On the shelf

Today I learned that I feel guilty—Madam is moving well into toddlerhood, i.e. thoroughly out of control—and I feel myself split into two, with both selves pulled inexorably towards words and writing and my beloved books. Meanwhile, the maintenance of the house gets far beyond me—the carpet gritty with pebbles that crunch under Madam’s tender bare feet, the kitchen floor sandy with crumbs and scatterings that she’ll gleefully put in her mouth. I spend every moment I can (and many I can’t, technically) reading, or planning what I am going to write, or feeling despair as I watch a barely gelled new idea sink back into formlessness, growing indistinct, weary, fluttering dead before I can get to paper or the keyboard. And many times lately, no ideas come at all—I sit, staring at nothing, trying to swivel my pupils back towards an inner life, but concentration and ideas never come.

Writing always needs to come after; after bedtime, after the house, after dinner, after, after, after. And when I get to after, there's nothing there--no energy, no imaginative power, nothing. And yet, trying to ignore all of the things, to lose myself in my writer's mind...well, that's not working either. I'm always acutely aware of my sink of dirty dishes and my tottering baskets of laundry, and they loom larger than anything I can concoct in my imagination. So I try everything, and end up with nothing but a howling toddler, a room that should be condemned, ideas that flutter away, and a constriction of resentment at my throat, choking utterance.

I feel jealous of other writers who can accomplish so much more that I can lately; feel rebellious at the piecings of my time. I want to gobble my books, not nibble with constant half-starts and half-stops and crash, bang, keep the baby’s finger out of the drawer. I want to pound away at a longer, more ambitious story instead of my little wisps. I want to see my writing form under my hands, get better. And I can’t, right now. That's not my life right now, regardless of how much I wish it could be.

She’s napping so little and night sleep is a topic best left unexplored. I want so much to take courage from the past—those women who have somehow managed to create beauty and meaning even as they chase toddlers around and around a small room. But it’s difficult when all I can see are the impossible summits being scaled by the nimble childfree.

I’m just tired of it—tired of feeling tension before I write, so sure I’ll be interrupted just when it starts to loosen and flow. Tired of feeling resentful of my Madam, who can’t help needing me, after all. Feeling vaguely disgusted by my unkempt house, overwhelmed by tasks which are constantly shunted aside to gain me five more minutes of writing time. Writing which comes with a stifled scream of haste and an aftertaste of guilt, writing which feels so very important and yet emerges with only a whimper of mediocrity.

I wish I could treat it lightly, an amusing hobby, perhaps like building elaborate train sets. But that’s a lie—I am full of unseemly ambition—I want to be not only a good writer (which I think I do manage on occasion) but a great one, famous, acknowledged. And that feels impossible right now, because I can’t seem to produce anything while in this life situation.

This sneaking and stealing time doesn’t satisfy—I’m endlessly frustrated, hungry, gulping at air. It only reinforces my feeling of being on the outside, looking in. I feel breathless before my day even begins, knowing that I'm behind before even leaving the bed.

I need to choose, but there is no choice, is there. I need to be a good mother. I need to take better care of my house. We can’t afford help right now, or rather I can’t quite justify it. I'm a stay at home mother, after all, why should I need housekeeping? TEG is very busy with building his company, working long hours into the night himself. We have no family around to share the burden. I say this not to arouse your pity (although I have a sizable amount of self-pity already) but to try to really SHOW you where I’m at. I know that other mothers manage; I don’t know why I cannot, except to admit that I am no great planner, no organizer. And thus everything teeters until it falls down.

Like the fox from the old story, I rationalize—what is the great loss, anyway? I do like certain, isolated sentences; certain skeletons of stories I’ve written—I do see possibilities for growth. But there is just no time.

So I have to lay it aside for a bit, hope that this silent time adds layers and richness to my imagination until I have time to concentrate on it more fully. But I just can’t keep up this half-life, everything scattered in pieces around me. I need to concentrate on Madam now, and not so much on my writing or myself. This is not the time to be selfish. I wish I could say that the mother role is a light cloak, a second skin, but it’s not. I’m struggling to raise another over myself. It’s not easy for me. I’m still absorbed with me, with my own zealous literary dreams. And that’s not fair to Madam—I can’t do it all, I’m barely holding one of my roles together with outstretched arms.

So I’m putting it on the shelf for a time, and hoping that I'll soon have the means and the desire will still burn when I get back to it.