Calm Amongst the Chaos

“Too broad” my friend Codi says to me on New Years Eve as I tell her my resolution. But it was way too late into the night to really have any sort of meaningful conversation with me, I am sure at the time I thought it was meaningful, but by the next day it was lost in a huge headache. “Too broad” was right though I mean I said I wanted to live life fuller. I knew what I meant, but that could mean travel the world, leave my family to travel with the Renaissance Festival (a thought that does cross my mind at least once a year), or it could mean to sing and dance while we clean the house. I mean we all want to live a fuller life. We want to be in our lives enjoying each moment, right? Well maybe not those who live in their own filth on Hoarders, but are those people real anyway? But wanting and doing are two totally different things. Like today all I want to do is sit at my laptop and write. It’s been too long and I really wanted to commit to writing more, it is what makes me a better person, yet if I am really trying to write and Oli keeps coming up to me to reload his nurf gun telling me he wants to “shoot people” every 5 seconds and it is frustrating me am I not living fully? That is where the line gets blurred. One side if me would see living for myself as locked up in some beach cottage alone probably drinking way too much wine spending my time writing. Yet another side of me, the bigger side of me wants to live for my family so I will continually stop to fill his nurf gun, get up a million times to help him leaving whatever I write to be nothing but crap. Mindless mumbling that goes no where. I drive and I think of things I want to say, want to write yet it just gets lost in my head along with seizure meds and diets and practices and a job and another job and dinner and oh maybe something fun to do with my kids that has nothing to do with any of those other items listed above. Then I go on pinterest and get linked to blogs where these people have it all together. Rules for raising sons. Rules for raising daughters. Rules to be a better person. Rules for passing it forward. All beautiful things. Things I can totally see myself saying/writing if I weren’t on overdrive in my real life. So I wonder are these people locking themselves in their room and letting their kids fend for themselves? Or is that my jealous assumption to what most likely is they have the rules figured out and their kids sit and color with each other politely asking each other for the blue and green crayons? And is that yet another judgement to the fact maybe they need less sleep than I and are able to stay awake til 11pm and instead of spending their time rolling their eyes at the real housewives of whatever county knowing full well that the “real” housewives realize that their kids bus driver saw them in the same shirt for 3 days in a row and that is what it looks like to be real. Whatever judgement I place on people who have their act together is all about me and where I feel like I am lacking in my life.
I have so many wants that may actually be needs, but they never make it past the whirlpool going on in my brain, so when I said I want to live my life fuller I meant I want to be in every moment. Yet this moment, the one I want to write in I have a little boy who won’t give a two second break to actually think one coherant thought. So here I am thinking whose life am I supposed to live fully? His or mine? Are my dreams set aside when I had kids, let alone 3 of them? Do you put aside your wants for them or do you try to do both? I feel like I am failing miserable on all counts because I want to do it all. So when I say I want to live fuller that is so incredibly broad and something easy to say, but what I want from that statement is a different way of living. I want to play with my kids. I want them to remember a childhood of silly dance parties, edible dinners and a mom and dad that laughed with them. I don’t want them to remember me on my laptop ignorning them. But I also want them to be able to look back and read my thoughts on these years. Look back and respect me for working to help our family and understand I worked to make a difference for kids with CDKL5. I have to find a way to do everything at 100% instead of dividing those things into 100%. But the first step is knowing what needs to change, right? Having intentions to do better has to be a great place to start.
Maybe next year I will quit smoking. Which means I have to start smoking this year.