There is no time to write these days. I have revised my goals multiple times since the year started and have not made any of them. Today, I am sitting at the computer with the desk piled so high with papers I can barely see the bottom of the screen. So scratch the idea of waiting until I get the desk clean. But last night we sat down to dinner and the clamor around me was all I could hear. The baby was hollering in the high chair and banging his toy, the toddler was whining about having a drink or not having a drink- I can’t really remember, several things forgotten in the setting of the table were being remarked on by others. It was a relatively happy chaos, but in my frazzled state all I could hear was the chaos part. And I realized that I had not had a moment of uninterrupted thinking since the night before, when I had forced myself to stay awake (nursing the baby of course, so even then I wasn’t truly alone) just to have a few moments to hear myself think. This lifestyle can, at times, be pure torture for an introvert.
I found myself getting crabbier as the day progressed, never being able to finish a thought without another little person coming to talk to me again. In conversations that mostly go like this:
Molly: Mommy!
Me: What?
Molly: Mommy!
Me: What?
Molly: Mommy!
Me: What?
Molly: Mommy!
Me: WHAT?!?
Molly: I love you.
Me: I love you too.
I have these little exchanges with Molly about 10 times a day. It is cute, but it can get a little grating.
So I figured that maybe, for my own sanity, I should write a little <insert phone call from one child, extricating a child from the tangle of scotch tape, and breaking up a fight between two others here>
Oh, and Molly please take your dolly away from the piano, she doesn’t know how to play.
What was I saying… something about finishing a thought…
Oh well, it’s gone now and the vacuum is making a very strange sound in the other room, so I guess my moment of sanity is over.
<An hour or so goes by.>
I’m returning to try to finish this post. <How did she find another roll of scotch tape?> Ahem. My realization was that <NO, YOU CAN’T HAVE CAKE!> I need to carve out some time to finish my thoughts before I go completely catatonic. I am at one of those stages when children begin to decide that all adults are idiots. The first stage happens when they are learning to talk and tell you they want “Um gick!” forty three times before you figure out that what they really want is ” Some milk!” Then next stage is where I am right now. My brain is trying so hard to finish a thought that my kids will come and say something to me 4 or 5 times before I can register what they are saying to me. And I can see the idea forming in their heads: Idiots are in charge! Tired idiots! We can get away with ANYTHING.
This is no new revelation, that I need time for myself. It just keeps getting harder, that’s all. But it also becomes more vitally important as more of these people are relying on me to make important decisions and do things like use electricity to cook.
What I need now is for the baby to sleep. And by that I mean to sleep while not touching my body, which he hasn’t been so hot on so far. No swaddling, pacifiers, swings (we bought two out of desperation), or crying (his or mine) seem to do the trick. So we are just going to have to be down to emergency measures: letting other things go so I can grasp a moment here or there to think. Typing things out, maybe that will help my disjointed thinking to become thoughts and thoughts to become ideas. And this desperation will release its grasp on me just a little so that I am a little better to focus on these little people. I love them so very much. I just need them to LEAVE ME ALONE FOR ONE MOMENT PLEASE!!!
As a fellow introvert, I salute you. I get it.