Bringing the Outside In

I'm sitting here on a cool July night, after a spectacular thunderstorm this afternoon, in the dark, quiet house. The Whirling Dervish, AKA Graysen, has finally succumbed to sleep after much heartache, tears, neediness, frenetic energy. He changes on a dime, I spend all my waking hours, it seems, trying to keep up with him. His new thing: if his shoes are ON and we remove them he pitches the holiest of holy fits. He literally acts as though he's losing it. He won't sit for more than a few minutes in his hichair. I usually have about three minutes of peaceful seated eating time before he's climbing out and, invariably, into my lap to nurse. He nurses ALL THE TIME. This morning we were up at 5:30 because he couldn't stop nursing, and switching sides, forcing me to constantly shift my position in bed to accommodate his demands. By morning, I am exhausted, wrung out, dehydrated. I almost feel violated, my body beyond my control.
This child can slay me with his smiles, and then leave me feeling depleted beyond all possibility.
I say this as the mother of four, and he is my youngest. Though the other three were intense, with this child I feel like I'm on a rollercoaster with no seatbelt, and no promise of any reprieve.

Chris and I were at odds tonight over smallish slights from the night before and a couple from today. Gory details aside, he feels as though I've been pulling away and being rude to him. I feel like I've been in a funk and am trying to be direct with my feelings. It all culminated in tears tonight--mine--and feeling at the very edge of myself. It seems, in our marriage, that we rocket between extremes. Extreme happiness and passion, extreme upset and hurt. Like a bipolar marriage. Like a rollercoaster, with no seatbelts, no reprieve.

So I came here, to the couch where my butt is slowly working a groove into the cushion (again with that issue of my "home office") and tried to find some definition around my grief. I am close to some sort of epiphany, I already grasp it in theory...but trying to bring it into my psyche and live from that place is proving difficult.

I am struggling with the idea that I keep looking to the external to fix the internal. That job I wanted is a prime example of this. On the one hand, there's nothing wrong with desiring a position of paid employment doing what you love and have worked so hard to build. Therein lies my disappointment. Alternately, however, I knew going into the long wait that if I DID get the job I would be facing a very steep learning curve, be put into a position that would challenge my fundamental nature (mostly introvert whereas I would be required to be extroverted), and I'd have to devote a larger block of time to the work. Evenings, special events, weekend events...no straight 40 hour workweek for that position.

I knew this, and had this nagging sense of insecurity about it. Would it mean I'd have less time for the kids? Gray is still so little...what would I do if I had to work late and Chris wasn't home yet? How often could I really ask my mom to help out? So many questions. As the backbone of the family when it comes to managing the kids' time and needs, this concerned me. Of course.

I chose to ignore it, feeling that I'd figure it out. In the end, it figured me out.

In the dust that is my hopes for that position I can see something more clearly than before. I don't have to take a job to continue my creative pursuits. Perhaps, in fact, I can separate the two things and really create on my own terms. Design, writing, photography...for ME. And, hopefully, publication here and there.

The largest lesson in all of this: though I know better, with my mind, my spirit isn't quite up to speed with the idea that validation for my life and love needs only come from within ME. I don't have to land that director position to prove I have the skills I have been building for so long.

Right now I am faced with a dilemma. My inner editor wants to grab my hand, read this over, and poke holes in it completely. It's rambling, it doesn't hang together. What in HELL are you really trying to say, anyway?

Ya know...fuck it. What I'm trying to say is this:
I live on the fringes of this brilliant raw world where everything either brings great joy or great sorrow. My time is rarely my own and I am always tired. My belly sags, remembering the stretching of each tiny being I made with my blood and bones....and my heart is filled up with them. My marriage is a blessing and a curse, my husband alternately my best friend and confidante and the person who most makes me want to run screaming. I embody this rawness, this deep thick life...and I both crave it and feel repelled by it.
I can validate myself, and need validation.
And I got a big kick out of saying FUCK it. Fuck it!