I started writing here to record my thoughts around parenting. In the hope that someday someone might stumble on it and get something from it. It’s purpose was to provide thoughts and guidance around parenting. Tips and tricks learned and discovered.
Another reason was to start writing. To give me purpose outside of the daily routines of the life I now live. To grease the wheels stuck in on unfamiliar road. Looking for, or trying to create, a purpose for me, outside of being a stay at home parent.
It’s easy to get consumed by the person we are becoming and lose aspects of the person we were. The pieces that formed the person we use to see in the mirror. Before someone mattered more to us than our tiny little brains could grasp.
It would be easy to fall into a rabbit hole of want-to-be-deep thoughts. Trying hard to wax poetic on being a parent and the trial and tribulations. The ups and downs of marriage and choices and decisions. Of a child that sees in you the world. Full stop. There are better people than I out there. Better people that may not feel the pressure in such a way. Trying to be better. To stand taller. Simply, trying to talk better. I’m sure there are those that struggle more than I do.
There is no one size that fits all for anything. I got to live my life for me. My way. Unencumbered by the responsibilities of a person that needs you. NEEDS. YOU. Now, you do what you think is right. To try and figure it out. You hope you are doing right by this little person. Only to learn you are not. There is always a knick in the armor and something gets missed. There is no way to have it all. There is no everything.
The problem isn’t that there is no everything. It’s accepting there is no everything. Then, finding a way to be okay with that. One of the hardest moments in our lives is the moment we learn our parents are not parents. That’s a label given.
Our parents are human. Flawed. Selfish. Broken. Happy. Fun. Normal average everyday humans. People trying to make it through the day same as everyone not a parent. Same as everyone with whatever label they may have. I almost wrote, “Whatever label they may be”. Are we the labels given? Do we become what someone says we are? Whether we want to or not? Whether we try to are not?
What labels can you walk away from? What labels are you because someone else says you are that thing? Why do we cling to labels? I am me. I am I. There is nothing more there. Call me what you will. Say what you will. Label as you will. A flawed person trying to make it from one day to the next.
And never have I felt more flawed than when becoming a parent. For a time working hard not to show those flaws. Being flawed now hurts or affects another person. My flaws existed in a self-contained world. Now, those flaws bleed into the development and life of another.
Closing mind wander:
Counting Crows, A Murder Of One: You don’t wanna waste your life. I walk along these hillsides in the summer ‘neath the sunshine. I am feathered by the moonlight falling down on me. Change. Change. Change.
A Better Father 