Note What I Expected

I decided to go through the Notes app on my phone today. And if you've got one, it's probably a lot like mine: a long list of weird one-liners with absolutely no context. I haven't gone through it in literally years, so there are notes in there dating back to as far as 2013 — so basically, almost Corbin's entire lifetime. It's crazy that there are so many things I thought were important enough to save in the moment, yet I have no clue what they mean now.

A few ridiculous (and inexplicable) gems from my Notes App archives:

"Carbicle. Coconut oil. Colin bring independent. Peeing standing vs sitting."

"Kiss My Ass"

"Steak tweezers. Thumb toe. Pants coat. Nose water."

"I wonder if soaring through a sunrise feels as majestic as it looks or if the birds are just like, 'Damn traffic.'"

"Fashion water. Bigfoot with little feet."

"Pisket bastick."

"Rock and roll caused delinquency."

Yeah. I'm pretty much stumped by this entire list, except for the knowledge that Coby did call tongs "steak tweezers" and his big toe his "thumb toe." But other than that ... WTF.

Most of them left me confused. Many of them made me laugh. But then I came across one that took my breath away ... and, to be honest, kind of broke my heart. It was from June 2015 — 11 years ago — when my kids would have been 10, 7, 6, and (newly) 2. And it perfectly sums up the way I felt inside during the majority of the entries in this blog. Here, read for yourself:

"June 11, 2015

I need help today.

From the moment I was first summoned from sleep, I've been exhausted. I don't know whether that's a result of my usual fitful slumber, or because my senses were immediately bombarded with a list of demands that seems to grow more quickly than my brain can even process it. 

The kids want breakfast. There's a pile of dog poop in the living room. As the mental to-do list lengthens and gains clarity, I feel as though I've been tossed directly from my bed onto a treadmill turned up way too high. Last night's dishes clutter the sink, because by 11 PM I felt too beaten down to tend to them. A neglected mound of clean laundry is piled precariously into two baskets on the counter, awaiting my attention. The demands keep building up, threatening to come crashing down and crush my fragile sanity.

I feel stickiness on the bottoms of my feet and glance down in dismay at the tumbleweeds of dog hair and crumbs beginning to gather in the corners of the kitchen. I'm disgusted, but I'm also irritated because I just mopped this floor ... I count on my fingers ... oh. It's been almost two weeks. Clouds of guilt gather to darken my outlook as I reflect that the rest of the house is just as bad. It's all I can do to keep it picked up — at least where company would see. It doesn't even smell fresh in here.

I need to just take a couple of days and clean, I think to myself while shoving frozen waffles into the toaster slots. But shit. Who has a couple of days to devote to cleaning? I've got work to do. Real, paying work. With deadlines. Maybe if I devoted more time to working, I'd make enough money to hire a cleaning lady. But no: any extra money I'd make wouldn't be "extra" at all. There's always so much month left at the end of the money. And if anything, we should spend it on getting these kids into some kind of activities. My first-grader is dying to take Tae Kwon Do classes. If I would just work harder, these things would be possible. They'd have more opportunities.

But somehow I feel like I never really SEE them as it is. I spend most days shooing them impatiently out of my path as I struggle against the rising tide of obligations. Not now, buddy, I'm working. ... Sorry, baby, I just have so much to do. And yet ... I can never seem to get anything done. Not really. 

My heart sags with the weight of knowing their childhood is slipping by so quickly. You're going to miss this, I chastise myself. I feel like I'm trying to gain ground on a mountain where the peak just keeps getting higher. And tethering me to this mountain is the gnawing sense that if only I were more energetic, more focused, more attentive, more driven, harder-working, thinner ... if only I could step my game up ... maybe I'd get my shit together. Maybe then.

But the more I feel I need to do, the more daunting it becomes.

My kids have frozen waffles for breakfast, but the only thing in my mouth is a bitter taste, and a lump of sorrow in my throat."

Oh, man.

I want to reach back in time and hug 2015 me. She was trying so hard ... and she wasn't failing as miserably as she thought she was. I want to tell her to breathe; her kids turned out just fine. That they've had plenty of opportunities to do things and go places. That a couple of them are happy, functioning adults (which I still cannot believe!) and the other two are well on their way there. And none of them have sobbed on a therapist's couch about how neglected they felt as kids (... not yet, anyway). 

I remember these feelings so clearly. The anxiety. The disappointment with myself. The constant, unrelenting Mom Guilt. And I guess I remember it so well because, if I'm being totally honest, not much about me has changed. 

Even though my circumstances are pretty different now than they were then, I'm still like this; it's just packaged differently. The subjects of my worries may have shifted slightly, but I still feel this way most of the time. I wish I could say I've learned valuable lessons since then about not being so hard on myself. I'd love to take the compassion and reassurance I have for 2015 Rita and apply it to 2026 Rita. But even though I can look back on that time and see how unnecessary all that guilt and self-hatred was, that's only because I have the benefit of hindsight now.  

Maybe that's the cruel little trick of being human: we're always extending grace backward and withholding it from ourselves in the present.

Eleven years from now, Future Rita will probably stumble across this post and think, Oh, sweetheart. You were doing fine then, too.

I hope she's right.

Until then, I've always got "Bigfoot with little feet." ... Whatever the hell that is.