Avoidance behavior.

I’ve been avoiding the blog again. Not because I’m busy and wrapped up in the holiday season or anything like that. Rather instead because I’m annoyed at the Internet culture. The idea that everyone has to put on this front of a perfect life that is all peachy keen. And if you do happen to open up a little and express an ounce of how you’re doing its usually in the form of obscure lyrics because you don’t want to completely honest with whats going on because you don’t want people’s pity. Or maybe that’s just me. I crave for someone to reach out and ask me how’s it going and to actually feel like I can open up and say, “You know what, not so good.” But I can’t. Open up that is. I’m not ready. It’s too scary. Even with the people I love the most.

Steve and I have been going through some difficult things and I’d love to be able to really open up about it but it’s just too hard. So I’ve been avoiding the blog and social media and all of that sort of stuff. I’m hurting and while I want people to know, I don’t. And so I just avoid it. No one wants to read about my sob story anyway, right?

At least that’s the way I have been feeling. And then I stumbled upon Babble’s top 100 Mom blogs. And do you know what blog is the top? Jennifer Lawson’s The Bloggess. She’s honest. She’s controversial. She doesn’t apologize for cursing. She’s not trying to cater to anyone. And people love her. Her blog isn’t fancy or well designed. She doesn’t have a million hipster sponsors and her pictures aren’t perfect. And people love her.

Okay so maybe I don’t care about people loving me necessarily. But I want to be more honest and stop trying so hard to be the perfect hipster blogger mom who has the perfect design and the perfect dinner parties with the perfect friends and the perfect pictures with the perfect kids. And I want to be able to say “shit” without having to apologize because we all know I can’t say it in front of my kids with out at least one of them repeating it at the most inopportune times. But most of all I want to be able to say, my life is hard right now. My kids are driving me crazy. My husband’s job is stressful and it’s stressing me out. And yeah sometimes we fight. Sometimes we fight a lot. I’m worried that I won’t get all the Christmas gifts out in time and also that people won’t like what I got them. Also, I haven’t been sleeping. And I don’t think I’m talented at anything. Good at things, yes. But talented? Not so much. And you know what? I think this is all normal. And sometimes I need to remind myself that yes, it is okay to be normal.

Some days I will be fabulous and wear something amazing and cook 5 delicious things perfectly and spend quality time with my husband and have 3 successful projects/activities I do with the kids. And some days, like today, I’ll stay up too late the day before, and I’ll go to sleep with my make up on, I’ll sit around in my pajamas all day, I’ll let Sophie eat chocolate pudding for breakfast because I don’t want to fight with her, I’ll look at the pile of things that need to be done and ignore it, we’ll eat leftovers/pizza for dinner, and I’ll spend way too much time on pinterest and/or watching tv. And that’s okay. And that’s something I need to be okay with. Life’s not perfect, and it never will be no matter how much I try to pretend. But Sophia and Joel love me. And Steve loves me. And a bunch of amazing people love me. And I love me. And that’s what really matters anyway.

14. December 2012 by Jackie Brags
Categories: Little beats. | 2 comments