Lately, when I’ve had free time, I’ve preferred to sit in front of the TV and check out.  I mean, do you know how many hours of Bachelor in Paradise I have to catch up on?  You really can’t let that shit slip or things get out of control.

But today, with my precious few kid-free moments, I thought I might sit down and write some things out.  Because if I keep ignoring this, it may never go away.

The truth is, lately, I’ve been feeling down.  Like shit, actually.  I’ve been in a funk and I just can’t seem to climb out of it on my own.

It’s supremely frustrating, because all winter long, I dreamed about how much better everything would be in summer.  (Insert requisite Olaf meme here).  I planned to live it up and enjoy every last ounce before winter returned again, but things just didn’t turn out like that.  I’ve been too depressed, anxious, and tired to appreciate the season.

I really think part of the problem is that I spent so much energy just trying to survive this winter.  My fragile sanity was stitched together by barely a few threads once the weather started to warm up, and all I could do was realize how truly exhausted I was.  And then I took a few disastrous, solo-parenting, cross-country trips that took weeks to recover from.  And I swear to god Hubby has worked more overnights this summer than any other resident in his program.

At the same time, I’m having a bit of an identity crisis and feeling somewhat professionally unfulfilled.  What I would really, truly, love … is about 10 hours of work a week, preferably something that I can do remotely.  But that kind of work doesn’t come easily in my field — or maybe it does, but I just don’t know how or where to look.

I’m having a crisis of confidence about being a stay-at-home-mom.  I know how hard the work is, and I’m proud of myself for sticking with it for more than a year now.  But I also know that there are a lot of people who look down on what I do.  And as much as I would love to rise above that, I can’t help but feel insecure about it.  I miss being the bad-ass lawyer who covered all of the household expenses and put her husband through medical school.  But … I also really don’t want to go back to that lifestyle.  Can you even imagine how our house would stay afloat if I worked 60-80 hours a week while my husband carried on with his emergency medicine residency?  I mean, would we ever even see each other?  Would we eat anything other than takeout every night?  Would the kitties die from the inevitably unchanged litter?  Would we forget to pick our kids up from daycare?  I know there are plenty of families where both parents juggle high stress, high demand jobs, but I also know that I’m not cut out for it.  I’m just not that good at multitasking.

So basically, I’m just confused and dissatisfied all around.  I know I need to talk to someone, I know that therapy would help.  Or at least, it’s helped in the past.  But can we talk about how hard it is to figure out therapy when you’re responsible for two little munchkins all day? Can we also talk about how I am a complete noob and still don’t know how to find or use a babysitter?

On the bright side, I think my kids have still had an okay time the past few months.  Though it’s felt like pulling my own teeth out, I’ve made an effort to get them outside, go places, do fun summer things almost every day.  I know (and hate) that they’ve sensed that I’m sad from time to time, but I also feel like they’re doing ok.  They’re really good kids.

Until next time,

Vee