As I sit here typing I can’t help but smile slightly at the ridiculousness of the situation.
I’m wearing my hot pink Beats headphones and pretending to be listening to something just so I can be left alone long enough to get the thoughts swirling around in my head down on paper.
The headphones were a gift to myself a few months ago in an effort to drown everyone out.
There is no shame in my game and I want to paint a very honest picture for you.
The truth of that picture is that for months now all I have wanted is for everyone to leave me the f#&@ alone. Yes. It’s true.
I’m exhausted and burnt out. Did I mention how extremely tired I am?!
So yes, at least once a day the voice inside my head shouts, “please, for the love of all things holy, just leave me the f#&@ alone!”
And yes, these thoughts are so often followed by an immediate complete showering of guilt for thinking this way about the ones I love.
Here’s the deal though, I’m in no way up for pretending to have a perfect or even close to perfect life.
I played that gig for many years and it served me well, but I was so damn exhausted.
And truthfully, the other part of this is that I know we ALL have these thoughts. They may have different voices and slightly different verbiage, but it’s all the same.
I know we ALL know what it’s like to just want to be left alone, or for your kids to just go the F#&@ to sleep, or for the needy parent to stop being so needy and just be your parent instead of the other way around.
I also know that we often wish for things we don’t have.
Like you know what I miss the most?
Good lord I never thought I’d ever say this…
My commute.
Yes, I miss the 1-2 hour commute to Newton I had some 10 years ago when I would listen to books on cd and sip coffee or listen to talk radio with inappropriate djs. I miss driving the scenic route to and from work because I’d rather know it was going to take me 1.25 hours to get there instead of sitting in stressful gridlock traffic on the Pike knowing it should only take 35 minutes with no traffic.
I miss driving through the New England towns and looking at foliage.
The ride home gave me time to decompress and my flip phone gave people minimal access to me.
I miss it.
I do.
I think about the fact that we are so quick to judge one another instead of truly hearing what the other person is saying because somehow we’ve decided that wishing for more or different or wanting to be left the f#&@ alone somehow means we’re ungrateful.
That message, that judgment, couldn’t be farther from the truth.
I can have deep gratitude for this blessed life and those in it and still want more, or different or miss what used to be.
I wake up each morning and spend a few extra minutes in bed thinking of all I have to be grateful for. I do the same thing when I go to bed each night.
This is a practice I began embracing years ago as life started to grow more messy and complicated.
I found that living a life of gratitude assisted in reducing my anxiety.
Now it’s just a habit.
The other habit I incorporated was stopping to notice the blessings in my everyday life.
Believe me, there is an endless supply.
I try to capture these moments in pictures and videos and share them. I don’t share them to project the image that life is easy or perfect, but rather I share them to encourage and inspire others to look for the beauty and blessings in their everyday messy complicated lives.
Because the truth is once you make it a habit, you realize you don’t have to look very far at all.
I share these moments, these blessings because someday I want my daughter and the people closest to me to look back on my life and know that I was truly grateful for it all no matter how messy or complicated it may have been.
This is my one beautiful life.
And I’m sharing how I feel because I also want all of you to know that it’s ok to feel this way and it in no way reduces how grateful you are for what you have. It in no way makes you less enlightened or less zen or more selfish or more bat sh!t crazy.
It simply makes you human.
The human in me embraces the human in you.
So I won’t pretend that it’s easy and I won’t say or do things to make other people comfortable with my life and my thoughts and my decisions.
I won’t pretend that I’m not deeply annoyed by the fact that the across the street neighbors broke ground on a construction project 12 weeks ago and told us they were sorry for the noise, but that it would only be 4 weeks. 12 weeks, every single day and no end in sight. I want to scream.
I won’t pretend that waking up daily to jack hammers and nail guns and a foreman who likes to stand outside my living room and shout into his phone has not reduced me to tears several times this summer. Because it was my entire summer and I want him to just go the f#&@ away too.
I won’t pretend that I don’t have frustrated thoughts swirling through my head…like I want to sarcastically stick my head out my front window and shout, “Hey, wanna come in and sit on the couch and have a cup of tea while you have that conversation because it already feels like you’re sitting in my freaking living room anyway!!!”
I won’t pretend that I don’t sometimes want to avoid my dad’s calls when I’m in the middle of Target because sometimes I just want to go in and buy the workout underwear I came in for and get the heck out and I know answering the phone means he will ask me where I am and then start rattling off a list of sh!t he needs. Then I’ll have to go drop it off because he doesn’t drive AND I just finished doing all of his laundry this morning. But I answered the phone anyway, out of guilt, and now I have bags of crap in my trunk to go drop off in all my spare time.
I won’t pretend that it doesn’t make me want to cry.
The truth is my nervous system is shot, I hate winters in New England and, as my beloved Jon Snow will tell you, “Winter is coming”, I’m dealing with crazy adrenal fatigue and my weight is at my “scary weight” where it has been hovering and dancing for a couple of months.
The truth is my life is messy and complicated and exhausting and perfectly imperfect.
So once I’ve hit post on my blog I will retreat out to the new zen garden we just had built and close my eyes in the sun as I listen to the sawing and hammering of the other house across the street that started construction today.
It’s like they’re competing for the title of who can f#&@ with my zen more. See...more naughty thoughts.
Just know this sweet loves…yes, I am so full of deep gratitude and I am fully aware of the blessings in my life, but my life is also messy and complicated.
I’m so very human.
Psst, guess what?!
You are too.
So I invite you to be your messy complicated perfectly imperfect human self because I’m over here doing the best I can just like you are.
And please know that when I invite you in for tea I mean it. I don’t want you to go the f#&@ away.