The reality of blogging

For a while now I’ve wanted to write about the real me, but I just didn’t know what to say, or how to say it, or was it that I just didn’t have the “balls” to do it? Either way… one of my close high school friends read this blog and left me a comment that I read at 3am this morning and I felt like a fake, I feel like I put the best me forward, the amusing me, the good mom, the good wife, but it’s not the real me, and I know that I’ve said on a couple occasions that I feel like a hypocrite, and it’s because I really hate feeling like I am not being true, it literally causes me emotional turmoil…. and no, that is not an exaggeration!

I thought about saying that I am not this well-adjusted, I thought about saying that I am not always an optimist, that sometimes I cannot stand being me, that sometimes when I am alone I cry, that sometimes I am happy only so that my kids and family don’t worry about me, but what would be the point of that?

You know, I actually have a lot of trouble managing my emotions, emotionally-inept, if you will, but when I write, I feel like I can better articulate and understand what I am feeling, and maybe when I first started blogging, it was a way for me to escape the somewhat prison-ish nature of being a stay at home mom, and I didn’t really think that much about what I wrote, perhaps because I was mainly writing for myself, and maybe the 4 other people that stumbled upon it and thought I was amusing!

Now I write for you, I write for other parents, especially the new ones, the ones with doubts, the ones who make mistakes, the ones who struggle, so they know that they are not alone, I do that because I remember what I felt like when I had my first baby and I thought that I was the only one who didn’t know what to do, because I remember what it felt like when I had a second child and I didn’t think that I could ever survive motherhood.

I write for not-yet-parents, who are wondering what its like to be a parent, who are looking for encouragement, or reassurance, that even though it is a hard job, they’ll be able to do it. I write for all of you, to entertain you with my spectacular wit (well, I try anyways!), to make you smile, to give you hope.

I choose not to make this blog full of my fears and insecurities, but that does not mean that I don’t have any, I choose to see beauty in life, in the world, in humanity, instead of lamenting over the obvious injustice and challenges that we all know exists, I choose to inspire, and to encourage, and not to be bitter.

The real me, though, is facing a reality that I didn’t even know was mine, is learning that sometimes we don’t know ourselves as well as we think we do, that I am, may be, not as strong as I imagined I was, or independent, or truthful, or as open, and I discovered being “selfless” should not mean that you literally forget about yourself. The real me, is perhaps not always this cool, or collected, or capable, but the real me is caring, the real me does try to be a good person, the real me is very real, and very flawed, and very not-well-adjusted, but you love me anyways, right?