Saturday, August 17, 2013

On Choosing Beer, Sushi & Happiness...

If you've been with me over on G+ this past week, then you know I've hit a patch of general fatigue, restlessness and malcontentment from working at home while being a stay at home parent. And I think those patches are just part and parcel of the overall human condition, but that are perhaps magnified or protracted by the stay at home parenting thing.

Not that some of us can't be really and truly fulfilled in that career path alone, but that a lot of us choose it for the time being because it is the path that makes the most sense for our families, even if we have the option to do it differently.

beer +

Actually, come to think of it, I've taken the other option in a past life too. I've worked full time with others caring for my children while I was at the office, and I can say that the same frustrations arise when your desire to be a present parent butts up against pretty much all your other non-parenting desires and ambitions.

Add to that the general fatigue of having a little one who still keeps odd hours that are not compatible with your own odd hours, and you are bound to have moments. Moments in which you would like to escape your life for just a few moments. Not that you don't love your life. And not that you're not grateful. But just that you're frustrated. And because against your better and sound judgment, it feels like there is nothing to be done to change your situation.

To make it worse, a piece of you wants to wallow in that frustration until it wells up in your chest and makes you want to cry in a big, pathetic heaping pile of self shitty pity.

The truth is, sometimes, there really is nothing to be done to change the situation right then and there. Sometimes, in order to be good, happy, healthy and fulfilled human beings, we have to commit for a time to things that frustrate us because it is truly the best for everyone, self included, in the long run. Sometimes, without giving up on ourselves and our dreams, we have to have patience for our temporary situations because we realize that they are serving a very good purpose.

sushi =

And sometimes the only good thing to be done in those moments when you can't, and perhaps shouldn't, be trying to alter the root cause of your frustration, is to choose to allow some totally unrelated but totally accessible thing to make you happy in the moment and to make the necessary wait less painful.

It only took me 15 minutes of straight bitching, moaning, whining and downloading to The (Very Empathetic) Man after he asked what he could do for me to stop and look in his eyes long enough to see his genuine desire to help me through the moment by doing something, anything, to make it better. And to realize that nothing I was doing was helping or allowing him to help me and partner with me, through this piece of our life together.

It was only after speaking the same frustrations and annoyances aloud in several different words and crying into the dishes that I was so fucking sick of washing and running out of different ways to express the same nowhere leading negativity that I realized how tiring, and frankly tiresome, I was being. To both of us.

But I didn't want Dean to take Izzy off my hands while I left the house. I'd missed him all day. And I didn't want him to take over the dishes because my irrational compulsion to finish them, because I'd started them, wouldn't let me let him do the dishes. And in the end, I don't really want to go back to work in an office right now. I love being home with Izzy, and I'd be a fool not to cherish a second chance to cherish one of my children in a way life had not allowed for before...

But the road to Impossibly Unhappy is paved with those kinds of can'ts and wont's. And before you know it, you've set down so many stones, you're practically there.

So I had to pick something, anything, in that moment, and allow it to make me happy. And perhaps more importantly, to allow Dean to make me happy.

Beer and sushi.

That's never not made us happy.

And Dean was truly happy to oblige.

And I was happy.

For the beer and the sushi of course.

But mostly for the choice I made to let the beer and sushi and Dean make me happy. ^^

happiness ^^

shinae

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