There are soundtracks to many stages of my life. That is, I associate music with various chapters or events in my life, as I'm sure many people do, and I've been listening to new music lately. As you know, I'm also in a new phase of my life.
I think High Highs "Open Season" is keeping me sane. It's my daily guarantee of forty minutes of inner solitude, and a fortunate reminder that love is all you need.
Despite what I said, this is hard (I fear I didn't make that clear last time we spoke). Even on the days when Liam is at "school' I feel like a waiter in the weeds; and having Liam in the mix makes it that much harder to rise to the challenge (he's a twelve-top upstairs when your downstairs section is full). Surely we're feeding off one another's energy, and the morning sets the day. The mornings have been rough, and so have the days. I'm exhausted. Still not hysterically so, like I'm not slap-happy or simultaneously laughing and crying, but that's because there isn't a lot of happy or laughing connected with this kind of tired. I'm mostly just pissed off and crying.
I can feel myself attempting to squelch the Nasty-Yelly Mommy, and by the end of the day - which doesn't really have an end because they all just bleed into one another - I have a pounding headache as a reminder of all the frustration I've suppressed trying to maintain my inside voice. I don't like yelling, and I find yelling at children futile and damaging. So, of course I want to keep squelching this ugly person inside of me. My husband would chime in here to remind me, in the midst of my being hard on myself, that I've been recovering from major surgery (the C-section), post-partum preeclampsia, and some nasty, unrelenting virus that Liam brought home from school. And he's right. I haven't been in good health, and that's contributing to my lack of energy and patience. But the problem remains, and those are the causes I can't control.
I'm not really sure what to do to make this better. I'm still mulling it over, trying to figure it all out. I'm taking little steps to see if I can get a handle on things by just doing a bunch of small, practical things to make getting through the day a little easier. But there might be something inside me that has to change; maybe my attitude, maybe my expectations, maybe something deeper. In the meantime, I'm using music therapy, and it's likely that I'll always associate the sometimes melancholy, sometimes upbeat, always nostalgic "Open Season" with the first couple months of Eliot's life.
