I'LL TELL YOU WHY YOU SHOULD WRITE [she announces with misguided confidence].

I'll tell you why you should write. 
Maybe.
Writing helps me, because while I'm doing it, the internal voices quiet down to one. 

I spend a lot of time in my head, trying to manage feelings, unknowns, knowns, the past, the future, ideas, my faults...okay, I just spend a lot of time in my head.  And while reflection can be helpful, I'm not sure it accomplishes what I expect.  Because I just discovered (and you should brace yourself for this) you cannot fix things by thinking about them. 

I know.  It's total bullshit, is it not?
And obvious.
But if you already knew, why didn't you tell me?

I don't have a lot of confidence in myself as a parent these days.
Being fun, engaging, creative...it all feels beyond me as we begin summer vacation.

Routine and structure have been nonexistent towards the end of school, and if I'm honest, for the past year as I've adjusted to working part-time.  However, because we don't feel "anchored" or "at-the-ready" as we face the days, does not mean they stop rolling over us, does it?  And when time rolls over me without what I consider sufficient time to manage and mull prior, I feel out of control. 

I've always assumed that was bad.  I have felt that what happens when I'm not ready or focused didn't count or was wasted time, i.e., "the days with the kids are going so fast, I'm not being proactive therefore the kids are learning nothing and nothing good is happening."

But today I was remembering when I used to be home all day waiting for Chris and the kids to arrive.  There were a couple of years where the kids were in school and I stayed home.  I was busy enough, but just before they actually walked through the door,  I was sort of on alert and ready for them.  That wasn't bad.  At all.  But you know what happened soon after they arrived?  They just needed to zone out.  Which I understood.  Nevertheless, I was sort of hurrying-up-to-wait, if you know what I mean.  "Welcome home!  Oh okay, you need space."  Which was strange, but is sort of how I thought I liked things...not just after school things, but the bigger picture of life too:  Mull, prepare, manage, wait, action.

Now I'm getting home when the kids get home.  I never have time to mull and prepare.  The afternoons and weekends seem busy too.  Yet, life keeps rolling, and tossing me along with it.  This has felt challenging.  An adjustment.  And because it has felt tumultuous, it has felt "wrong." I'm all about labels for myself, and knowing what's right or wrong.  I have a love/hate relationship with being graded, and I am working on that.

However, I decided today that's it's not wrong. I also decided that I'm glad I am not in charge of time.  I often wish I could slow it or freeze until I feel ready for the next happening.  But knowing myself, there'd be a lot of freeze-framing.  NOT like "oh I just want to treasure this moment!"  More like, "Oh, I don't want the next moment to happen yet because transitions make me buckle like I've been punched."  And I don't enjoy being punched, so, if I were in charge of the clocks, I might never say, "Action, roll film."

But things need to happen.
Ready or not.
Good or bad.
Surprising or expected.
You know, just life needs to happen.

And while this is obvious, I think the fact that I can write this shows progress.  And I only really understood it, because I sat down to write about it.  So writing is helpful.

A lot of what I learn seems to be cliché.  Sometimes I don't want to share it, because it's been said to death, and a voice in my head says that being unoriginal is the worst kind of sin.  But the other voice [the kinder voice, the voice that speaks in brackets and calls me Honey instead of Jackass] has always said that the fact that we are all similar is the best kind of gift.

So, if it helps you, just write.
For yourself or us.
You can be boring or fascinating.  Don't worry too much about the labels.
Because for a little while you can get the voices in your head down to one.
And we can be the ears.

the walls have ears