Where Nobody Knows You’re Name

I’m waiting. Waiting for the toddler to nap, waiting for the husband to get out of bed so I can wash the sheets, and waiting for the stomach bug that has been moving through my family to get me.

I’m holding my breath that it doesn’t because for me there will be no sick day. No one getting me Gatorade or juice. No one making soup or steering the toddler in another direction. There will just be me because mom’s don’t get sick days or breaks or lunch hours.

Sometimes I think it would be nice to go where nobody knows my name. To sit in a bar with a glass of pinot noir and a book. To wander a book store, perusing titles while sipping a hot coffee. To sit on a plane with my headphones on. To be alone. To be quiet.

Cause I’m never alone, even after Jack has gone to bed and John is still at work. I’m not alone. I’m waiting for the Jack to wake or the dog to bark or for something to come along and destroy this precious moment of quiet.

I remember when John and I started dating we were always together.

When you first start dating it’s like you need to live and breath every moment together.

But I had always been a girl who enjoyed being alone, who was OK alone.

Before heading out to his house one afternoon I saw a book on my nightstand that sat unread for months. I drove to his house and I couldn’t remember the last time I had been alone.

I walked in the door and told him I was going to go home. He didn’t understand.

But I needed to go home and be alone to prove that I could still be myself, that I could still take time for me. That I hadn’t entwined myself so tightly to him that i forgot who I was and what I enjoyed.

I went home and read that book.

And it felt so good to be alone, to get back to myself.

I think it’s the same way with motherhood you tend to lose a bit of yourself. Whether it’s the time you once had to do the things you enjoyed, or leaving your job to stay at home or the size 4 jeans you used to fit into. You lose something in motherhood.

Somewhere along the way I lost my quiet, my solitude, my alone. I lost turning the radio on and reading a good book in the middle of the day. I lost locking my bedroom door, turning up the Dave Matthews Band and journals filled with unfinished novels.

I lost lazy Sunday afternoons spent watching episodes of Sex and the City. I lost my taste for Chinese food and my favorite pair of jeans. I lost my job and the sense of purpose and growth and achievement that it gave me.

The toddler is quiet and the husband is starting to emerge from the sickness. And I’m holding on to my bit of quiet, here, for now in this moment.

What did you lose to the motherhood?

I’ve gained more than I’ve lost from being a mom and I wouldn’t change a thing, but this post really wasn’t about that, but I feel the need to say it anyway.