Jun. 18th, 2005

falcongrrl: (Default)
It feels like a long time since I've written in here. This week has been a difficult one with the kids, to the point where I just haven't known what to do. Dave made an offhand comment in a moment of frustration about us being 'crappy parents,' and that's stuck with me. I know that he didn't really mean it, and yet there's a part of me that thinks that he did, that it was one of those rare, uncensored, blatantly-honest moments.

Part of me thinks that parenting is meant for those ESTJ souls, for those of you who are familiar with the MBTI. Dave and I are both INFPs, the gentle, mildly-obsessive dreamers either retreating into fantasy or questing after something in reality. Parents are meant to be planners, administrators, not hapless folks who'd rather be taking an art class or writing a poem (incidentally, he's the first; I'm the second).

At the same time, I feel that parenting is making me stretch and grow as a person, sometimes kicking and screaming, but it's still happening. I'm much more vocal than I used to be, much less afraid of making a fool of myself, much more willing to laugh at my mistakes. I've learned to shrug off a lot of what's not really important (granted, this is still an ongoing process) and to surround myself with folks who have a baseline level of emotional health, who energize rather than drain me. I don't know if I would have been able to learn these lessons if I hadn't had to, and parenting was/is/forevermoreshallbe a huge part of that process.

But then the ambivalence comes, that little voice that says, 'It's all about you, isn't it? What about the children, for god's sake? The truth is that my kids aren't easy--whether the blame for that is genetic or environmental, the end result is the same. The truth is that I want them to grow into healthy, happy individuals--and that I often don't have the faintest idea of how to go about that process. Or, conversely, I think that I do--but it involves refashioning myself into someone so foreign, so different from the 'me' I construct normally, that it seems nigh impossible.

Or maybe that's a cop-out?

I'm going to disable comments, because I worry that lately this journal has turned into a bit of a whine-fest, with different ones of you feeling like you have to pop up and reassure me, and I don't want that to become some weird dysfunctional pattern. At the same time, it's melancholy that sends me running to the keyboard, typing in order to make sense of my (admittedly mishmosh) internal and external life(lives).

So, thank you, all of you, for reading. And thanks to those of you who have crossed over into that select section of the monkeysphere: those of you who love me, whom I love back. There are far more of you in that list than I deserve, frankly, but I'm selfish enough to...well...not care. ;-)

Have a good weekend everybody, especially [livejournal.com profile] zyll_art, who's been in my thoughts all week after her daughter's surgery.

Love.

Profile

falcongrrl: (Default)
falcongrrl

May 2023

S M T W T F S
 12 3 4 5 6
7 8910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
28293031   

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags