This is from my other blog, it’s getting harder and harder to keep them separate.
My work has come to a halt again. My better half works in the film industry and the latest project – that has been extended beyond extending – is coming to a close so he has to do twelve hour days six days a week.
He gets up at 4AM and comes home at about 7:30PM. Our daughter misses him, I miss him, I’m sure he misses him! Though he comes home at a fairly reasonable hour I cannot find the strength to work. My daughter wakes several times a night and I am the one to get up for her, I get up early with her and do breakfast, entertainment, cleaning, dishes, grocery shopping, cooking, laundry, nappies, dishes, vacuuming mopping, cooking, dishes, laundry and you bet your ass when she goes down for her midday nap – so do I.
I go to bed at 8:30PM each night and I haven’t gone out in the evening for gosh knows how long now.
Today I felt pretty hopeless, I feel a little stuck and strangely detached from the world. People do visit me more here but I have such a solid routine which I cannot deviate from. Because I need my rest, I need my daughter to rest otherwise I can’t cope.
We can’t cope.
I know my daughter is not always going to be two, but it gets hard to keep sight of that when I’ve had to stop everything so many times. I really have to just stop and try really darn hard not to think about it otherwise I cry. I had more help in Berlin and that makes me feel rather torn. That’s not to say that it was better – it wasn’t – but childcare was more affordable there, more accessible.
It gave me more of a chance in someways.
I love being a parent, I’m just constantly left flummoxed as to why this is so hard. We’ve been making babies forever but with the way everything is set up – the way it’s still such a shock – I mean, why? Why is it like this? Does no one else think that this is absolutely stupid?
And when I begin to think about it in the wider context I get completely overwhelmed and crushed. So best leave it.
One day, one day it’ll be my turn.
At least what he does is pretty spectacular:
Oh Lily! I remember just what this feels like. I know it’s not much consolation but the more I create, the more I appreciate the fallow times. The times where there is nothing happening in terms of output but a lot happening beneath the surface. Every day you spend with your daughter – going to bed early, keeping yourself healthy – pondering, questioning, playing, dreaming. All of it will come out later, when you have the time and space. It doesn’t disappear. You are building such a large base of feelings and experiences from which to draw, even if it doesn’t always seem this way in the midst of motherhood.
Productivity isn’t everything though our world sure tells us it is!
Thinking of you x
Thanks Jessie! I am glad to be looking after myself, I think I just struggle with feeling detached and forgotten!
‘Productivity isn’t everything though our world sure tells us it is!’ wow! So true and thank you!
xx