LonelyMomDotCom "Her Secret Life..."

I have hesitated posting this because I do not want for anyone that may ever read this blog to think that I live this lifestyle. As Seinfeld would say, "Not that there's anything wrong with it!" 

I do believe it fits here, though. As I have pointed out, I have a very bland existence and this experience was as unusual and out of character for my life, as this entry is for what I am trying to express or represent in my blog. 

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So, in the last decade, I have a had three real friendships that went south, and one potential real one...that turned out to be a farce, though it took me years to know it. Like a person's romantic relationships, I have found that friendships ebb and flow...in my case, to their bitter end.

I am starting at the decade mark, because that is when I started traveling in the "Mommy" circle. You know, those women that you meet based on your child's activities, or (at the time) class assignment. That is where this chapter in my life begins. 

My first attempt at friendship was with S. She was quiet. Our children were in pre-k together. We saw each other frequently, which forced the inevitable required conversation upon each meeting (kids, activities, lack of sleep). We started our friendship slowly but eventually grew into close friends and confidantes. As the year rolled on, we gathered our families often for parties or meals or just hanging out. Until...

One night, after a family meal, S and I decided to have a girls' night out. My husband drove us to a restaurant (so I might have a glass of wine) and dropped us off. We laughed. We chatted. We had a few drinks. I have no idea how much time went by before the conversation turned to this...

She started by telling me that she was a "swinger". She described her lifestyle in great detail. I was in shock.  Now, first, please understand, though swinging is not my cup of tea and I was most definitely surprised by her revelation, I truly would've gotten over that, had it stopped there. We would've have never had to discuss it again. I would've considered her one of the more colorful people in my life. Second, to this day, I have no idea why she thought that I was even open to this discussion. Our friendship had never even involved one discussion about sex. It had just never gone to that place. This was really coming out of nowhere. It was the next few minutes that floored me.

She spoke of how she gives her husband the thumbs up before he can "date" someone. (Though what she described was not dating.) She went on to tell me that before he could "date" someone, SHE dated them first. I kept trying to laugh her off, not really sure, at first, if she was serious. She WAS, after all, a little tipsy. 

Then, she started down the road of no return. She told me that I had had too much to drink and that we should call her husband and have him pick us up. I explained that my husband was coming. She was insistent that I spend the night at her house. This went on for what seemed like forever. I said no. I walked away for a minute and called my husband. 

I felt so uncomfortable. The way you feel when you are alone with a date and you feel like he has a different idea of where the two of you stand than you do.

The rest of that evening was uneventful. My husband picked us up and we dropped her off.  I was upset, confused and shocked. I told my husband. He was angry. 

The next morning she called to see how I was. Suddenly and without invitation, her husband got on the extension and said he wanted to take me out and get me a few GROWN UP DRINKS! (I still have no idea what that meant but that is what he said.) What?! I said good bye and hung up. I was certain that I was misunderstanding what was going on. These people were my friends, after all...or so I thought. 

I replayed the night and that conversation over and over in my head for the next few days. S called me relentlessly. I would not pick up or return her calls. Then, she started to drive by my house. I was shocked. This was what I would've expected from a man that I rejected. 

Then one day she showed up on my doorstep. She pounded for what seemed like forever. I am not a timid person but I was actually afraid. She screamed and yelled that she knew that I was "in there". I was so afraid by this point that I called my husband to come home from work. When he arrived, he found a long letter in my mailbox. It said how she needed me, among other things.  She continued to try to contact me for a few weeks. She even sent letters that had no return address...I only fell for that once. I have never seen her again. 

Of all of the things that a grown woman would expect to experience when entering a new friendship, this was not one of them.

LonelyMomDotCom "Let Me Introduce Myself..."

I am an average woman. If you walked past me in the mall, you wouldn't look twice. 

I had a career that I had a love/hate relationship with. I swore that I would never leave it until I fell my first child kick for the first time. Then I swore that I would never leave him. I quit. 

I have a wonderful husband that I do not deserve. He is my best friend...which we were for a year before we even considered a first date. 

I spend my days and nights with my children doing whatever I can to bond with them. This flies in the face of everything I expected to be as a mother. My thinking is that I only have a limited amount of time to have them at home with me. There will only be a limited amount of time when they want MY attention. Then, I'll be chasing them for theirs. 

I homeschool my children. It came to be originally out of necessity. It continues by choice. Being with my children day to day is a gift of time and memories that I never knew that I even wanted until I was faced with no longer having it. I cannot foresee me ever sending them back to school. 

I am prone to depression. It runs in my family. 

I started blogging, literally, to save my sanity. No one ever told me that motherhood was going to be this hard, this challenging, this lonely.  You hear about the rewards of being a mother. There ARE many. So many  But there have been times when I have been in a very dark place. Sometimes that darkness seemed endless. When there was no one to talk to or no one that understood, I journaled. Then one night, I decided to publish this blog...like a note in a bottle in the ocean.. Hopefully, one day, it will wash up on someone's beach.

LonelyMomDotCom "Here I Go Again..."

I have spent these last few months trying desperately to get into the fold of our new homeschool community. It's been a year since we started homeschooling. In that year, I have tried to become a joiner. Much to my chagrin, I think that's am not capable of just "going with the flow". I discovered today, what I wish I would've realized a long time ago...I am not capable of easy social interaction. The idea of a pending social function makes me physically ill. I dread it for days in advance. On the day of the event, I try, in my head, to invent a million reasons not to go. I think that from the outside, if someone were to watch me and know my though process on that day, they might think that I was lazy...of course...a mother not wanting to take her children to a social function. There were times when I asked myself just that. Did I just not want to be bothered? But I knew different. I knew (and know) that if there were a pill that would make me walk into a room and not have a mild heart attack, I would take two!

I thought that if I immersed myself in social situations, I would slowly become immune to the panic that strikes the night before even the most innocent playdate. So I did just that. I signed up for anything I could. I would further commit myself by paying in advance for field trips....therefore instituting a financial penalty on myself for backing out. I have been doing this since late October/early November. It is now April...a full six months into my self prescribed "immersion therapy". Guess what? I failed. Miserably. 

I think the term being "socialized" is a misnomer. In my experience, you either ARE social, or you ARE NOT. Just as your gender and height are predetermined, so must your ability to mesh into a group of people. I do not mean "to belong", or make easy conversation, or even make a joke. I mean, simply, the ability to walk in, stand there, and not feel the clunky awkwardness of just STANDING THERE...wondering if you should sit or stand...walk up to someone and start a conversation or remain on the sidelines. It feels as though the oxygen gets sucked right out of my lungs. 

This happened again today. Another outing with what has now become a familiar group of people. They are kind and welcoming. I stood on the sidelines. When a mom finally came up to speak to me, I truly had no idea HOW to make a conversation with her. I have spoken to her now multiple times. As she spoke, I found myself silently searching my brain, asking myself "What should I say to her next?". In those moments, I know I must've appeared uninterested in what she was saying, when actually I was trying to figure out where to go next with the discussion. 

I sit here this evening, so discouraged.

Now, I know...KNOW...that in the grand scheme of the world there are real problems. I realize that there is homelessness and hunger, joblessness and illness. I am aware that my quandary exists in my world alone, and may seem small and petty for me to put so much time and thought into it...but you see...this problem affects my children a great deal.

At the end of today's field trip, others lingered. I did not. The activity was done, and I knew that if we stayed, the others would try to speak to me and peg me a bumbling idiot...because one on one, with no other distractions I AM a bumbling idiot. I knew as I walked out, that my children would've loved to stay and hang out. In truth, we stayed longer than I wanted. I fought myself to stay for the last half hour, as I sat at a table alone, where I had been for over an hour, as the other parents were scattered, in groups, at other tables. So in reality, I won that battle and held on as long as I could. 

I'm starting to wonder if I will ever feel "normal". The odd thing is that in my career prior to being a SAHM, I had to speak in public and in social situations everyday. It wasn't easy, but it was my job. I have tried to look at this situation that way..."It's my job to take my children to social activities.". That just doesn't work. 

If it was behavioral, then nothing could make me want to change it more than doing it for my children's sake...after all that's what has made me walk into every frightening room for over a decade now. 

If it's not behavioral, then is there hope? 

LonelyMomDotCom "Anatomy Of A Freindship "We Meet..."

     I posted this on my other long forgotten blog about a year and a half ago. I make friends very rarely...real friends. This relationship was shaping into one, or so I thought. I was "pursued" by this woman relentlessly for quite a while. I use this word because in my original post, I liken a blossoming female friendship to that of a couple romantically courting. After months of pursuing this friendship, she simply stopped. I was shocked. I took it personally, at first. It was months before I realized that she had done this disappearing act from our entire circle of friends, not just me. She had stopped answering emails, phone calls, and facebook posts.

     The odd thing was that whenever I would see her, whether weeks or months had gone by, she would act as if she had just seen me the day before. I did not and still do not know what to make of it. This post, and the one I posted after this (which will follow in a few days) has significance because recently due to schedules of our children, she has come back into my life. She is trying to get back into my life. After the way she treated me before, I hesitate even getting involved with her. I am still pretty unsure about what happened with her. 

So here it is....

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     I see a lot of people during the course of a day. You go to school, drop off children, pick them up. There are events, field trips, activities, parties etc. You smile politely, make conversation that is age appropriate to your child. For an infant at gymboree you may discuss eating/sleeping/pooping habits. Kindergarteners??? Adjustment issues and napping…First//Second grade???? Homework and making friends Third/Fourth grade??? Study habits and overbooking activities for their schedule. At this point in my parenting life, that is the limit of my experience.
     So, as Moms go, I am pretty introverted. Some Moms make friends easily, some do not. I am a “do not”. I sit and wait till the last minute, then race in to get my child. I watch as the other Moms congregate and discuss playdates, etc, envious. I have even willed myself to get out of my van a few minutes before absolutely necessary (a huge feat for me). Only to find that I stood alone with no one to talk to, as the other Moms still congregated, just without including me. Standing there, alone, feeling like I was a sole performer on a stage, as if all eyes were on me, reinforced my Mom style choice…self imposed social seclusion….or so I thought…until recently.
It occurred to me over the last few weeks, that making new friends at my age has started to resemble the everywoman search for “The One” that we look for in a mate in our teens and twenties. We start out open to every and all possibilities…old, young, nice, the bad boy/or girl (as the case may be), employed, unemployed. Then, as we go further into the dating field, we narrow our search…like a Google search. We exclude words or categories…such as “momma’s boy” (and I can say this now that I am raising a son), “recently released” (from jail, rehab, a mental health facility) or swinger/polyamorous (that’s one I learned the hard way…more on that later).
     Well, it’s the same with a friend. We tend to narrow our search as we get older. We look for people that have something in common with us from the get go. Whether it’s a child of the same gender/age/interest or a spouse at the same firm/department/etc. In my case, rarely do I meet someone new without one of those pre-existing conditions (spouse/child in common) because I learned to face it a long time ago, there is room for nothing else in my life that doesn’t sprout from their world first.
     I met D a few months ago…actually I met her husband first. My hubby and I were on a field trip and I noticed that our daughter was gravitating to his daughter. As we picked pumpkins, I started talking to him. He told me that his wife was not well but was recovering. We spent the rest of the morning talking…then goodbye.
     A few weeks later, I noticed D. I wanted to say hi, but knew she had been ill and didn’t want to bother her. A few weeks after that, another mom invited my daughter over for a playdate. D and her daughter were there. The three of us moms sat and talked. D and I, it turned out, had quite a bit in common. The three of us laughed about it. I was relieved, actually. Normally, I dread playdates. I am awkward, to say the least and making conversation is quite difficult for me. I found talking to D was the same as when I had girlfriends as a single, young, unattached girl. When I chose friends and my friends were not CHOSEN FOR ME by circumstance. We talked about things OTHER THAN OUR GIRLS. OMG! I was having a conversation as a person…not a mom!
     As the playdate ended, I was actually sad to leave. I went home and told my husband that I think I was about to make a new friend….

LonelyMomDotCom "She sleeps till noon..."

Well, I do not, for the record. Apparently, however, for months, my husband has thought that I do. Here's how I discovered this...

For about a year now, give or take, I have been homeschooling my children. It is challenging and fulfilling at the same time. (You cannot imagine my joy when I saw the light go on in my daughter's eyes the moment she finally understood the concept of reading a clock.) Make no mistake, though, it is quite an undertaking. Homeschooling two children, several years apart, different curriculums, is the equivalent, for me at least, of taking on two full time jobs. This is in addition to a SAHM's already endless list of duties.

Because of homeschooling during the day, I have found that my usual housework, shopping, etc., falls by the wayside. This has been problematic for me, as I cannot exist in chaos, and find myself doing work after I finally get the house to sleep. (Have I mentioned that both of my children are nocturnal, by nature, like their mother?). So there are nights when I do not hit the pillow till 3 or 4 am. I THOUGHT my husband knew this. He is an early riser, you see, even on weekends, so he usually goes to bed before me.

Last night, when my husband arrived home, I was having a particularly hectic day. The children were not in a learning frame of mind, to say the least...causing me to consider using crazy glue to keep them in their seats...is that frowned upon in the homeschooling community? So, much to his dismay, I used his arrival and obligatory "how was your day?" as an opportunity to unload on him.

I told him how the children were not cooperating, how dinner wasn't cooked, how the laundry had gone untouched, and how I had struggled through the entire day on only a few hours sleep. Now here's where our conversation went south...

His reply? "Well if you went to bed earlier, you'd be able to get up earlier. What are you doing till 4am anyway."

My initial response? Mouth agape...disbelief...silence....seething....hearing my own heartbeat in my ears....

I gathered myself enough to say"Remember when you went to bed last night and the sink was full of dirty dishes and the kitchen was a mess. Then when you got up, POOF, it was clean..."

He mumbled a frightened "uh, huh"

"That was me." I continued on, getting louder, as he backed into the kitchen counter, cornered, with no escape in sight. "...and what do you mean 'what do I do'? What do you think I do, wait until you go to bed so I can skype with George Clooney in private? Who do you think does the dishes? The dish fairy?"

Hubby's reply "Well, I'm just saying, if you got up earlier, you'd be able to..."

My left arm started to tingle. Is this what a heart attack feels like? Maybe I was having a stroke. "WHAT?!"
"What time do you think I get up?" He hesitated "Well, if you can stay up till 4am, you can't be getting up..."

"SEVEN THIRTY! EVERY MORNING! When I am up until 4am, it is not because I slept IN. It is because I am STILL going."

Now, you have to understand, I have been married over a decade. I like to think that my husband and I are fairly close, as spouses go, but for the last year, his job has required more hours than usual, as has my new role as teacher. Well apparently we were more far apart then ever. He assumed because I was up every night, that I was making up for the sleep in the a.m.  He could not fathom that I had been existing in 3-4 hours of sleep a night. After all, how can anyone do that?

Hello!!! Have you been listening to me, at all? I had been telling him for months that I really couldn't continue this way. The lack of sleep has caused so many problems. Daily headaches, short tempered, crying jags. There are mornings that I get up where the day before, only a few hours ago, seems like a dream...foggy at best.

Our conversation was one for the records. I have learned that if I don't say it, he does not know it. I should not assume that he knows what I do or how I feel. All of these months, I have been, I must admit, a little resentful that he hasn't come to my aid. He does the occasional set of dishes, sure. For this, I know, I am lucky, in comparison to a lot of husbands out there. But he doesn't ask if I need help with school instruction, or the children. I have been waiting...and waiting. I was sure that he would see me struggling and jump right in. He, on the other hand, figured since I didn't come to him, that I had it well in hand.

I didn't. Lesson learned.

LonelyMomDotCom "In Awe..."

Yes, that's what I am. In the few days since I started blogging, I have really begun to read the blogs of other mothers. I have found that the "lonely mom syndrome" is an epidemic. I mean, really...without exaggeration, an epidemic. First of all, it comforts me to know I am not alone. I would like to thank the mothers that have contacted me to assure me of such. One sweet mom even offered to friend me on facebook. To "A", thank you. I will take you up on that. I am starting a facebook page under my pseudonym so as to not offend anyone in my life if I speak of them in a negative light. Also, speaking of facebook I should point out that my 59 friends, are including a large number of "pages" not actual people, so my actual person count is lower.

Second, it concerns me as to why so many of us are lonely. Are we really lonely, or are our expectations too high? When I was a child, my mother had NO friends. She never went out, she never spoke on the phone, she never had anyone over. She woke up long before my siblings and I did, to start her housework. She stayed up at night, long after our bedtimes for the same reason. Consequently, my siblings and I had no friends, no playdates, no sleepovers, no dance or sports nor did we expect any. We knew no other way to be children then "go outside and play".

When I became a mother, I vowed to change all of that. I watched my own siblings raise their children as we were raised...in a bubble, and swore my children would never be afraid to walk into a room full of people. As I have watched them grow into the young people that I had hoped, I think that I raised the expectations  that I had for myself. I expect that if my children can walk up to new children and say "hi, wanna be friends?", that maybe I can too...of course I phrase my "wanna be friends" a little differently, such as " is he/she your only child?" or "I hear that this is a great class".

Anyway, it has yet to work out for me. I will re-post an old blog entry regarding what I thought was really shaping up to be a promising friendship. It was, looking back, quite a comical experience, though at the time it was not.

LonelyMomDotCom "My Island..."

Lonely? Yes. The kind of lonely that makes you understand exactly why Tom Hanks talked to the Wilson soccer ball in "Castaway". The kind of lonely that makes you chat up the girl that calls you to survey you about your last hospital visit. That poor girl didn't know what hit her. She couldn't get me off of the phone fast enough.

I was reading a magazine a few days ago. There was a woman who blogged about how larger women use fashion as an art form. When asked why she blogged, she answered that she saw a need for people just like her...a void that needed to be filled.

BINGO! A void. That's what I had been existing in for years. This void that connected to no one in my hemisphere. A sea of well put together moms that came in and out of each other's days and lives effortlessly. All the while, it took me 3 hours to prepare for a 10 minute drop off for dance class!

A void. I had to wonder if out there in this great blogosphere there were others like me. The same way I imagine people once wondered about the other side of the ocean, or the other end of the solar system. Are there other lonely moms? Moms on there own little islands just like me. My island is in a major metropolitan city. A place that one would never expect an island to be. It just sits there, quiet and undisturbed but for the comings and goings of those that inhabit it.


So I sit here, typing...using what is probably the last functioning cells in my brain...sending out my S.O.S. Is anybody out there? 




Yes.