Today was one of those days where my mind was everywhere. I have some significant transitions happening at work and I’m trying to coordinate all of the chaos. Not only is my mind everywhere, I physically am everywhere. This morning started out with an appointment for me then I zipped off to drop Cam at school and then ran downstairs to go to work. I had meeting after meeting and was running around while I was eating lunch or snacks on the go. Then, I grabbed Camryn from school and threw her (gently, obviously) in the car to then get Harper from school. Once I had the other clown, I dashed her off to basketball practice to then rush home for dinner, baths and bedtime. I am a glorified fucking ping pong ball. Now, I understand that millions of mommies, daddies, caretakers do this every single day but holy shit, it is exhausting! Like truly exhausting. I hear it only gets worse and she isn’t even playing a sport. How the hell can this nightmare actually get any worse?!

I used to pride myself on being super early for everything. That, and being able to remember everything. Now, I have no idea what day of the week it is let alone which month we are in and I feel like I’m failing at everything. Forget my memory. I am lucky if I remember where I park my car each day at work and I park it in the same damn spot every single day. I dont know how many times I stare at my staff while they ask me a question and I say, “hang on, give me a minute. My brain is slowly leaking out of my head.” To which they typically respond, “we know you have a lot going on.” Totally agree, I do have a lot going on but when did this happen and how did I let it get like this?

Well, the answer is, it just kind of happens. I have two kids, I work full-time, I have two consulting side jobs that range up to 15-20 hours a week depending on the time of year and in the summer I teach swimming lessons 3x a week at my house for another 10 hours a week. I am not the greatest at math but I’m pretty sure that my equation above just equals I work a shit ton. That doesn’t include the driving and the cooking and the cleaning and being the maid and all the other duties I have. One day I woke up and poof, my amazing little organized world had turned into a spiraling shit storm of semi-controlled chaos. And the spiraling shit storm of semi-controlled chaos is on a good day. Most days it is the exact opposite, which drives my ocd and need for perfectionism to grow which then kicks up my anxiety.

My friend Jen and I made a pact that we were going out to dinner with one another once a month. I loved the idea! She had an even better idea that we would schedule the next months outing while we were sitting together so we could lock it in. Brilliant! Friend date night for April was amazing and we went ahead and scheduled the next one for May. May roles around and I get a text from Jen saying she is so excited to hang out. I did that thing where I looked down at my phone a few times and then checked my calendar to see who was right. Sure enough, she was right. Sure enough, it was in my calendar. Sure enough, I blatantly forgot.

I felt awful. After apologizing a million times, we decided we would skip it and pick it up again in June. Fast forward to our June date and the same damn thing happens! Can you believe it?! I am still angry with myself. Jen texts me to confirm our plans and I completely forgot. Not only did I forget, it was mysteriously not in my calendar. I have NEVER been like this. EVER.

I just feel like this is the evolution of motherhood. Take kids here, pick kids up, shovel some healthy(ish) meal down their throats, entertain their small bodies for some amount of time, commence bedtime routine that seems to take a billion hours only to hit repeat the next day. Repeat, but a different repeat depending on the day of the week. Calendar or not, it is almost impossible. So, it is no wonder why I forget everything now.

I have no magical cure how to wrap your head around being organized again and not being so frazzled because if I did; shit, I would have done it and then sold my secrets and become a millionaire. I just take some days minute by minute because that is all I can do. Some days I am okay with taking that approach and other days I get super irritated that this is just how it is now.

Hey Jen, let’s shoot for a June date or maybe July since the month is almost over….

Anxiety strikes out of nowhere. You can be perfectly fine one minute and then the next minute be huddled up in a ball on your couch wishing this didn’t happen to you.

My friend once said that having anxiety about anxiety is the worst part and at first I thought, no fucking way you crazy lady! I thought back to my most recent anxiety attack which I didn’t have to think back too far since it is currently happening as I write this. I thought about the fear and panic. I thought about how crippling and debilitating they are. These feelings are the worst part, right? Or so I thought.

Since I have time to think because I want to get my mind off of my stupidly high heart rate right now, let’s dig deeper into this thought. When you are in the throws of an anxiety attack and you don’t think it can get worse, it does. The constant worry about having an attack could actually, in fact, be worse. When your daily thoughts from the moment you wake up are, “you will be fine today and you will take the day as slow or as fast as you need to” is the worst. To keep having to remind yourself that you are okay is frustrating and annoying. The questions of, where will you be when your anxiety attack happens, who will you be able to call to talk to, where will your kids be, how long will it last; those are the worst. It is the constant fear and panic from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed. Or it is that lovely point in time where you were sleeping and boom, not anymore because your friend anxiety wants to keep you up for the next four hours to play the giant mind fuck of emotions game. Cool. Game on.

To be quite honest, I am never really calm or never really enjoying any moment even when I am with my two favorite people in the world. Some anxious thought will distract me as H is reading a book and then I am forced to pretend to listen while trying to calm down and trying to hide it from her. When I am at events with people I care about and love deeply; my body is there with everyone but my mind isn’t. I’m checking my pulse to see if it is racing or slow because I honestly can’t tell anymore. I am waiting for another anxiety symptom to creep in even though I do all that I can to try and avoid it. I try and sit and do deep breaths to just regulate everything while I watch everyone else around me enjoying themselves. Then I get angry or sad because I just want to be like that, happy for a few minutes without this anxiety.

So now that I have been sitting here going through all of my symptoms while trying to write this blog, as fucking shitty as this is right now: the pounding heart rate, the shaking, the obsessive pulse checking, I agree with my friend. Living your life waiting for the next panic attack is the absolute worst.

If there is a silver lining to an anxiety attack, which in my case there is only one, it makes me so tired afterwards. I may not get a lot of sleep but after my body has been working overtime for however many hours they last (in today’s case it was three), I am so wiped. Heading to bed to get a little bit of sleep because most likely I will be up shortly because this is how my nights tend to go. Work tomorrow should go swimmingly.

I haven’t had an anxiety attack in about two months. I haven’t really celebrated, truly in fear of evoking one, naturally.

I had almost forgotten what they feel like, until this evening. Until literally right now while I write this.

The overall fear that consumes you is unreal. All I want to do right this very moment is sleep. My body is so tired and I want to shut off my brain or at least push the pause button. Sadly, no, not this evening.

I left my bedroom and came to the living room where I started rushing around trying to find any medium to help me not be so consumed with my thoughts. I grabbed my mermaid coloring book and colored pencils and the pencils were far too dull. That is not going to work. I grabbed Harper’s massive coloring briefcase and found a marker that was thick and useless to me. I then grabbed my phone and started to blog. I haven’t written in quite some time so why not do it now. Well, that is not the total truth. I have written but I just haven’t published. I am working on a few at the moment.

So this right now is raw and real and maybe with one or two typos because of my current state. Perfectionism is not a key at the moment, survival is though.

So what triggered this bastard? A couple of things I think. I have told quite a few people how I haven’t had a panic attack in a bit. So, the karma gods decided to say, well now, let’s change that. I am also so tired. I have had some really horrible dreams the last few nights and have woken up with headaches I think from the lack of sleep. All this insanity is cyclical.

You know what is hard to do when you are feverishly typing away your thoughts? Checking your pulse. Yes, who knew it was hard to check your pulse and continue to type at the same time?! I am trying to skip doing it constantly because it is annoying but also it is slowing me down. However, this is what I do. That is what I do to see where I am at. Is it high? How high? Then the panic ensues.

I am starting to get sleepy now which tends to happen after these because my body gets so worked up. Hoping I can sleep the rest of this off and we dont have a second edition…

I was told the birthing process was the hardest. I remember when I was in labor with Harper, the nurse said I needed my sleep because I would be pushing for four hours like most new moms. Umm, excuse me? Say what? That wasn’t actually what I said to her. What I did say was, “you haven’t met me and there is no way in fuck I am pushing for that long.” She laughed. It was a laugh that said, I do this for a living and you know nothing. Whether or not that was true, at the very least, that is what her laugh seemed to say to me. With that being said, you never tell me what I can’t/won’t/shouldn’t do. It instantly becomes a challenge. I pushed for 30 minutes with Harper and for 29 minutes with Camryn. Four hours, my ass.

I was told nursing was the hardest. For both girls, they were naturals. I have been blessed to have nursed both babies until they were each 14 months old. I am not going to lie, nursing was certainly trying at times, especially when you never knew how much milk they were actually getting.

Then there was pumping. It took forever and not to mention, ALL.THE.DAMN.PARTS! Sanitize, steam, wash, rinse, repeat. Not in that order because I am pretty sure that I just said that backwards. Pumping sucked. Period. What sucked even more than pumping was mastitis. Between having mastitis a total of 5 times between both girls, was brutal. However, still not the hardest.

I was told the sleepless nights were the hardest. The kind of nights where you were up all hours nursing, diapering, nursing and more nursing to try and put that sweet baby on some type of schedule. I would walk around most days in an absolute blur while on maternity leave. The days turned to nights and the nights back into day and I wouldn’t have a clue of anything else going on. Scott would come home and ask what I did all day and I wouldn’t be able to respond. What did I do all day? Other than keeping the kid alive, I really haven’t a clue.

When Camryn came into the world I had already had a baby so I was a pro. I was in the been there and done that club. What I wasn’t at all prepared for was the insane mom guilt because I was always leaving one child to suffer. I couldn’t play with Harper while I was nursing Camryn. I wasn’t hyperfocused on Camryn like I was with Harper. The mom guilt was terrible and not to mention, mind numbing. In that moment it was really hard but still not the hardest.

I was told two was the hardest, no wait..or was that three? Or both? Two was tough but three?!? Oh, three was a trying time. That would be a nice way to put it. However, since it’s me that is writing this and I don’t sugar coat anything; it was a fucking disaster most days. Three sucked major, major ass. That was the first time I left my groceries in aisle Main Street (thanks Roche Bros for naming your aisles rather than sticking with numbers) with a mini screaming crazy person in a football hold. I thought about a head lock but that seemed like I would get more stares and glares than I already was getting. And by left the groceries, I mean I wasn’t able to buy food because of said mini screaming crazy person. This age tested my patience every single second of every single day. I was also pregnant with Cam and had such a terrible pregnancy where anything that could go wrong went wrong. But damn, being pregnant and dealing with an asshole threenager was the pits. Now being two full years out of that stage, it wasn’t the hardest.

Now that I have captured your attention, based on all of my infinite parenting wisdom, I will now tell you what the hardest part of motherhood is.

The hardest part is watching your children gain independence and needing you a little less. It is the most incredible thing but also the most gut-wrenching. When you are in the throws of it and doing everything for this little person I can remember the countless times I would say, “I can’t wait for her to be able to (insert whatever task it was). “Momma, I need this. Momma, I need that. Momma, can you open this? Momma, can you tie this? Momma, can you wipe this?” Until they start ‘getting this and getting that’ for themselves, it is actually so hard to sit back and watch these little people you have created become more and more independent.

The last week in August tested my limits of motherhood. My baby started kindergarten that Wednesday. On Thursday, I had to sing to my 1 year old while they put her under general anesthesia for ear tubes and on Friday, my baby who was now a kindergartener also turned 5. The week was such a cluster fuck of emotions, I can’t even begin to tell you. My heart felt like it was ripped out and stomped on multiple times that week.

Someone once told me that ‘the days are long and the years are short’ and I have repeated that saying countless times. It is so very true. I look at my 5 year old and 1 year old and wonder where the years went. I look at old photos and videos of my little chunky, curly-haired, sassy girl and want to hit rewind. I watch my stumbling redhead learning how to walk and think to myself, she was a baby just minutes ago.

So, for me, this is the hardest part of motherhood. I am just sitting here watching them become their own person right before my very eyes. How amazing is it watching them exist in this world and how terrifying at the same time? This is one of the many things that are out of my control and boy, do I hate it. I want my girls to continue with our morning and nightly snuggles. I want to bathe them and then smell their hair when we are done. I want to look into their little eyes and know they are still as innocent as the first day I held them in my arms. I want to giggle all of our cares away when I put them to bed while we talk about our day. I know that one day all of these things will start to fade. For now, all I can do is make sure that I have prepared my girls as best as I could for the world that lies ahead of them.

I do have to ask one thing though, what age should we be confident that they can properly wipe their own ass? I am still not at that age yet. Well, I guess she still needs me for something! Phew.