Searching for something satisfying...

My husband took our son out for a bagel and some father-son bonding while I have my Friday lie-in. He wants me to workout and shower in this time (not because he's a jerk, but because I told him I have to do that before we start our fun-filled family day in this beautiful spring weather). As he was heading out the door I think I remember telling him that "maybe" I would do those things while they were out. I haven't. 

Instead I've been reading a wicked-ass blog that I stumbled upon randomly through a facebook ad for a mani-pedi bar here in Toronto. The author of the blog owns the mani-pedi bar and for some inexplicable reason, she has connected her business website with her personal (and I do mean PERSONAL) blog page. While I would NEVER want the two things mixing, she seems like a pretty cool girl, and she might even be using her blog as a marketing tool - promoting her salon by publicizing her Carrie Bradshaw lifestyle. You know, 'I'm just like you. I struggle, I love, I have successes and failures. Don't you want to hang out at my Mani-Pedi Bar?' Anyway, whether the connection of work to personal life is as savvy as I'm making it out to be, or just a weird choice that I'm too suspicious to look past, I really enjoyed reading her posts, and it got me thinking...

I miss my pre-baby life. I miss it in a way that I never expected I would and it sucks sometimes. I know I made the right choice to marry my husband - there isn't a better man in the world better for me than him, and I love love love him. And my son? Forget about it, he's everything that words couldn't possibly express. I sing him a song called My Boy, My Joy, and sometimes I find myself just staring at him in loving amazement. BUT... I feel such guilt because I need more in my life than just being a wife and mother. I need my independence. I need time to myself where I'm not being responsible for someone else. Hell, perhaps I even need it more than other moms do... I don't know. I just know that, like it or not, I do have a wanderlust that's been there forever, and it didn't go away when I became a mother. If anything it's made me feel a little trapped. Trapped by responsibility in some ways, trapped by guilt that I need more than other moms do - that I'm selfish. I find myself envying this stranger's Sex and the City-esque life. Wishing that I had her freedom and resenting that I haven't experienced near the successes that she has - even though she probably wouldn't even see her life in such a way.

While lamenting about similar stuff to my brother a while ago, he responded, "well you are Dad...". Like that was in itself an explanation for my struggles. I didn't say anything, but I was offended, and have given it a lot of thought since. You see, my father left our family because he couldn't handle the role of being a "full-time" dad and husband. He resented the expectation he felt to provide for us in the traditional sense. After he left, he moved every year or so, because he got itchy. He's always wandered - from job to job, passion to passion, woman to woman - and we have never been a priority. We have always come second to his passions, to his needs. It terrifies me and breaks my heart that people compare me to him so much. I know he's in there, but I also know that there's a lot of him that is NOT in me, things that I reject and run screaming in the other direction from. I don't accept that I'm destined to fulfill some genetic prophecy my father left for me because I yearn for something more from my life.

Whether my family and/or others get it or not, at the end of my day I want more time to write, to read, to travel, see movies, to go out with girlfriends, to plan fundraisers, to learn, to organize, to exercise. I want to feel fulfilled by a passion. I want to feel useful and powerful beyond my homelife, as a part of the global community. I want to feel successful and smart and desirable. I want to be a wicked mother, and a kick-ass woman separate of that. I'll totally cop to getting the intense, dreaming, passionate side of my father. But I also got the nurturing and committed parts of my mother. I just happen to want it all, and I think I'm becoming okay with that. Now I have to figure out how to get it!

I'm thinking a Mani-Pedi might be in order!!