OMG. Who ARE these people?

"...the grief that has enveloped me, and it's amazing. I'm sitting here with tears streaming down my cheeks, and I need someone somewhere that could tell me this is normal..."

The subject of my rant today is people "struggling" with the empty nest. I'm talking about deep, anguished writings by women who are trying to build a life outside of their children. Stuff like this (above) and throughout, which I've edited so that the original authors can't be identified.

OMG, WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE? I started raising children at 19, and if you don't count a couple of my ex husbands, and the hundreds of students I've taught, I've raised three of them. Three children, who have by and large kept me hostage while they took everything I ever tried to have for myself: my favorite flavors of special K -I found three empty boxes in Mini's room while cleaning out the old house, and I've spent the weekend scrubbing boot black off stairs. This would be from JROTC combat boots.

"...I find myself wandering to his room, where I sit on the edge of his bed and thoughts of him run through my mind..."

I also found candy wrappers and old socks behind nearly every piece of furniture in his room...and also throughout the house. (And do we condone this? We do not.) Then, I packed up the car and drove to our new house, where I have cereal that will stay UNTIL I EAT IT and where, when I go to get something, it will be exactly where I left it. The only messes to clean are the ones that I myself have created.

Which carries its own challenges. But, anyway.

Am I a terrible mother who hates kids? I don't think so. I used to think I was - I tried apologizing to my grown children for their inconsistent upbringing and for being so crazy, but they've both assured me that I wasn't a bad mother, e.b., You should see some of the mothers my friends have, and they call and email me often enough to where I feel pretty assured that they don't have "issues." At least not yet.

I'll just say it: I feel like I've been let out of PRISON. Maybe I put too much into motherhood; I don't know. I felt like my job was to raise kids to be healthy, responsible individuals who could take care of themself and not need me and move on to live their lives. I stopped trying to get some meaning or reward out of parenthood long ago. I was my job, and when I enjoyed it, that was a bonus. But now I'm done.

"...As my son packed his things, my heart ached. Only a mother could know the anguish of saying goodbye, giving him wings so that the struggling baby bird can soar. I want to grab his little beak and say 'come back to your safe, loving, nest'..."

Good lord. To my children: I love you, but if you're coming for a visit, I want to see a return ticket before I let you in the door.

I come home at night, pour a glass of wine or a cup of coffee, sit on a clean couch, and look out at the foothills. Sometimes I go for a walk. I enjoy a quiet supper with Sweet Baboo. I'm in awe that life can be this good, even, and calm--devoid of any drama except that which I care to add.

There is nobody for me to ferry to an event. There is nobody to shove several pieces of paper at me at 6:45 am for my signature and/or checks to write, nobody to drop dirty clothes and books on the floor or tell me tearfully at 8 pm that they have to have 2 pieces of white posterboard RIGHT NOW or they will FAIL.

I bet this is the part where she says she misses all that.

I have a plaster cast of someone's handprint (I can't remember who) with a little poem attached that has a line or two about how much I'll miss their dirty handprints some day. I don't. Maybe that makes me a bad mom, but, that's something I'll have to live with, I guess, while sipping my chocolate wine and planning my next vacation.

I sit in my living room , watch a movie with the man I love, and there are no interruptions. The stereo has not been blown, the TV doesn't have smudgy smears on it, the cats are calm, because nobody has chased them with a paper sword that day or tried to stuff them into a box. There is low-fat ranch for my salad because nobody drank it straight from the bottle. There is chocolate milk for my mocha lattes because nobody drank the entire carton while sitting in front of the TV WHERE THEY ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE EATING followed by putting the empty carton back into the refrigerator.

"...I miss having teenagers around...I would hear newest jokes and newest music. That has been the hardest....

The phone almost never rings, but when it does, it's for me, and it's not teachers or ex-spouses calling to let me know that my son or daughter is in trouble, failing a grade, or mouthing off to them. When the TV isn't on, I sit quietly and listen to music, or read.

I'm 44. Now my life begins.

"I guess I knew that it would be here sooner or later, like the terrible twos and the teenage years. Everybody goes through it, so why do I feel like my guts have been ripped out, thrown on the road, and run over by a truck?"

OMG, woman. Go for a run, or to spin class.

...

18 Confessions.

1) iPod rules. There. I said it. I hate All Things Apple, but I love the iPod. Or as DP calls it, the Precious.

2) It really is all about the bike.

3) The foam roller works.

4) When you Google me, you see a couple pictures of me, but also pictures of horses. And sometimes, strippers.

5) I should have listened to my mother way, way back in 1983. And 1987. And, probably, 1994. I'm not telling why.

6) I know where there's a bag of potato chips hidden right at this moment. They are not baked.

7) My pager battery has been dead for several weeks. I know this, and I haven't replaced it.

8) I've discovered recently that I'm actually pretty nervous before endurance events. Terrified, actually. It just doesn't look that way. It looks a lot like, laziness. I'm secretly pleased when things are called on account of rain, and the more terrified I am, the lazier I look.

9) I frequently change the time on my posts to mask the fact that I clearly wrote them when I should be working or sleeping.

10) I haven't sent out Christmas cards out since 2001.

11) Britney Spears' CIRCUS was released November 28th. It was in my iTunes library November 13th.

12) The skirt I'm wearing today is a size 14.

13) I have a southern accent that is largely extinct due to my efforts, but I will use in a completely mercenary manner.

14) I can, on occasion, be quite catty.

15) Because of this article I have purchased a large mesh strainer and a USB cord. I am just that combination of geek, lazy, and cheap.

16) I will eat stuff that falls on my kitchen floor. And I have cats.

17) There are three words that I have to lookup no matter how many times my word processor tells me they are misspelled: maintenance, embarrass, and license. I used to misspell conscience all the time until I saw the movie, "As Good As It Gets."

18) I still watch SouthPark. My excuse that I teach teenagers having disappeared, the truth is, I still watch it.

...

Putty face.

I have a particular problem that used to be bad all the time but now, it only affects me at certain times of the month or when I can't run. It has a name. Every flaw. Every asymmetry, that is normal for a person to have, is magnified, far and beyond the usual issues people have with their appearance.

I look at myself and a recent picture and just before I can express my horror of how awful I look in the picture, Sweet Baboo says, "Hey, that's a good picture of you!" My closest best friend, when I lived in South Dakota, thought that I was vain because I checked the mirror so much. She just didn't get i that I was checking, the same way someone with an eating disorder might check their weight.

I blame my mom. And maybe, some chemical stuff that I probably inherited from my father's side. LOTS of depression and self loathing runs deep in both sides of my family. But anyway, Mom was a professional artist and so I have more than a healthy knowledge of "proper" proportion and symmetry and am acutely aware that I have neither of those things and frankly neither does anyone else but remember, a good neurosis is all about me Me, and my inability to stop fixating on how much I often wish I looked like something other than how I looked.

In bad times, I see the chicken pock scar from when I was ten, and the mole that I've tried to freeze off 3 times despite most people not even noticing that it's there, and the groove that's deepening between my eyebrows, and the nose that I've had altered, and lines that are just starting on my forehead. I feel the insecurity rising in me, the desperation, as I look at a face that looks like I've had a stroke. My face misshapen. I look like a face made of putty that's been stretched unevenly.

But then.
But then I say, Screw it. And I go out for a run. And then it fades away. I come back all sassy and sweaty and don't care how I look. I see myself, and I see strong and healthy. I'm a strong healthy slightly assymetrical nearsighted forty-something woman and I don't notice the lines after the run. I just notice the glow, and the smile.

Except that right now, I can't run. Erg. I've gotten better about this problem that I have with my appearance, but I want to stay ahead of it. I used to take meds that helped with various things, but nothing ever helped with this, until I started running.

So. But. I'm not writing this for validation of how non-ugly I am. I know, intellectually, that I'm not ugly. But when putty face strikes, it's not intellectual. It's emotional, and it's chemical. I'm telling you because maybe you know what it's like. I'm telling you that it's not you. It's emotional, and it's chemical. You just have to keep searching to find the solution, which for me, was running. Sometimes, for some people, it's meds, or therapy. For me, it was running.

Running, for me, is magical. I stop picking at my skin. I stop staring in the mirror. Sometimes I go by reflective surfaces and I even forget to check. I run, and I'm fabulous, and beautiful, and strong.

So I run. ALOT. Except that right now I can't. Soooo, I guess this afternoon I'll try aqua-jogging. Running is my new drug, my new addiction that makes the ugly putty face go away.

I'll do anything to keep it from coming back.

...