Obligation

I feel hounded.

My dad and his wife want to come to see us, again. My stepdad wants to come see us. My mom and her husband always want to see us. My grandparents always want to see us. My inlaws want to see us.

I complain about being lonely, but I also appreciate my space. I appreciate the chance to choose who and what we do, instead of doing things out of obligation. I feel loved by our families. I appreciate their willingness to travel and make time to see us. But it often feels overwhelming.

Until I was 13, I grew up with a single mother. My parents divorced when I was young. My mom couldn't afford daycare or many babysitters. I often went to work with her, and sat in the break room reading or drawing...anything that was quiet and made me mostly invisible. I learned to only speak when spoken to. I learned to jump when people said to jump, so as to be as small of an inconvenience as possible.

I started high school in Kansas. A new transplant from the big city. My mom was newly remarried, we were new to Smalltown, and I stuck out like a sore thumb. I was innocent and naive and gullible. I learned to continue to try and be mostly invisible. To try and be as little an inconvenience as possible.

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I think there are elements of how I grew up that are positives for sure. But I feel like I grew up learning how to be a really great doormat to all the other people in the world. It's what made me an insecure artist. It's what made me feel tired and overwhelmed in being around people. Whatever my ingrained genetic personality was as an introvert, was doubled by the environment that I grew up in. It was exhausting catering to everyone else's needs. Throw in my religious upbringing to be a servant, and I was the best goddamn doormat you ever saw.

Serving others, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. Being intuitive and sensitive to how others might perceive something you do, is not a bad thing. But when it's all unbalanced, when there's no self care, or protection of self, and you lose who you are or are insecure in yourself because of it all...then it's a bad thing.

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Hotness started the process of helping me deconstruct my self image, my way of social interaction and lack of self care. He cared about me. How I felt about things. How things effected me. He helped protect me from myself. He taught me to start saying no.

MyStar's death blew the lid off everything though. Who gave a fuck what so and so thought about this or that? My daughter died and that's all that mattered. My art came alive out of her death. I still felt dead...do still feel dead some days. But her dying helped me to observe that if I didn't cater to everyone else's needs at that time, it wasn't going to be the end of the world. That I could be a little selfish and take care of me. And I slowly learned to take care of me and Hotness again. And I'm learning to take care of me, Hotness and MySon.

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But I have all these peripheral family units to balance too. Coming up on two years out from MyStar's death means I should be healed and able to handle life and be my old self again. I can be the doormat that I was again. I feel the pull to be that again.

Hotness and I aren't even close to being ok. Our marriage is still in shambles. We just neatly stack all the pieces in a corner so that we don't stumble on them all the time. We watch n.etflix or h.ulu every night, because it helps keep us distracted. We do talk. We have hard talks. But we have no answers. None. At all. So instead of focusing on having no real direction to go, we fix our house, watch tv shows, play and love on our son, and try not to do anything to totally destroy our marriage.

The close proximity of my family adds a huge element of stress. My dad has a debilitating mental illness, which makes visits from him difficult and stressful, and add that I'm not a big fan of his wife. I know all families have quirks and difficulties, so I won't go on and on about what all mine are.

But I say all this because I feel guilty. I feel hounded. I feel like I should be able to say no, but then I'm not a good daughter, or a good person. I feel rather evil most days actually. How I really feel goes against EVERYTHING that I grew up learning and believing.

Our society, and rightly so, values and respects people who give of themselves to fill a need or serve or make sacrifices. I don't want to fill a need, or serve, or make any sacrifices. I just don't want to. I want to try and fix my marriage. I want to take care of my son.

Saying all that feels like I am abandoning my family. They made sacrifices for me. They made time and had energy for me. Don't I owe them that back?

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I'm feeling really tired and down right now. About everything I said above.

About MySon being at a point that we need to figure out sleep stuff. I'm embarrassed to say that he'll only take a nap with me...nursing. He sleeps in his own crib at night, after being nursed to sleep. I have allowed it this long because I love cuddling him. He's growing so fast, and I want to savor these moments. But when we travel or need to be out of our normal routine, it's difficult because I can't just lay him down.

Some nights I feel like forcing him will be bad. That he'll progress on his own. That's how he made it to sleeping in his own crib. And other nights I want to pull my hair out because it can sometimes take two hours for him to be fully out. And with all these new developments he's waking himself up more and needing my help to go back to sleep.

I guess I'm more AP than other "brands" of parenting. I'm not super comfortable with CIO. But somedays it seems like the best thing to try. I've read the main sleeping books that everyone throws around to try. I'm either dimwitted and can't implement something correctly, a big wuss for not being able to allow him to CIO, or cold hearted* because I want to let him CIO some days.

I'm kind of just sobbing at this point. The last two nights have been mostly sleepless. I just need to stop writing. This has been one big "woe is me" and I'm sorry.



*I should clarify. I realize that some things may work for others that don't work for us. Or that work for us and don't work for others. I go back and forth about where we fit in regards to CIO. I think each family should do what is best for them, and have no judgement passed on them for that.