Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Wasted

Facebook is both a fabulous connection tool and a horrible self-esteem killer.

Back when I started this blog I don't think I even knew FB existed - if it did. Now it's always on along with my email. I've re-connected with so many people I thought I'd never hear from again. They've moved, we only shared a short period of life together, or whatever. Now I can see everything they've done in the last few years and they can see the same about me.

Therein lies the rub. What I've done for the last few years is stay home with my son. With another one on the way I don't see myself getting back into the "working world" anytime soon.

People I knew in college all seem to have fabulous lives and careers and I wonder what they think when they see me. What have I done with my advanded degree? Sure, I used it for a couple years and will probably eventually go back to it. But what about now. It seems like a big waste of money for what I'm doing. A 4 year degree would have been more than adequate.

Or maybe it says more about my insecurities and the way I look at what other people have done with their lives (good or bad) than it actually says about me. Do people even care that I'm not using my degree? Or is it just me.

Of course this is all precipitated by running into a guy I knew in high school this weekend. I wonder how he sees me now, even though he probably doesn't even know I have a grad school degree. But it made me wonder how my grad school friends on FB see me.

And sometimes, to be honest, I just wonder if it was even worth it. Yes, if I didn't have kids it would be a field I would truly (and did) enjoy. But I knew that my ultimate goal was to have kids. Perhaps I still need the field because I won't always have small children, but it's hard to see beyond that now. Now that I'm in the middle of what will probably be 10 years out of that field. Of course, I had to go to grad school to even meet my husand and have said children. So maybe it's all theoretical anyway.

A convoluted maze where the other possibilities always look better, but are only that, possibilities that were.

Friday, March 5, 2010

Alone

I'm a month away from having my second baby and all I feel is alone. I'm not going to the hospital because I hated it, but that requires so much more from my husband and I feel like he's just completely wrapped up in his own world that is work. He tries to share it with me... at times, and we did have the same profession, but I don't really think he thinks I understand.

I stay home all day with the first child and he works. I feel thwarted in getting things done because I'm so tired all the time so when he asks me how my day was I usually say that I didn't get enough done. Somehow he has taken this to mean that I have been lazy and doing whatever I wanted all day. Occasionally this is true, but most of the time it isn't. There are a million and one little things I do all day - any mother can relate to this.

It's come to a head when he hasn't done the dishes 4 out of the last 5 days leaving the sink piled up and overflowing so that I can't even make a meal for my child without having to do the dishes first. This is the only "chore" that he has to do at home and it's compounded by the fact that the sink faucet is so far back it literally hurts my back to do dishes for more than about 5 minutes at a time. (we don't have a dishwasher)

He then proceeds to tell me that he works really hard and is just too tired to do anything else. He uses the excuse that I have so much free time and he is just "going" until 11 at night. Yet every time I walk into the room where he is supposedly working he has his work computer out yes, but his personal computer is set to playing games online. Games that I know require his undivided attention because he can't even hold a 30 second conversation with me and remember any of it when he's playing this game. Yet he can't be bothered to do the dishes because by the time he's done "working" he's too tired so he just goes to bed.

And in the middle of all this I realize that I need him to help me if I'm going to get through labor. Yet right now I don't trust him and don't even want him to be in the same room with me. I would rather have my best friend there than him. I can't prepare on my own, but I can't ask him to help. I don't even want him to touch me.

I sit, in front of this computer, "my computer", in the spare room that he says I haven't left any room for him in. This, apparently, is "my" house because I did all the work of finding it and making appointments and keeping track of paper work. And he feels left out. But I don't feel like he ever really wanted to know. He's so wrapped up in his world we (me and the child) might as well not even exist. It's a good thing the child is persistent or he would never be noticed.

And I'm dying a little more inside every day because I feel so alone.