Sometimes, You Have to Get Down

If you are looking for a post about dancing, you might want to stop reading.  Because this post is not about dancing at all.  It is about real stuff - consider yourself warned, dear reader.  You don't have to keep reading at all.

Last week, I started cutting back my caloric intake.  Way back.  I noticed a pattern that happens whenever I try to get back into shape.  I become incredibly, emotional.  For me, cutting calories had the side effect of making me sad, weepy and depressed.  I saw my therapist and mentioned this to her.  She turned my perception on its head and catapulted me on a journey that I am trying to gather the courage to stay on.  She suggested that since I have the history of self-medicating with food, that perhaps the feelings I am feeling have been there all along.  Perhaps these feelings are true feelings that I've been pushing down with food and not merely a side effect of taking in less calories. 

What she said rung so true to me that I have been trying to let myself get down, feel down so that I can try to figure out the source of these feelings.  It is no fun.  I feel a deep sadness and I cannot really put my finger on it.  Some things have bubbled up to the surface and I hope that in time, I will have a fuller picture of why I feel such melancholia.

In addition to cutting calories, I have also started to pray again.  What was once such a big part of my life has been left on the sidelines during the time that I most needed it, the almost three years now since we've had our children.  It strikes me that I turned to prayer for more balance and wholeness, but along with the calorie thing, it has actually led to my feeling more imbalanced and fragmented.   But I have trust.  I trust that going down this path will be good in the long run.  But right now, I feel like yuck. 

Motherhood (alongside the motherhood of my friends) has been a deeply lonely time for me.  You young children take so much of your time and energy, that you have precious few hours and precious little energy to nurture your relationships.  Rarely do free time and enough energy coincide into that moment where you can really make a connection with someone else, or even with yourself.

I don't just miss other people, I also miss ME.  What happened to that person who used to blog and journal?  The one who felt halfway interesting?  I feel so bored and boring now in the midst of my 15 weekly trips to drop off/pick up kids from school, my endless loads of laundry, my endless pleas for better behavior, my countless trips to the park, my trips to the grocery store, and even reading those cute books OVER and OVER to my beautiful boys. You have to admit, motherhood has an element of BOREDOM.  Yes, it is amazing to see your children grow and blossom yadda, yadda, yadda, but it is also boring and tedious.  

My life is a good one.  I love it.  I have been gifted beyond imagining.  But deep down, there is some despair, some sadness and I wish I could understand it.  I think it includes loneliness, disconnection, boredom, a general feeling of being unappreciated and of being spent.  But I have the suspicion it includes more than that.  I am tired of eating these feelings down.  The more I face these emotions rising in me, the less I want those extra calories.  I really want to get to the other side of this (whatever that may mean), free to live my range of emotions without feeling I have to medicate somehow.  I know I will be a better parent and person for it, closer to my true self.

I am contemplating whether or not I will actually publish this blog post but  reaching out seems to be an important part of my working through whatever this is.  Perhaps you feel some of these things?  The friends I once had on my emotional speed dial now have busy lives.  I think of calling one, but she has moved far away.  I think of calling another, but she has her own problems.  I think of this other gem of a friend and think she has so much going on in her life.  Then there is the friend who disappeared about two years ago, whom I miss very much.  And I wonder, did she disappear because I called her with too many problems?  I could go on and on with excuses for not reaching out personally.  And I stay in my little corner, feeling lonely, with the sneaky suspicion that some of my friends are lonely, too.  Perhaps making the same excuses.

As if on cue, I hear Bill and the boys coming up the driveway, back from the park.  Onto baths, hair day, dinner and books.  And now that I've aired some emotional laundry, that routine actually sounds good.