Slump

I'm terrified, I'm in the mother of all slumps.  Summer is finally showing itself, the kids are done school, no more lunches, no more tight schedules, no more homework or backpacks.  I always look forward to this time of year.  When I can finally shut down, slow down and unwind from the year's tightening grip.  But this year it feels different.

The big kids are older, they aren't around too much, the little kid, well, she's still little, and me, well, I sit and wait.  I wait for some kind of epiphany, some kind sign that will point me in the direction I need to go, but nothing.  I think I've spent the better part of the last 13 years running on auto pilot, just doing what needs to be done.  I've run around like a crazy person year after year, without any kind of a break, and now I am staring face to face at one (well kind of), and I don't know what the hell to do with it.  The longer I sit and wait the more difficult it becomes to dig myself back out of this pit.

My creativity is in the toilet at the moment and I'm not sure how to get it back.  I still do the day to day stuff of most mothers do, tidy, complain, clean, complain, cook, complain and finally do it all over again.  It just seems like it's missing something, chaos maybe, I don't know.  It seems the more I used to have on the go and on my plate the easier it was to get through the days.  My heart raced, I had more purpose than emptying the dishwasher or changing the beds.  

Now the days somehow don't feel long enough, but at the same time feel sort of endless.  How the hell can that be, I ask myself?  But there it is.  I want to sit quietly and read, I want to be in a room full of exciting people, I want to draw, I want to sing, to dance, to feel more alive, and for some reason I want it all at once.  I know that 's impossible, I know it's slightly irrational (well more than slightly), but it doesn't make me want any of it any less.

I want purpose, and I already know that people will be thinking, "well you already have purpose, and a very important fulfilling purpose, in being a mother".  Well that's all well and good, but sometimes, hearing that, or thinking that yourself, just doesn't cut it.  I am a mother, and there are many pieces of it that I enjoy and dare I say love, but then there are other parts, parts that leave you feeling a little disillusioned, for lack of a better description.  One can only do and redo certain things so many times without feeling like they've somehow lost it.

Somedays, it's all one can do just to get up, put one foot in front of the other, go through the motions of the day, go to bed that night with the knowledge that tomorrow you'll get up and do all of it again, and probably in the same order.

So slumped I am.  I'm sure I'll get out of it one day, hopefully anyway.  Until then I'm glad I can say it, feel it and do what I can to fight it, or maybe I'll learn to embrace it.  God that's a scary thought.