Wow....8 months later.

I can't believe that it has been eight months since the last time I blogged. I think that I have gotten very caught up in the business of life. I forgot that blogging can be cathartic and that it does good things for my mental health. I would make this the type of post that updates everyone on how I have been and what I have been doing, but to be honest I haven't been doing that much. In short, I still run and I still love it. I still parent and sometimes I love it and sometimes I wish that I could run away screaming and start a single life in a city somewhere. My husband was deployed and now he is back, however my kids and I are now living in a different state waiting for his service to end. He should be joining us in a month and a half. I graduated from college and am getting ready to start graduate school. I will be pursuing an MA in teaching. I think that's about it, and it is definitely the interesting stuff.



I decided to blog again because here I am alone with my kids again. By the time that 2012 ends, my husband and I will have only lived together for 4 months of the year. While I understand that this is a part of the military package, that doesn't make it suck any less. My husband is amazing. We have a wonderful relationship and I love him very much. On top of that, he is a great father and he is very involved. He helps a lot around the house and does more parenting than many men that I know. It has been a really long year for me.



I don't think that a lot of people are completely honest with the public about their feelings on parenthood. I know that, having been a stay-at-home-mom for the last five years, there is a lot of pressure in the stay-at-home-mom community to be all mommy all the time. You are looked down on or judged if you express an interest in a life outside of the home.A stay-at-home-mom is expected to enjoy every minute of it and to devote herself to it entirely. I know some moms who actually do, I know some moms who are honest about the moments that they don't. However, most of the moms I know just put something out there that I *personally* don't think they really feel.



We moms don't talk about how exasperating it is to try and keep a house clean all day long while the messes seem to keep popping up. No one understands how hard it is knowing that the words "go brush your teeth" are going to cause a tantrum but they have to be said anyways. No one especially understands the crushing feeling of having a million things to do, wanting to do them all right, and feeling like you will never get the five minutes you want to just sit there and breathe. I have felt that a lot this year. Being a stay-at-home-mom is defeating me. I am not giving my all to anything because I feel like it's never enough.



I am so tired all the time that I feel like having a job of my own would actually be refreshing. I feel like I would value my time with my children more if I worked outside of the home. I want to enjoy them, not wish that they would go play quietly away from me in their rooms. I want to look forward to the moments that I will share with them rather than dreading the moment that nap ends and I have to deal with more messes. On the weekends (or whatever my days off are) I would like to look forward to doing things with them rather than wishing for a moment of peace and quiet.



I love my kids so much. I love being a mom. I love being a wife. But I think that I need to get back in touch with Molly as a person. For a long time, school was all I needed to keep me anchored as a person. Then I added running and that worked like a charm. But, once again, I need to grow and I need to change. I need to work. I need to start making a life for myself outside of my home. I need to see myself as something other than a wife and mom and student and runner, because I have always known that I was capable of great things and I need to feel like I am doing them.



It's time for me to walk out the front door and grow even more than I already have in the last couple of years.