I walked down the stairs and took a deep breath as I ran through the things left on my to do list. It was 8pm and my baby and toddler were finally asleep, but my night seemed to be just getting started. As I turned at the bottom of the steps, I glanced into the playroom that was covered in toys. Among them were the crayons that had been tipped over for the millionth time.
Sidetracked, instantly, I started robotically picking up the toys as I told myself “how lucky am I to have this mess to pick up”. The mental relief a clean playroom provided me made the ten minutes it took to clean worth it. Onto the next task…
As I walked toward the kitchen, I heard the TV in the other room and rolled my eyes thinking “yeah…don’t worry I’ll get everything else done…you just rest.” Deep down, my sleep deprived self was seething and ready to blow up the second he said anything. It seemed unfair that he didn’t have to keep a running tally of what had and hadn’t been done…that somehow, I had inherited the role of ‘life manager’ for our family.
My mind started getting the best of me as I angerly put the dishes away. I couldn’t stop thinking about how we struggled to connect like we used to. Somehow it had become easier to attack each other instead of attacking the lists together. Yet, when we attempted to connect his attempts were irritating because it seemed as though he was oblivious to the expectations that I believed had been placed on me, as “the mom”.
He walked into the kitchen and interrupted my self pity self-talk.
“Hey, babe, I will clean up the dishes. Come sit down and hang out with me. I turned our favorite show on.” I was relieved but at the same time I felt frustrated. We only had a few hours to check these tasks off our list before we were expected to get some sleep and function at 100% the next day. I let out a deep sigh, irritated that he was being romantic when before children I would have been gushing.
He grabbed my arm and drew me closer as he lovingly wrapped his arms around me and kissed my forehead. Slowly he led me into the living room as we flopped onto the couch. I was reminded once again why I chose this man. He knew how important it was to me that we approached things as partners and he understood without me saying a word. I softened.
As we snuggled in, we laughed at the stupidity of our show. I glanced down at our laced fingers and smirked as memories of us filled my mind. Before our beautiful little creatures entered our lives, we were the center of each other’s world. Our dreams as individuals and our collective goals were our focus. His free-time revolved around friends and basketball games and mine yoga and girlfriends. We flourished by chasing our interests and would meet back at home to snuggle and watch our favorite shows.
Life was quite different now as these two humans naturally demanded our attention and energy 24/7. New demands meant less time for us individually and therefore more stress. Less sleep and more stress became a perfect recipe for bickering about things we used to laugh at. His jokes seemed to be less funny and my sassy flirtatious remarks tended to be more snide than endearing.
Lying there I became more aware of how my approach was tarnishing our connection.
My self-pity became a wall between us, when communicating my frustrations would have eliminated that wall. Life had drastically changed in the last 5 years and I was exhausted, so I gave myself grace.
As I pulled his arm around me tighter and kissed his forearm, I internally vowed to voice my frustrations more openly. This connection started it all and built this beautiful life and I would not let my own self-pity stand in the way of nourishing it.
The to-do’s can wait until tomorrow. I’m choosing connection over checkmarks.
