My honest wish for my Covid-19 Mothers Day PG-13

I realized today that I haven’t truly picked a movie or tv show to watch that was really what I wanted to watch for 3 years. This wasn’t apparent until the Covid quarantine hit. Before covid we didn’t really watch that much tv because we were always out doing something. Now I'm embarrassed that I lack a voice when we are picking shows together. Does my husband or kids extend the same courtesy to me? If I had to guess I would stand on the fucking table and say ‘NO’. They most definitely don’t watch something they don’t want to watch. The problem is my husband only likes cop dramas. Bosch. Criminal Minds. Seal Team. Cop shows. My kids like fantasy shows. The umbrella academy, stranger things. I like shows that are weird and artistic. Like the one that follows the interesting lives of members of the New York Symphony. Or handmaids tale…? I mean that show makes you think. I would never ask them to watch something like that. Honestly, I don’t know if I’d even want to watch it with Alan because if he doesn’t like something he can’t even sit through it without eye rolls and the comment of ‘this is really slow, this is weird, I don’t understand what’s happening’

Yesterday I skirted with a mental breakdown. I had zero patience with everyone and everything. I was tired. Overworked. Over talked to. Please, for the love of everything holy please leave me the fuck alone. I made some poor choices I think. I decided to make homemade lasagna. This was my own choice, I get it. I wanted to have something to focus my attention and energy on, something that had a tangible ‘I did this’ and I wanted to use up ingredients in our pantry. My husband had gotten a ‘free’ package of lasagna noodles with the safeway monopoly game, so dumb right? I never buy lasagna noodles. That’s probably why they were fucking free. That box of noodles has sat and looked at me every time I’ve opened the cupboard for a year. Finally, at week 7 of the covid quarantine I decided it was time to make the fucking lasagna. It took forever to put together. I had to re-read the recipe about 10 times before every step. Was it sauce, noodles, ricotta, mozzarella, parmesan or did the noodles come first….? I was feeling guilt about taking so much time to make the lasagna that I decided to draw for almost 2 hours with my kids to try and connect and feel better about neglecting them. During all of this I was attempting to repair my marriage relationship. We were disconnected and struggling to see eye to eye. It was an all-day endeavor of us talking, getting heated and hurt, calming down, trying to talk again, getting heated, over and over. I think we repeated the cycle 5 times throughout the day. By the end of the day I just wanted to be numb. It all takes time. Time away from myself. I need to recharge. I am exhausted. Mentally exhausted. This is not a normal stay at home mom situation. The kids are HERE ALL THE TIME. Their school is not school. It’s curriculum that we have to monitor and I’m terrible at it. I feel the mom guilt for my kids missing shit with school. I feel mom guilt they are on their ipads, I feel mom guilt that they didn’t do enough chores. I feel mom guilt if I don’t make them healthy meals. I feel mom guilt if they fight. It’s a lot.

On top of this my husband and I aren’t getting any alone time together. He is the step-dad and he is mentally exhausted too. I get it, they aren’t his flesh and blood and if I’m this annoyed with them I can’t imagine what he is feeling. Usually we have every other weekend alone but not in the past 7 weeks and it is taking it’s toll. I am starting to envy single parents where their custody schedule is a week on and a week off.

Back to yesterday when I realized I gave everything I could. My gas tank was empty and the emergency reservoir tank of gas that you only use once in a blue moon was empty too. It’s all gone. Dried up.

When I reached the end of my rope I turned on the TV and said ‘I want to watch that new Little Women remake’. I even paid for the movie rental. I mean who am I? I wouldn’t think twice about renting a movie for my kids or for Alan. But for me? Just ME? Gosh that took me a few breaths to decide to do it. Isn’t that dumb? I even watched it in the living room and made everyone go away.

I’m a straight up baller.

We sacrifice so much for others that we don’t even know we are doing it anymore. And we wonder why we are so god damn exhausted all the time. It’s because we don’t know how to treat ourselves as well as we know how to treat the other people in our lives. We are selfless day in and day out. When we take a moment for ourselves, we toil with the guilt of doing so. It’s awful.

It’s time to start treating ourselves better. It’s time to say to ourselves; I have already done 8 hours of cleaning up after the children, laundry, cooking, dishes, helping children with their school, helping children work through a squabble, breaking up fights, reminding them to go play outside, reminding them to get their homework done, making meals…it’s ok to be done. I know my husband comes home from work and would love for me to muster up a smile and give him a warm embrace and say hey babe, it’s good to see you, what do you think about going for a nice drive in the country without the kids but first let’s go make love? Let’s do something FUN! I have all the energy to give you!

It’s ok if it’s not like that during this time. And it’s ok for you to say this.

This isn’t even remotely close to what I want to do with my day. I just want to paint by myself with no one else taking over my spotify account and messing up my music jam. I want to have take out sushi and I want it to be hot outside so I can get a slight tan. Then I want to be able to take a nap without having to remind my kids to be quiet midway through because they decided they should play their stupid fucking skateboard game in the bedroom directly above mine. I just want quiet. And then I want to have a delicious cocktail that was made by a fancy bartender. It would have fresh ginger and something else muddled to perfection. Then I would magically transport to my spotlessly clean house with everyone asleep. There would be a cozy fire burning, (I know it was a hot day but it’s a cold night, c’mon it’s my dream!) There would be a cup of expensive fancy herbal tea and I would watch a romantic period drama by Jane Austen. All by myselfffffff .

Then I would go to sleep without anyone giving me the hint of wanting to have sex. On my nightstand would be a cold glass of water ready for me since I can’t sleep without it and I always forget to grab it as I walk from the kitchen to the bedroom.

I would sleep undisturbed until 6:30 where I would wake up and have a whole hour by myself to drink my coffee and read.

That’s my perfect day when I’m out of quarantine. Or maybe if I’m really dreaming it could be my mother’s day present this year.