The Other Side of Failure

“I get it. You’re busy. You have kids and you’re juggling, just like we all do. Being a mom is hard. Try working full time on top of it.”

I’m failing at this balancing act – this act of playing wife and mother and career woman – I’m failing at all of it. But from the outside, from the perfectly orchestrated picture I’ve constructed for you, you would not understand. Because I don’t want you to.

I’m putting forth all my effort to make sure you do not see what I don’t want you to see. My children have food and a safe, organized home. I have a husband. He smiles in our pictures and holds my hand. They are loved, my family, and they know this. In my professional life, I show up in clean clothes that are almost on trend. My hair and makeup are done, and my youthfulness can still cover what a hairstyle and lip gloss can’t. I finish my tasks on time. My patients are cared for. When I’m at work, I am there and I am stellar and I look victorious.

But my failures loom large on the inside, where it all actually counts. I have taken these three things I’ve wanted so desperately in life – to be a wife, to be a mother, to be a professional – and I cannot have them in a way that makes me feel successful. The dream I’ve clung to all these years, that I can do all the things and all the things well, is not reality.

God gave me children, and not the simple way, not the “let’s decide to have a baby and then we get pregnant next Tuesday” kind of way. We got pregnant in the kind of way that shoves you on your knees pleading with God until you loathe every other pregnant woman kind of way. The kind of way that makes you feel like you are failing.

Then there is my career, which required years of schooling and post-graduate degrees, and demands so much of my time and energy. My family, mostly my children, eat up what’s left. My “free time” goes to their needs for food and clean clothes and time spent playing with their mother (who is constantly being pulled from being present with them to the tasks on her to-do list). And my husband needs a few hours, too, which I seldom have, and thus, my failure continues.

And then there is the house. It has become my job to make sure the laundry is done, the bathroom is clean. I’m the one sweeping day after day as the crumbs multiply on the floor. And when I don’t clean, I’m miserable, and when I do clean, my husband just complains that all I do is clean. I’m failing at swapping out seasonal clothes and too-small-clothes and too-stained-clothes and shopping for bigger clothes. I’m failing at cooking for my family, and even when I succeed at this one small task, I am the only one who eats the dinner I’ve made. More failure.

And when the floors are finally sparkling and the paperwork has made it to the filing cabinet, when the clothes are clean and folded, when I have time to play without that to-do list looming, I have usually fallen behind at work. My struggle to stay relevant and present, to not slide back from all that I have accomplished, is constant. While I sit at the office typing my daily notes, one hand is filling my online grocery order. My mind is making a priority list of things to do before bed. All of this is happening simultaneously while I’m hooked up to the blessed breast pump that allows me to nurture my youngest until he’s old enough for an actual cow to take over.

So my mind floats to the “other side,” the one where it’s easier and the grass is most definitely greener, the life of a SAHM. The other side where my floors are clean because I’m home to clean them. The other side where I can grocery shop without the masses because I can do my shopping, in person, at 10 am on a Tuesday. The place where I can feed my family a homemade dinner at 5:00 pm because I’m physically at home before 5:00 pm to start that process. The other side where my family gets a coherent mom and wife, not the zombie version of the one they thought they had.

Then things get harder and harder as we’ve added another and now another baby to the mix and I sit and wonder, “How do I keep all of these dreams alive?” (like, literally, how do I keep these children and my career and my husband alive?) And dear God, what if I fail at that?

I’m growing tired, oh so tired, of being a failure. I cannot continue if all I see are my losses; I will not make it out alive. Maybe I could survive if I was on the other side.

Katie, Woman of a Certain Rage

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“Maybe if I could just get a break, get away from this house and have something of my own. If I was working, I could finally be the mother my kids deserve.”

I’m failing at this balancing act – this act of playing mother and lover, humbled stay-at-homer, domestic goddess and wiper of asses. Because this was not what I said I would be. I was going to be more, so I am always feeling less.

At parties and get-togethers, the conversation circles to work and careers:

“How’s the school year going?”

“Congrats on the big promotion!”

“I heard you on the radio the other day.”

“Wish I had a work conference in Vegas!”

“So, what do you do?”

I sputter, try to explain that while I stay home with the kids and do not, in fact, work in any capacity where someone pays me money to do some sort of skill or trade, I do, in fact, have an education. Then, I can’t help but add in a jokey sort of way, “that Master’s degree really comes in handy during potty training, am I right?” so they don’t judge me to be an uneducated twit watching the Young & the Restless all afternoon while my kids eat their own feces behind the couch (that is not to say my kids haven’t actually – and very accidentally – eaten their own feces). Sometimes, I even blurt out these very private, internal fears, making the situation grossly more awkward than it ever needed to be, and instead of just me feeling uncomfortable, now everybody does, and so goes my favorite game of “I could never do what you do!” which looks a little like:

“Oh my gosh. Staying at home with my kids 40 hours a week? I could never do that!”

“Me either! I need to be outside of the house. I mean, I need to feel like I’m doing something for me and using my degree.”

“You are amazing! Seriously, I could never do what you do. Work is totally my escape. Like I need to work.”

“Yea. I would hate not making money and having to rely on my husband to take care of it all. That would make me so uncomfortable.”

Oh my gosh. That’s so crazy because I totally feel the exact. same. way. And even though I know your intentions are good, this game that I sit through every time gets harder and harder to swallow as the years (fucking years!) roll by. My resume gets less and less relevant. My skill set diminishes and my confidence drops faster than my bra-less breasts. Only working women wear bras. And again and again, I remind myself – I am not a working woman.

I am not even a woman who “works from home.” I am a woman who “stays home,” so one assumes I have endless hours to accomplish all manner of things: laundry, dishes, home-cooked meals, clean floors and toilets and crisply made beds. But no. That is not my reality. Each bed in this house is unmade, dirty sheets speckled with drool and snot and forgotten socks. I am busy, busy, busy all day long, running from chore to child, chore to child, but never really accomplishing anything. It’s so odd all the work to be done that is quickly and continually undone.

Please, little children, sit in front of the t.v. and have your surrogate parent teach you the lessons of the day. Listen to the tiger learn to share and express frustration, say he’s sorry to the meowing kitten scratching out my ear drums. Actually, children, turn that t.v. off!

“But you told us to watch a show…”

“Just turn it off!”

And then comes the guilt. Those career women, those working moms and their voices ringing in my ears:

“You are so lucky to have the opportunity to stay home with your babies.”

“Oh my gosh. I wish I could have that much time with my son!”

“I hate having to leave my kids at daycare every day. I feel like someone else is raising them.”

Me too. Their names are Elmo and Daniel Tiger. I can’t teach emotion regulation to a three-year-old! I am 36 and have no idea how to calm myself down; I leave that to PBS and their father. I am not the example they need because this Mommy is not her whole self any longer, this Mommy is missing something. But I am the one who’s here – me and the puppet and the tiger. So much guilt and anger with nowhere to go because there are women wishing for the hours that I am lucky to have, that I take for granted, that I need a break from.

Then, when I take too many breaks, the space between my husband and I becomes toxic. Who does more? Who is afforded the larger rest, the “better” break? Who has taken more than their fair share? We are always keeping score. A hockey game. A girls’ night. A casual dig. An explosion. A fight ensues, and my husband is steady and silent while I spit fire and rage, growling strings of obscenities.

So often muzzled, I use these cracks in my mundane mornings to release all of the demons I can’t show my children who are nearly always milling around my feet. I lose my temper and dignity in one fell swoop. Again, I fail when what I really need is a win, but wins are few and far between on this side of the fence.

Ashley, Woman of a Certain Rage