A great big steaming pot of love

I think it goes without question to say that the last few days have been somewhat challenging for me, and my previous entry caused quite a wave of encouragement and reassurance from several friends and family members, that despite the pressures and the feelings of inadequacy, I'm doing alright. Along with the encouragement though, came several echos of the feelings of pressure to perform these tasks and fill the roles of wife and mother with perfection, and I was thinking about where those pressures come from. Who is the one that tells us that we have to be better? That we have to have a 3 course meal on the table every night, a white glove approved home and a child with an IQ of 150? We do it to ourselves. I will admit that I am my own worst enemy.

As a woman, I think it is natural to compare. Not right, necessarily, but natural. I think that's largely the result of the images we are fed in the media, from an early age, we flip through the magazines and see these "perfect" supermodel bodies tucked between articles of "Bikini Body by Spring" and the psychological process of comparison begins. This is what I'm supposed to look like, and this is how I'm supposed to do it--and so we start to compare ourselves physically, and then we become competitive. We're supposed to be blond because it's summer time, so let me dye my hair, but hers looks better than mine so I have to ask her for the name of her stylist, we compare shoes, wardrobes, jewelry, even spouses and we want to have the best and be the best. I mean, how else could Manolo Blahnik get away with selling $300 pairs of shoes!?! Thus it carries into every area of our life, we are so attuned to the comparative nature that we do it down to the habits of scrubbing our toilets, and so Mrs. X always looks gorgeous and her house is pristine and her son can already read and so surely I'm not doing the best that I can when I run to the store decked in my sweaty workout attire, with dishes still in my sink and my children screaming all the way. BUT the truth is Mrs. X was the one just ducking out of Wal-Mart with her hair in a pony tail and little Johnny screaming because he didn't get the Oreo's he wanted. We see in others what we want to see, and subconsciously we want to compare.

One of the responses I received from yesterday's post was a phone call. As I began talking to the very tender hearted woman on the other end of the phone, I burst into tears as I poured out all of the stressors that I had been suppressing for the last several months and she asked me a very simple question, "Does Alex know how you've been feeling?" I paused and hesitated, because the one person on this planet whom I claim to talk to about everything, who I swear I keep no secrets from, who shares my very heart and soul was so removed from all of the things that had me so worked up, that he didn't even know anything was wrong. It wasn't his ignorance, it was my walls! I've been so caught up in the need to be perfect! I mean look back a few posts and you'll see the climax. I've been so dead set on shielding myself from everything that has been a concern--the health of my parents, the state of our finances, Alex's recovery--that I completely poured myself into obsessing over making everything fit into this ideal that I had created and in the process I was pushing away Alex, the priority who I claim to do it all for!

It wasn't but a short time after I ended this phone conversation that I received a call from Alex, and with my voice wavering I answered the phone and in response to his concern I fell apart into a blubbering mess. As much as is possible, he consoled and comforted me and offered me all of the reassurance that no one else could. He sees all of my bad days, he knows how ugly I can be sometimes and he still loves me and still thinks that I'm a good wife and mother, and it was then that it all started to change.

This morning I woke up and I went into the kitchen and poured myself a cup of coffee. I didn't make the coffee but it was there for me, just like it is every morning, and as I inhaled the fragrant aroma and savored the warm brew, I fell a little more in love with my husband. You see all the times I complain about the crumbs that he leaves behind, or the dirty socks on the floor, candy wrappers in the couch cushions and dirty dishes left on the table, and I think of those as the expectation, or the "slap in the face" and I feel like he doesn't see me as anything more than just the housekeeper became irrelevant because in that cup of coffee I was reminded of his love. Alex is up and out of the house before I even think about opening my eyes on most mornings, and because of the nature of his job he is often preoccupied with several tasks and to do lists before he leaves the house, yet every morning he makes a pot of coffee. One of the first things that Alex learned about me when we started dating was my love affair with coffee. Sure, he is a coffee drinker too, but he always makes sure to make a full pot, because he knows that I won't make coffee if I know that I'm the only one drinking it, and so he always leaves at least a cup for me. Not only does he always make sure that it's there for me, but he leaves the burner on so that it stays warm, so that every morning I wake up to a warm pot of coffee waiting for me. He knows that despite his busy schedule that every day he can give me the gift of indulgence in one of my simple pleasures, something that I won't give myself. So, in that instant this morning as I sipped the coffee from my mug I was reminded of my husband's love for me and I knew that he still thinks I'm doing ok. So despite the comparisons and obsessive need for perfection, despite the overwhelming feelings of inadequacy when it all falls apart, I know that every morning when wake up to coffee, my husband still loves me, and it's going to be ok.