Deeper

This isn't going to be one of those cute, sweet, look what my baby did today, and here's what I'm knitting, and look at my plants, and here's what we ate for dinner sorts of posts.

Occasionally you have to dig a little deeper than that and explore those parts of yourself that you often wish to deny exist at all. So, if that isn't your cup of tea, you know where the exit doors are.

I've never been happier than I have been since June- at least not in that personally happy sort of way, where I know that what I am doing is right and good for my family. I mean, I've worked steadily since I was 15, so taking a little break has done me some good-- not to mention the good that it's done for my son. Before I quit he was about 6 months behind in his speech and always sick. No, not just the sniffles and cough sort of sick, but sick sick. Staying at home and watching him develop and grow has been a wonderful thing.

That being said, there's also the other side of this stay-at-home token that no one really sees all that often, and that I never thought would be a factor for me. It's the aloneness of it. Day in and day out it's just me and the munchkin. Sure, he's great company, keeps me laughing most of the day. But even in a shy and withdrawn person like myself, there's a need for companionship- or even the bustle of familiarity of a crowd. Yeah, me, the one that gets sweaty and nervous and more than a little panicky in a crowd, I'm the one that's saying that. This is the down-side to stay-at-home mothering.

Sure, there are mommy groups I could join, there are story times to go to, parks, zoos, and J is of the age where I could probably take him just about anywhere with me, but there's no one to go with, and I'm certainly not the type to go out and do something by myself. Even walking into a grocery store without a companion is sometimes a difficult thing for me. I don't really know or understand why, but if I'm alone I don't feel like I have a reason to be anywhere- don't belong.

I'm not like the other moms that go to the mommy groups. I don't wear nice clothes, I don't spend $20 a week on pedicures. I don't have fashionable hair, have never worn makeup. I don't care what's happening in the soap operas and I don't watch American Idol or any of that stupid crap. I don't know which celebrity is dating wich, or who was in what movie. When I go to these sorts of things, it's almost worse than the silence and solitude of home because here I am, in a crowd, with a group of "like-minded" individuals, and yet, I'm not. My husband doesn't make a six-figure income- we struggle to get by on his salary alone, but we do it for the kid. But whatever- I'm just beating a dead horse here. People like me, we don't have groups.

And then there's the relationship with my husband. It's not much of one, to be perfectly honest. There hasn't been any intimacy between us in years, and lately there hasn't even been much in the way of conversation. I'm ravenous for conversation and companionship, but when he comes home he's sullen, tired, just wants to be alone. Or conversations are always either about his terrible day at work, the bills that aren't getting paid this week, or the extravagantly expensive things he wishes we could afford, but can't.

He won't say so, but he loathes me for not working- for not being "useful". I know that he can't see the value of my role here at home. The way he sees it, I still managed to keep the house relatively clean, I still cooked him dinner, and the laundry was usually done back when I was working. So what am I doing with all my time now? He resents having to get up and go to work every morning, because while he's out sweating his butt off in that van, I'm here, sitting on mine, watching tv and lazily passing the time.

So we don't speak much. It's a wonder we even share the same bed, anymore- a problem which I've considered fixing by bringing in the twin bed from the shed and setting it up in J's room for myself. Afterall, all he does is complain at night when J curls up between us. Not because he's interrupting some sort of intimate moment, but because his space is compromised.

Am I sounding sufficiently whiney yet?

Saturday Mary calls me. Offers me a job. A really great job with excellent pay, fixed hours, and lots of perks. Honestly, it's a job earning more than I ever have before. I want to jump up and down with excitement, squeal like a little kid. But then my eyes flick over to J-man playing with his trains and I remember those mornings where I had to drop him off at daycare- wondering if he was going to be fed or cared for at all, wondering if I'd pick him up in the afternoon with green snot crusted around his nose and a layer of filth on him so thick that it would leave a black ring around the bathtub at night. I thought back to my shy and reclusive kid that let the other kids walk all over him. My sensitive baby who needs nothing more than a hug, but was never given it. And I can't stand the idea of doing that to him again. I can't put him back in a daycare- not even a "good" one.

Wil can't believe that I said no. He isn't acting angry, necessarily, but I can see the dollar bills in his eyes. Why wouldn't I accept a great job like that? Why wouldn't I take some of the burden off of him? But Wil's never had to be the one to drag a sleeping baby out of bed at 5 am, or to abandon him amidst those terrified wails, to the arms of someone who was getting paid minimum wage and felt like her job was satisfactorily done so long as the kid went home still breathing at the end of the day. He can't see the value of my staying home with J, because he'd actually have to spend a few minutes with his son to realize how much he's changed and grown since I've been home.

And besides, if I took the job, even temporarily, what about my school? What about what I want for once? I know it's a struggle right now, without my income, but in the long run, it will be a benefit to us. I can do my work right here and earn decent money doing it. No long hours for J at daycare, no early morning commuting. Doesn't that make sense? It's a short-term sacrifice which, in the end, will do great things for us.

But honestly, when I sit down and I dissect it in my head- in the part of my mind that no one else hears, sees, or probably even knows about, the reason that going back to work full-time, and earning a great income is not a good idea right now is simply this: If I'm raising our son, pretty much on my own, and I'm keeping the house from falling apart pretty much on my own, and now I'm earning more money than he is, and there is no romantic, or hardly even friendly, relationship between us, what's to stop me from leaving him? And so, I declined the position because it was exactly what had to be done.