As a hard working, trying to juggle everything mum, I look forward to my Thursday nights out with my girlfriend. It's a vigil, a sanity check, and a keep in the real world affirmation. This precious time is like drinking mellow wine. We sit and write, gossip, laugh, and cry – we are back to being girls again. What a feeling!
As a stay at home mum, wife of a serial world traveler, and thrown into home schooling due to an anxiety disorder that struck my daughter like a speeding car, my temporary escape is key to my survival as Dawn.
As we pass through the different stages of our lives, I can't help feeling that part of me is disappearing. Some days when I look in the mirror, the image looking back at me is still the same old me, but I feel as if I am looking at a stranger.
Perhaps, it is because I am a stranger. A stranger to my former self. Yes, I have grown, matured, and learned life lessons, but life itself along with marriage and kids can overtake you like an alien. Invading your very soul. I love my family, but honestly, sometimes I long for solitude. To do things and make decisions based solely and selfishly for me.
As a partner and/or parent, whether you are male or female, we make compensations. We agree to meet in the middle, we compromise, we give in, and we make decisions for the best together. However, the young girl lost in me sometimes wants to rebel.
Is that so wrong? I don't think so.
Even my husband agrees, that in marriage, we do lose a little of ourselves. We are in danger of becoming the mirror image of our spouses if we submit to it. I can never forget an old English TV sitcom where the married couple wears identical knitted sweaters, their identity becoming one or reading "Eat, Pray, Love," where the author describes the time a person told her that in relationships she takes on the look of her partner. A reality that happens to some that is scary to say the least. You may argue that in marriage being synonymous is a good thing and, yes it is, but as a synergy not a coup.
So you see, my safe escape every Thursday allows me to visit with my old self and say hello to her. It allows me to enjoy the feeling of liberation and then return to my family, happy and content. We all need a little escape, so go ahead allow yourself, it is magnificent!
Climb Aboard the Double Decker Bus and Gab With Us
And why I don't complain when H has to travel out of town on some occasions. I only complain when it gets cancelled. :-)
ReplyDeleteHaha So Fancy - I am the same!!
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