Not My Circus

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Back in February I wrote about how I was ready for my children to leave the nest ... you can read about it here. 

My boys are still at home here with us, and even though I still stand by that post, I'm not disappointed, because if the truth be known I do enjoy their company and I would miss them, a lot.

What I really don't want to do is look after them.   Menopause is bearing down on me like a freight train which I just can't stop.  With it comes the stock standard hot flushes, dry skin, foggy brain and moodiness.   I totally accept the first three things, but I don't accept the moodiness.

I don't believe I am moody, and for those who are close to me (meaning those who actually live with me), you may not like hearing that what you perceive as moodiness is here to stay.  Rather than me being moody, I believe I have fundamentally changed as a person.  Not because I decided I want to be different, but because hormonally I am now different.

I no longer produce hormones that play a part in making babies.  The maternal instincts I once had have been replaced with something new ... I call them the "circus" hormones.  Thanks to Kelly Higgins-Devine, one of my work colleagues, I have taken on a new mantra this year.  "Not my circus ... not my monkeys."   I am no longer buying into things that I am not responsible for, and in some instances, things I don't care about.

I know this isn't sitting too well with my children and I'm sure they think I don't love them or support them anymore.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  I love them more and more as the years go by.  The bottom line is I just don't want to look after them anymore.

A couple of times in recent weeks I could have stepped in and tried to "fix" some things for my boys.  I didn't.  They were a bit surprised.  I was a bit surprised.  Not because I didn't help, but because I actually didn't feel bad.  It wasn't my circus, and they weren't my monkeys.

Possibly you are reading this and thinking that I am selfish and not a very good mother.  You are right on one account.  I am being selfish and that is because this is my time to be selfish.  It is the time for me to worry about me, to nurture me and to do the things that make me happy.   After twenty years of everything being about my children and how what I do might impact on them, the last few years have seen a gradual shift to me changing my priorities. 

Am I a good mother?  There's not a yes or no answer to this question.  I've tried my best.  At times I know I've been spectacular and at other times not so good, but I think that is fairly standard across the realm of motherhood. 

At the heart of it all I do love my children deeply and my support is always there.  It's just different.   I'm different and I'm comfortable with that.

Turning 50 next month ... I'm not comfortable with that.  Not. One. Little. Bit.  But that's a whole other blog post.  Unfortunately that is my circus and 50 is my monkey!

Today

Last night I wrote a blog post filled with self loathing after a day of eating everything in sight. This day followed closely behind the day before and the day before that. It wasn't a one day binge I was feeling guilty about. It was an unhealthy lifestyle I've adopted over the past few years.

The support I received was beyond anything I expected. The support was a mixture of tough love by close friends who know me well and many others sharing how they Were feeling the same way. A few of my lovely friends worried about my guilty feelings and hating on myself so much.

I just want to say that every single one of you said something that resonated with me. Even the person who said I needed a good burp!

I do have an unhealthy relationship with food and I suspect many of us do. I also know that dieting isn't the answer. Ultimately I want to feel healthy on the inside and that includes eating food that is good for me and doing some exercise. It means adopting a healthy lifestyle. It's not a 3 month thing. It's an all the time thing.

Of course I want to look good on the outside as well. I'd be lying if I said I didn't, but I am realistic and know I will never have a flat stomach and legs that go on for miles. I'm very much ok with that.

What I want the most is to feel strong again. At the moment it feels like my bones are doing all the work. When I am fit I can feel my muscles holding my skeleton up. When I'm not, I can literally feel my bones bearing all the weight.

So ... today I have exercised and stuck to making healthy food choices. I didn't starve, nor did i feel cheated. Tomorrow I will get up and do the same thing again. I am going to take this one day at a time. I will not make any rash promises nor set any unattainable goals.

Every day I wake up I have exactly the same choices as I had the day before. I just need to make choices that are right for me. The choices that make me feel good at the end of the day.

We all have our "messed uppednesses" to deal with and we all make excuses as to why we don't always do the things that are good for us. I'm the queen of this. I also know that most of us do the best we can on any given day. It's just that some days are easier than others. Today was one of those easier ones. I felt I had the support of you all cheering me on. I know not all days will be so easy. Life is like that.

I don't intend making this blog a journey about losing weight but I will come here regularly and share how I'm feeling. It may help someone else and if the comments I received last night are anything to go by, you all will most certainly help me.

Thank you xxxx

Fear & Self Loathing in The Gap

Tonight I am disgusted with myself. In this my 50th year I always said I would be fit and fabulous. I'm not. I am probably the largest and most unhealthiest I've ever been in my life.

In three months I turn 50. This number is significant to me. I feel incredibly lucky to be here, however given the appalling way I am looking after myself right now I am not sure I deserve that right.

My beautiful friends Suzy and Tracy were both incredibly healthy, vibrant women. They looked after themselves by eating healthily and exercising. They loved life. They embraced a healthy lifestyle. Sadly neither will get the chance to see their 50th birthday.

Yet I am here and they are not. I do not have cancer and I am treating my body like I don't care about it.

Like I don't care enough about the people who love me to be as healthy as I can so I can stay here as long as possible with them.

Like I don't care about the memory of Suzy and Tracy and my three other friends who have died in the past 12 months.

The thing is I do care. I care so much yet I can't stop putting food into my mouth. Every night I go to bed filled with self loathing as I think of all the crap I've been eating. I say to myself "tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow I will get up and start the day eating healthily. I will only eat things that are good for me." The problem is, tomorrow never comes. When I wake up it is today and then I repeat exactly what happened on the today that happened yesterday.

It should be so easy. I should be able to get up and eat the food my body needs to work efficiently and do some exercise and go about my day doing the things one does in a day.

Trouble is it isn't that easy. I find myself obsessing about food and what I'm going to eat and when I'm going to eat it. It makes me feel calm to finally eat that something I've been obsessing over. Once I eat it I feel bad, but more often than not I promptly eat another one to make me feel better. I don't feel better.

See what I'm doing here? I do believe they call it emotional eating. I do believe I'm stuck in a vortex of emotional eating and I need to get the hell out of it ... now!

I know this stuff. I understand why I'm doing it yet I struggle to stop. I'm smart and emotionally intelligent, yet when it comes to putting food in my mouth I am totally devoid of intelligence.

Today I have eaten my body weight in food that is made only to line my arteries with fat deposits. I am treating my body with disdain. It does not deserve this. My family doesn't deserve this. My friends don't deserve this. Suzy and Tracy don't deserve this.

I know I've said this before and I know I've let everyone down by not following through with it. I have to get healthy and I have to do it now. My wonderful husband looks after himself so he can be fit and vital as we age. He deserves no less from me.

I am the queen of excuses. So I have a broken thyroid, big deal! I am still alive, I take medication for it and I am healthy. Suck it up princess and just do the things you know you need to do. It is as simple as one two three.

1. Eat the food Lite and Easy deliver you each week. Don't eat anything else.

2. Spend half an hour each day exercising. Just get up, go outside and move!!

3. Stop finding excuses, reasons, lies as to why you can't do 1 and 2 every single day.

This was hard to write and hitting publish is even harder. I need to do this. I need to be accountable. I need to feel some shame. We only get one body and one chance to be the best we can be. Right now I'm pissing that chance up against the wall, so to speak.

Friends I need your help. Please keep me accountable and if you smell the hint of an excuse coming out of my mouth feel free to administer the biggest upper cut you can muster.

I owe it to myself to be fit and fabulous for my 50th birthday in June.

Acid, Eyballs & Dentists

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Some things should never mix.   Ever.

Like acid and eyeballs.

Gremlins and food after midnight.

Anxiety Warriors and dentists.

I'm an anxiety warrior and the dentist is my nemesis.    

You should know that my dentist Trent is a really lovely bloke.  He is kind and gentle and provides me with copious amounts of gas.   My dislike of him is not personal.   I just don't like being on his chair, unable to move, with my mouth filled with objects that shouldn't be in mouths ... it's all kinds of claustrophobic hell.

The other day I broke a tooth.  I'd rather break a leg.   I am serious.

I am petrified of going to the dentist.   The pain doesn't bother me.  It's everything else.  You could say it is irrational, but I may not listen to you.

As a person who battles with anxiety on a regular basis a trip to the dentist fills me with fear and dread.     I never go for regular check ups ... I only ever go when it is time to fix something.    Yes I totally understand the irony in that statement.   And, no I won't listen to anyone's advice about prevention being better than cure.  I just won't.

I told you.   Irrational.

A few years ago this trip to the dentist would have rendered me incapable of thinking straight for at least 2 days beforehand.  In fact, in days gone by I would only go to the dentist if I could have a general anesthetic.  These days, with a bit of help from a hypnotherapist I can keep the truly irrational fear at bay until I'm in the car on the way.  Then it is game on.

Did I mention that I'm going to the dentist today?   In approximately 2 1/2 hours.

The anxiety levels are building.   I'm trying not to think about it, but minute by minute, hour by hour the space in my mind is being overtaken by all things dentist.  

Today's plan of attack will have me arriving 1/2 hour early so I can sit in the coffee shop downstairs and take a half does of valium.   He will need to take an xray and I can manage that without too much panic.   Should he need to do some work I will require gas - even for a poke around gas will be required.  The minute I have to lie back and the suction machine starts, I need to be somewhere else in my head.   Somewhere else usually involves drugs and/or gas.

Last night a colleague told me he loves the dentist - he catches up on sleep when he is in the chair.  What the?  My mind cannot even process this.   I am still trying to understand how people can watch those televisions they put on the ceilings.   Seriously, the last thing I want to do is watch Mr Bean or Rage music clips. 

Millions of people are enduring much worse than this I know, and as I'm writing this I'm embarrassed by how ridiculous it sounds.   I wish I could just give myself an upper cut and get the hell over myself - but it's not that easy.

Anxiety disorder makes simple things seem so complex.   Yes it is irrational, and to some people it borders on ridiculous, but to an anxiety warrior it is a very real thing and not something that can be fixed with a good dose of "get over yourself".  

If only. 

Are birds smarter than humans?

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Are birds smarter than humans?

It’s possible.  In fact, the brain to body ratio in some birds equals that of dolphins and is almost the same as humans.

Why the focus on birds?  Am I about to “come out” of the bird watching closet?

Not quite.

I’ve been thinking a lot about parenting lately and I’ve come to the conclusion that birds make pretty good parents.  

They look after their eggs carefully, incubating them at the right temperature until they hatch.  They stay with their babies, feeding them and keeping them safe until they are old enough to venture from the nest.   They teach them to fly and teach them skills to keep them safe in the world.  Once they have done all that, they push them out of their nests and send them off to live their own lives.

I’m tired.  I’ve had enough of parenting.  It’s time to push my birds out of the nest.

There, I said it.

Are you shocked?   Disappointed in my attitude?

I didn’t say I don’t love my kids … I love them to bits.  More than I can ever express in words.

I’m just tired of parenting.  

Birds have got it right.  They equip their young with the skills they need to make it in the world then they push them out to fend for themselves.

This used to be the same for us humans.  If you go back a couple of generations most had left home by eighteen and were making their own way in the world.

Somewhere in between the previous generation and this one, things changed.  The game posts were moved.   All of a sudden our children didn’t move out of home.  Why would they?  Home was no longer a place they couldn’t wait to leave.   In fact, most of us have set our homes up so that our teenage children never want to go.   We build or buy homes that have plenty of room so the teenagers have their own space.  They can invite their friends over, there are less rules, their space is filled with every possible luxury – why on earth would they leave?

I am guilty as charged.  

However, there has been a shift.  It was subtle to start with, but now the subtlety has gone and the shift is more like a sledgehammer to my forehead.

My work is done here.  There is nothing more I can teach them.  They need to live their own lives and make their own mistakes to learn new lessons.

I’m tired of being responsible for my children.  They are now almost 21 and 19.  Their “stuff” is so much bigger now and I feel like I carry the worries of three adults.   They don’t ask me to do this, I just do it because I am a mother.  Their mother.  I love that they talk to me and tell me things, but on the flipside I don’t want to know everything they are doing because I worry too much.  I don’t want to know when they are out so I lay awake wondering when they are going to get home.  I don’t want to know if they get up and go to work or if they don’t.  I don’t want to be responsible for making sure they do the right thing anymore.  They need to be in charge of this now.   They want to be in charge of it.

I want to wake up in the morning and know my kitchen is exactly how I left it last night.  I don’t want to find remnants of late night toasted sandwich making.     

I want to wander through my home in my nightie and not have to worry that a twenty something man child, who is not my offspring, may also be wandering through my home.

I want to go to bed at night without sleeping lightly as I wait to hear them come home from their Friday and Saturday nights out.

I don't want to fight with them over the minutia of everyday life as we do now.  I want to have conversations with them, adult conversations and we can't do this while I am still mothering them. 

For the last twelve months I’ve wrestled with these thoughts and felt incredibly guilty.   At times I’ve felt like there was something wrong with me.  However after talking to other mothers with similar aged children I’ve found most of us feel the same.   We are all ready to start the next phase of our lives, unencumbered by children.  Free for the first time in over twenty years. 

Where does this leave our children?  Unloved?  Orphans?  Unwanted? Disposable?

Absolutely not … my boys couldn’t be more loved by me.  I will love them and care about them until the day I die.  

I just don’t want to care for them anymore and I know they don’t want me looking after them.  They are sick of my nagging and fussing and interfering.  We fight a lot at the moment.   I’m still trying to mother them and they are trying to be independent.   We are trying to live together but we all have different priorities.  The family unit has shifted, just as it should.  They are ready to start their own lives with their own boundaries – not mine. 

I’m not asking my boys to leave, nor am I kicking them out – I would never do that.  The changes occurring in our home are happening organically.  They are both talking about moving out as soon as they can afford to and I’m not feeling saddened by this.    It’s funny how things just happen and we are ready for them.  I remember when my boys were younger – the very thought of them moving away from home split my heart in two.  It wasn’t time then.  Now it is.

This is why birds push their offspring from the nest.  There isn’t enough room in the nest for a family of all adults and they know exactly when the time is right to send them off.