.  What I am realizing, through therapy and just life experience, that that doesn't work.  I have to do what makes me happy and, if I am happy, I will have more to give to my family.

This is all well and good to say, but hard as hell to live on a daily basis.  Due to my extensive downtime lately, I seem to be addicted to Facebook.  Bad idea, I know.  By reading and seeing other people's seemingly perfect and fun-filled lives, I can't help but compare mine to others and find it lacking.  That is my Achilles heel - trying to measure up to the Joneses.  But what I keep reminding myself is that those people that live on Facebook, Twitter etc. and post all the spectacular things going on and pictures of the great places they have been are just as insecure as I am and maybe more so.  In trying to make themselves feel better about their lives, they share the 5% of their life that is happy, fun and wonderful.  The other 95% is hidden behind closed doors, never to be shared or seen.  I read another blog about this this last week and it was so good and right on.  http://www.rocknrollbride.com/2010/08/how-to-have-a-perfectly-imperfect-weddinglife/  Social networking sites aren't real life - they are soap operas and sitcoms of lives that show only those beautiful moments, not the tedious, the mundane, the painful, the embarassing.  Online, you can appear to be all the things you wish you were in your really real life.  I want to live my life off line and find happiness in just being me.  It's a work in progress...