Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 142664 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 713(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142664 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 713(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
They never talk about the wear and tear on mind, body, and soul when you try to mesh your life with someone else’s. I would never have believed that my life would derail the way it had when I hit my early forties. I had blinders on, and I’d be the first to admit I took things for granted.
I thought that love was all that was needed to survive and keep the home fires burning bright. That’s a damn lie. If you neglect that love for too long, something is going to break eventually, and the whole house of cards is going to come crashing down.
I wish I had known that when I was young and in love. I fell in love with Corbin in middle school but never had the courage until my second year in high school to let my feelings be known. It just so happened that he felt the same, and the rest, as they say, is history.
But it wasn’t, though. My fairytale lasted until about the time we brought home our first son. Then reality set in. The reality of diapers and midnight feedings, getting up the next day, and going through the motions on no sleep, only to repeat the whole thing all over again.
As a woman, the brunt of it all landed in my lap. Not that Corbin wasn’t helpful, he was. But we were young. Fresh out of college, with no real-life experience beyond frat parties and Friday night football.
Everyone wants you to follow a script, but no one ever took the time to write that shit in detail, so you’re walking blind. Go to school, graduate, get married, have kids. On paper, it looks very good, but no one seems to realize that these big life moments come with real work.
All the stupid books that talk at people are no help no matter what they say, because each person’s experience is different. And because my Mom and the other women around me made it look so easy, I felt like a failure when it wasn’t as easy for me.
I didn’t know back then that those women were pretending while living in their own hell. I think they should stop. I roll my eyes these days when I see these trad wife bullshit artists on their social media reels pretending that they’re super moms. Only to end up in the news at some point for some heinous shit they did to their families.
In my day, way before social media became the highway to hell that it is, it was the country club Moms and the Donna Reed black and white TV shows that my own mother and grandmother cut their teeth on that told the big fat lie.
Now I know that these women were reading from a script and getting paid to lie to the known world about their perfect Leave it to Beaver bullshit. No one has it perfect, and some have it worse than others, but I didn’t learn that until it was too late.
When I was sitting on my bathroom floor, stressed the hell out, hating my life and everything in it, then feeling like a monster for my own thoughts and spinning on that cycle time and again, too ashamed to seek help because everyone else had done it before me and wanting to end it all, there was nowhere to turn. Why? Because even my own mother had hidden her hardships from me because it wasn’t the right thing to do.
By the time my little Alyssa was born, I was tired to the bone. Four babies in the span of ten years might not seem like a lot, but it was plenty, and I wasn’t ready for it. I don’t regret giving life to my kids, but I wish someone had prepared me for the reality.
Even with household help, it was never enough. There weren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done and still be the perfect twenty-two-year-old who’d gotten married at the country club on that sunny Saturday afternoon.
Shit, that time had been long gone by then. Before you knew it, I was a thirty-something-year-old mother who had given up her dreams of working outside the home to keep on top of things with my husband and kids.
Corbin was making more than enough money to take care of all of us, not to mention I came from money, so finances were never that big of a deal. You’d think that with that burden lifted, life would be a breeze, but it wasn’t because money has shit to do with human life.
Beyond paying the bills and buying the latest everything, money didn’t help me put a colicky baby to bed on time when I wanted just two minutes with my husband.
It didn’t give me more time to do the things that I was being pulled in ten different directions to do. My husband got the precious little princess he wanted after three boys, but my mind and body had paid the price.