Appreciation

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After reading a few posts I came across during the last week, about people debating the pro and cons of their lives paths and how everyone is responsible for their own life and has to set their own path I realized that I am pretty much struggling myself with who I am and where I am in my life right now.

I am now 36, I have two kids, I am renovating a house which I will then own later (right now it technically is still owned by my parents until the paperwork is done)...I have everything that people (as I have come to learn when reading those posts about societal expectations) expect someone my age to have. On top of that I have a Diploma in Business Economics. Everything should be as expected.

Unless it is not.

Societal expectations are that I should either be a happy stay-at-home mother who feels that being a housewife and mother (I once heard the term "family manager") is everything she ever wanted and her life is fulfilling and she wouldn't want to change a thing. With a husband who earns enough money so she can comfortably stay at home without any financial problems. Or I should be a mom who works part-time, handles everything perfectly, manages all the things at work, comes home, cleans the house, cooks dinner and falls asleep happy and content that everything worked out the way she wanted. Every.Single.Day.

To be honest, I'd love for it to be either way. Unfortunately it is not. Life rarely works out the way you want it, things go wrong, there are little twists and turns and all of a sudden you find yourself at a point you NEVER imagined yourself, thinking that you NEVER expected your life would ever turn out to be that bad.

Like (I think) John Lennon once said "Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans" I have liked that quote all my life because it is so true. You can plan as much as you want, you can imagine your prince to come on a white horse, treat you like a princess, shower you with diamonds and life will be perfect forever and ever, and the last take everyone will see is you, sitting together on an iron bench, watching the sunset...well, life is not a freaking Disney Movie unfortunately.

What actually bothers me the most is that I get the feeling what I do (while doing very little compared to what people expect me to do) is not appreciated. That might just be a feeling, but I have heard it from a few other moms I know and even my mother told me she has heard my father say it a lot when she was home with me and my siblings.

"What exactly are you doing all day anyways?" or
"how I envy you, you can watch TV and drink coffee with your friends all day"

Being a housewife and mother is mostly not considered to be "work". Yes, women are appreciated and praised for having children, for surviving 9 months of pregnancy, complete with nausea, heartburn, swollen feet and gaining an enormous amount of weight and for going through the pain of labor. But afterwards, life is all peachy and happy and having a baby is all kinds of fun and cuteness.

Except...it is not!

My kids are 5 and 8, I am fortunately past the phase of sleepless nights, crying babies, breastfeeding and changing poopy diapers. But as they always say "small kids, small problems...bigger kids, bigger problems" Now I have short nights with not enough sleep because I stay up late, trying to have some time for myself after the kids finally sleep around 9 pm, yelling and fighting, arguing about whether or not Cereal is considered a "healthy Dinner" and dirty bedrooms. I have to check every day that my daughter is doing her homework, I have to remind her to take a healthy lunch to school, I have to help my son clean his room, have to drive them to and from their friends, kiss bruises away, put band-aids on cuts and dry tears when one of them was mean to the other.

I am a negotiator
nurse
cleaning lady
maid
cook
drill instructor (sometimes)
chauffeur
teacher

and on top of that also
mother and wife

I should be earning a fortune, working 10 jobs, 24/7...365 days a year, no vacation time, unpaid overtime and weekends. I do not earn anything, except the love of my children, which is awesome but some days just not enough. And even if I know deep inside, not only my family but everyone around me probably appreciates what I do, it is not enough. I want to be told that I am appreciated, as in actually saying "thank you for doing laundry so I have a clean shirt for my important business meeting today" or "thanks mom for cooking my favourite dinner"

During those years when I was sick, had to have all those surgeries and was battling depression, getting up and doing what I was supposed to, trying to keep up with every day tasks was hard enough, back then appreciation was even more necessary than it is now. More often than not I had to force myself to do even the simplest things. And even now, being physically healthy and feeling a little more mentally stable there are days I don't feel like getting up. Those days would be much easier with a little more appreciation. My husband asked me a few days ago, a little astonished and with a hint of sarcasm in his voice "what do you want, do you want to be applauded for just getting out of bed?"

YES...as weird as it sounds!

Life is so much harder and feels so bleak and unfriendly when no one appreciates what you do...because why exactly are you still there if no one recognizes what you are doing?

Irene

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