Apparently I Can Swing One Update a Quarter :-)

Hey everyone!  I know I've been totally M.I.A., but I have been reading your blogs.  I always mean to comment, and I'm thinking of all of you, I just haven't had the mental energy to compose actual responses or blog posts :-)

Things are going pretty good.  Recovery wise I'm not doing everything I need to, but I'm doing something, so that's better than nothing.  Life has me, not down, but kinda down?  Does that make sense?  I'm not depressed per se, just overwhelmed I guess.  I feel like, for lack of better words, I'm drowning in motherhood.  I love my kids, more than words, but MAN is motherhood exhausting sometimes.  I feel like I'm living in that movie Groundhog Day, but with far, far, far more poop, vomit and snot.  I know this is just a time and a season -- I have four kids between 10 months and 6 years old, so it feels so relentless with the constant care of their every need.  I wake up and nurse the baby, then start on feeding them all food, then clean up from said food making, then I swear it's time to feed someone else.  In between I change diapers.  Rinse and repeat.  The problem is the more overwhelmed I feel, the less productive I'm becoming.  I'm finding way too many excuses to just curl up with the kids and let them watch PBS while I watch something on Hulu on the laptop.  I feel too tired to do much more.  I want to sleep again from the time I wake up.  My baby is FINALLY starting to sleep a little better, and the two middle kids take turns waking up all night from nightmares, being thirsty, needing their covers pulled back up.  And my husband is a total saint when it comes to this -- he handles almost everything with any kid who doesn't nurse at bedtime and during the night, but it still wakes me up.  Again and again.  I feel like I have NOTHING left at the end of the day.  Which makes me feel guilty for how little my husband gets from me.  And guilt just makes me feel more tired.  He's been awesome, trying to help out more, taking the kids off my hands, sending me out shopping with my sisters, doing more of the cooking -- and I feel so wiped out at the end of the day once the kids are down I want to curl up with a book or veg out and watch something mindless (and he doesn't watch any almost TV or movies anymore, so it's not something we can do together), and I want to be ALONE.  I don't want anyone to need me, to touch me, to be too close, I just want a quiet room where I'm left alone.  But I feel bad that here my husband is being super Dad, and after getting the three older kids down for bed all on his own, he just wants to spend time with me.  He wants to talk, he wants to cuddle, I'm sure he'd like to have sex, and all I can think of is how much I want to be left alone, untouched and in quiet solitude.  He's really understanding about it, but I feel like if I turn him away at every turn, I'm being selfish.  And not a 'not taking care of myself, only worry about others, dysfunctional' kinda way -- but in a true partnership, my needs shouldn't always trump his, so I need to figure out this balance. 

I keep telling myself I just need to make it to the baby being a year old, then everything will get better.  I'm not quite sure why I think that though, it's not like it'll magically change, but in my head, we'll hit a year and I'll get more of a routine down, we'll accomplish more, I'll keep my house cleaner, I'll carve out more time to exercise and take care of myself, I'll wake up early and get ready before the kids up . . . but it's pretty unrealistic to think this will all just flip on like a switch just 'cause the baby turns a year old. 

So yeah, drowning in motherhood is the best way I can describe my life right now.  Don't get me wrong, I'm immensely grateful for my incredible blessings -- four beautiful, amazing kids, a loving husband who's working his recovery like a rock star, and my opportunity to stay home with the kids without it being financially devastating to us.  I see God's hand all over the place in my life, and I'm really, truly grateful and happy for all my blessings.  But I'm tired (really, really, really tired.)  I feel slow and useless as unfinished projects outnumber the finished ones, I feel ungrateful and frankly, kinda stupid, for my dwindling spiritual progression (for the first time in our married life, I'm not consistently reading scriptures at night -- I think all day I should do it while I'm more awake and not as exhausted and it doesn't happen -- and more and more I just end the night with a quick prayer with my husband than roll over and fall asleep without reading even a superficial amount of scriptures and without saying my personal prayers.  I'm not quite sure why I'm being such a slacker in this area.  I may not have always had the most meaningful of scripture study, but even just out of habit I read every single day of our marriage (unless I was in labor! :)), and it's not just scriptures that are falling by the wayside, my prayers are fizzling out to something far less meaningful than I'd prefer.  I'm working on it, it's just slow going as I work my way back to something closer to where I want to be.
And, just to update on all aspects of our family story -- my husband is doing well in recovery.  Really well in fact.  When my burn out was escalating, I asked him if he could scale back meetings (he was gone 3 times a week, including a mix of group therapy (LifeStar), LDS PASG and SA meetings), and we've settled into a more workable routine of one LifeStar meeting a week (Tuesday evenings) and one SA meeting (Saturday morning).  It's helped a lot to have him around more, and it seems to be a nice mix for him.  He had been alternating SA and PASG meetings, but he's settled into just attending SA as he feels it's a better fit for him, and the scheduling works out better for us.  He misses the PASG meetings, but really feels like while doing LifeStar that the SA combination is working best.  He isn't working the steps the way I expect -- silly expectations -- but when I stop and look I really see him working.  (He hasn't finished his Step 4 Inventory in the last 6-7 months, but he is consistently working the LifeStar program and I'm learning to see that his progress is tremendous and I need to let go of some of my expectations of how this whole recovery thing should go.)  He goes to SA and participates and reads and studies, but he is currently focusing on his pretty intense homework load from LifeStar while he is in the program.  I expressed frustration at one point that he wasn't 'working the steps', and he pointed out gently that he is working them, just differently, and that while he was attending and paying for LifeStar that is where he was going to put his focus for now.  Which makes sense.  And it really does cover so much of the personal exploration and honesty that the steps do, just in different ways and through different means.  And I really don't want to discount the step work he is doing -- he loves his SA meetings and he does actively work on turning things over to God and to study the steps while he's at SA or working with his sponsor, it's just not currently the 'homework' he's doing.  He's making real progress.  After so, so, so many false starts, he really does seem to be 'getting it' this time.  He's so honest and open and he's making real connections with the men in his LifeStar group and in SA (one of the reasons he prefers SA is he feels like it's been more conducive to forming bonds with the other people there -- the LDS meetings were filled with different people from week to week, with little to no visiting afterwards.)  He emails, texts and calls others -- and while not a 'sponsor' per se, he has several men who text him when they need someone to lean on.  He recently told both his sister and my brother about his struggles, in hopes of helping them with some things they're dealing with in our lives, (meaning all of our siblings and parents now know) and has reached out to a couple brothers in our Ward that the Bishop asked him to talk to and has gone to meetings with them.  He's shed layers and layers of shame and really seems to love himself in a new way.  People comment on him having more personality, being more open and funny and talkative.  He got a big promotion at work.  Things seem to be going really, really well for him.  I feel confident in his honesty to me.  I wish I could say this means I don't suddenly burst into tears over some trigger or another, or that I don't have moments (days?  weeks?) where I don't wallow in self-pity-filled thoughts of, "What if it comes back?  What happens to our lives then?  What if I'm too fat?  Too ugly?  What if he's only pretending to love me?  To find me attractive? What if he's just being so sweet because he feels guilty?  What if none of this is real?"  It just goes to show that a.) this crap does a number on a wife's head, and b.) this is why I have my own recovery to work. 

So, long story short (too late), life is good.  It really, really is.  I'm just tired.  And I'm falling short in some areas I need to improve on (productivity, being more 'present' for my kids for more of the day, physically taking care of myself better, spiritually and on my relationship with my husband), but I think things are headed in the right direction.  And hey, my baby will be a year old soon.  Then everything will get better.  Right?  Right??  :)  (I really need to learn to let that expectation go, or I'm gonna be sorely disappointed (and still tired) when his birthday comes!)