When I look back at my childhood, I remember having a mom who seemed to do it all. She was a full-time mom until I was in middle school and I can’t think of a time when she wasn’t sewing new clothes and costumes for me and my siblings, keeping a clean house, attending all of our extracurricular events, running my girl scout troop and later my brother’s boy scout troop, having dinner on the table every night, and more things than I could fit in a reasonable post here. I do not think my son will have similar memories of me because, despite owning the costume, I am not Wonder Woman.
I only did the full-time mom thing until my son was 4 months old. He has yet to experience a summer vacation or winter break, because he is in some sort of care setting while my husband and I work. My sewing skills are not anywhere near where hers are (she still does lots of neat projects that have included quilting and smocking in recent history) and are mostly used for button replacements and minor stuffed animal surgery. We aren’t even going to touch on clean house and dinner on the table, I contribute next to nothing toward those.
I think I differ the most from my mom in that I’m a lot more selfish than she was. I don’t remember times where she told me she was busy or remember her taking time for herself. As I’ve written about before, I need time to myself to have the energy to be outgoing. If I haven’t had some time alone, I notice my temper getting short and my willingness to play diminishes. And that is saying something, because I love few things more than playing or exploring with my guy.
The last year has been a struggle overall for me. I haven’t wanted to go public with the information before now, so I apologize to any friends surprised by this, but about a year ago I began having a significant struggle with a heart condition. I was diagnosed with paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia (PSVT), which basically means my heart would get bored and jump to over 200 beats per minute. It is not a dangerous condition because, unlike atrial fibrillation, it was a complete heartbeat, it was just fast enough to be uncomfortable. After a few months of trying to treat the issue with medication, I gave in and had surgery in February. Since then I’ve only had one scare, and it turned out to just be a panic attack.
Speaking of panic, for years I’ve suffered from generalized anxiety disorder. Or at least I thought I did. It turns out that my anxiety was likely mostly feedback from an irregular heartbeat that was only detected when the surgeon was inside my heart fixing the PSVT. Since the surgery my anxiety is nearly gone. This sounds great, but when nervousness is a major part of your personality, and it is suddenly gone, it means you have to figure out who you are all over again. This has not been an easy process for me, so I’m currently seeing a counselor to work through some of those issues as well.
So now that I’ve shared way too much about myself and made public the reasons I’ve been struggling with keeping up on this blog, prepare for a strong return of the bad mom! I may have changed a lot in the last year, but I’m planning bigger (and way more positive) changes from here on. First on my list is trim down enough to get back into my Wonder Woman outfit so I can stand with pride in nerdy settings. As I work on it, I’ll be wearing my tiara ring to keep the goal in mind because I may not be Wonder Woman but I know I’m pretty freaking great!