The things you’re not meant to say.
I had a particularly crappy day last week. One of those that sneaks up on your for no particular reason. Nothing remarkable had happened for me to feel a bit down and all over the place, I just did. Which kinda makes it harder to deal with. If only there was a reason to explain the feeling. Something that could be done to fix it. How do you explain feeling a bit over it all when only yesterday you were in love with the whole lot of it, and tomorrow you’ll probably be back in love again?
I posted the following over on Instagram and it’s pretty clear I’m not the only one who gets these out of nowhere blue days or that I’m the only one who feels the things you’re not meant to say.
You’re not meant to admit that you’re being driven batshit crazy by all the repetition. When every day looks the same and you’re starting to develop a slight twitch from the question ‘why?’ You’re not meant to admit that you’re counting the hours until bedtime or that you’re dying for half an hour to yourself. You’re not meant to admit that you don’t love being Mum every day. That some days you’d love to pack off to work even though it’s completely your choice to stay home with them. You’re not meant to admit it, so instead you sneak away when they’re not looking to eat some chocolate from the secret stash. Distracting yourself from the mild ‘blergh’ feeling that you just can’t shake. Tomorrow is a new day.
Even though the responses were all overwhelmingly positive. And many of you expressed that you too felt this way, by the afternoon I was itching to delete it. As I was starting to feel better it was like I no longer wanted a record of admitting the truth.
That whilst I wouldn’t swap any of it for the world, some days being a Mum is a struggle. Why is it that we’re happy to admit that our jobs suck at times… that we don’t always love going to work but we’d still choose that path if we had to again… yet admitting the same thing about Motherhood feels like we’re being ungrateful.
I ended up leaving the post up there. Instead of trying to distract myself from how I was feeling by trawling social media (my usual go to when I need to ‘escape’), I sat with the feelings for the day. We didn’t really do much. I knew I wasn’t in the mood to deal with public meltdowns or anything particularly productive. And by the end of the day I sent myself to bed when my responses to Eamon’s constant questions became particularly childish and moody.
It’s funny how much brighter life can look on the other side of a nap.
Do you get unexplained blue days too? How do you deal with them?