And the lessons we learn along the way.

There was a time when I when I could get it up for a clean baseboard. The grit of diving in and fully committing to get your elbows dirty. Is that the expression? Those days are long gone now. I mean, would I love if they were clean? Yes. Do I feel pressed to get down there and scrub? Dust becomes less bothersome. I prefer to get my elbows dirty elsewhere. Of course, I feel an enormous sense of guilt about this change in perception. Mothers should clean house. How else will they know that I love them?

Right now, we are in maintenance mode: Stay on top of the kitchen and bathroom, let everything else shift to a looser schedule. I am recovering from the depression that I don’t really let myself suffer from. I mean, of course, I do suffer from it, I don’t allow any self-compassion. The message is: You have depression (of course you do, “you would”—hello, Dad) and that means you will feel less motivated to clean the house, and if you do clean it, it will take more effort (not really for me though, “I’m just saying that to get attention”—Mom) and on top of all of this, I have this relentless cheerleader for love bouncing in my brain who believes it is the magic elixir for any problem, and if I could just drill a hole through the glass case around my chest and tap into the source, love will magically lift this depression and I will find all the energy and willpower I need to clean the house joyfully. That’s the cheerleader’s goal, by the way, joyful cleaning. Fucking Stepford shit.  

I’ve grown up a lot in my thinking these last few years. I do not aspire to become a Stepford wife anymore. I wasn’t passionate about a spotless house or the perfect dish for the potluck. That was what I thought I should be, and so it felt right, but it didn’t feel like flourishing. It felt stagnant and hollow. It wasn’t all bad, there is real joy in presenting a birthday cake shaped like a school bus to a transportation obsessed 2-year-old. But as the kids grow older, it gets harder to make their days better with Oreo cookie tires. In my opinion, the type of parenting needed in the teen years is authenticity. Here is the world as I know it to be. I want you to follow your path. You can share anything with me, and I will do what I can to support you. I have trouble being that kind of mom behind my knitting needles, maybe because things started to feel a little too stabby. I had to hang up knitting for awhile. Mindful self-reflection showed a pattern of serial hobbies. In fact, I once dreamed up an idea for a YouTube channel where I tried out new hobbies and taught other people what I learned as I started out. I wasn’t knitting that I loved, I loved the process of learning how to knit. I discovered that once I’ve sufficiently learned the skill of a craft, the basic techniques, and language surrounding it, my brain is ready to find the next thing that sparks curiosity. 

By following curiosity, I find passion. In the security of therapy, I learned how to first broaden the scope of my search, identify which curiosities I wanted to follow, and soon after had to learn how to narrow them down. There will always be an “If we get to it” column on my to-do list. These days, I aspire to always aspire. Follow curiosity. Find passion. Seems broad enough. I also learned that I hold a lot of resentment toward myself for forgetting passion behind domesticity. I judge myself harshly for what fires passion in me. I feel ashamed to allow the thrill of passionately humoring myself. Do not enjoy. It feels like there’s a hungry cat trapped inside myself, clawing and shredding my own skin to get out and eat. It scratches and picks at the edges of my pleasure and mocks surprise when it yanks the thread that unravels it all. Curl up, motherfucker!

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A note of self-compassion:

I lived in fear. I was so deeply steeped in fear and anxiety that I thought that was life. I was born afraid, I think. I hated that about myself, and I would make decisions pretending not to be afraid which are never the ones you want in the end. Now, I recognize how hard that struggle was, and how often I was struggling alone. I forgive myself and am grateful for the fear that kept me safer than I would have been without it, but I’d like to move forward with less self-doubt, if you don’t mind.   

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So, I’m back to casting my line as broadly as I can with the hope that I will entice a curiosity to nibble at my hook. I feel some fear that I’ll catch a fish that seems larger than I can fry, but I’ve really been surprising myself lately. Once I accepted that I truly desire to understand as much of the way of things as I can in my short span here, the world seemed come alive again and I remembered why I like to go fishing. It feeds the cat.