i am pleased to say that that post below was a dark moment and i can already see day-break। i am feeling better. if there is anything i understood this time round it is that - अभी ज्ञान कच्चा है ज्ञानी.
when i think about it, one of the most important attributes in life is balance, lately i had lost that, as i have been screaming in the last few posts. Once I had it, and then I lost it, and then I got it again and i thought i would never lose it, and then i lost it again.... and this time i thought i could never get it back and .. yet, yet it looks like i just might.
it is cyclical. i am beginning to understand the whole idea of re-birth, may be you don't actually have to die. maybe the idea of death is an analogy to explain the concept. maybe when they say you have live many lifetimes to attain that 'ultimate true knowledge', they don't mean it literally, but figuratively. Grow up, learn, fall back, question your knowledge, learn some more, lose it, work again, and so on... if that makes any sense.
There is a lot to learn and the roads ahead are slippery, one false move, and you find yourself at the bottom of the pit. I guess it is some consolation to know that eventually if you keep at it, you will get out it.
So I start again, this time with hope and humility, with the knowledge that even knowledge is transient. That the curse of karna can fall on any one, at any time, especially on those who have been expecting it. That in the moment you need it the most, it just might leave you, your knowledge, your luck, your courage. That in spite of all that you collect for yourself, one of these days, you might find yourself all alone, flapping haplessly in the winds, wondering just what you had been doing all along.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Monday, June 21, 2010
a sense of failure
I feel like i am fighting battles on five different fronts and failing on each one of them. Everywhere i look there is a reminder of things i did not do, did not do well enough, or did not do often enough. My life is crumbling around me and i am helpless to anything about it.
I look at my kids and I think - should be taking the toddler out to museums, and science centers, and more field trips, should be reading more books to her, should spend more time teaching her things. She is bilingual, but i want her to learn french and spanish, and i want to do math related activities and plan science experiments and ... i could spend all twenty four hours with her, but i have a baby too. Poor thing, she gets the shorter end of the stick, she just gets fed, and bathed and i barely have any time to read to her like i did with my older one, or play with her or do any activity specifically designed for her. She has to be content with activities that are for the older one, so even though she does not know her A,B,C's she is learning how to read 'HAVE and THIS' because at this point in life, no, i cannot make two lesson plans, so I tell myself it is better, she already doing advanced stuff. The trouble is even I don't believe that.
Then i look at my home and i see i need to organize the garage, the shoe closet, and the baby has outgrown half of her clothes that need to be put away, but why put away i am not planning to have another kid, so may be i should donate those clothes, should find the number of soem place that picks up clothes for donation, when, don't have the time to make calls. And the toddler is outgrowing her clothes too, so i must put those away in a proper bag and label them with the appropriate age they are for, so i can find them in time when the baby is that age, which means when i put the bag in the basement the basement has to be organized enough that i can actually find the said bag at the said time. And since organizing the basement seems like such a luxury item on the to do list - luxury because who has the time to organize basements when dinner needs to be cooked - those old clothes lie in a heap at the bottom of the older ones closet and every morning when i open the closet they serve a reminder of the whole twenty four hours seven days the i probably should be spending organizing my home.
I walk outside from this mess, and i see weeds, weeds growing relentlessly in the grass, in the flowerbeds, in the nooks and crannies of the stones laid to make the pavement, the same weeds i had pulled out last week, some even yesterday, not that it did me much good, for here they are shamelessly thumping their noses at me. The flowers need tending, they need plant food, the jasmine plant is outgrowing its container, the poor thing had the forbearance to survive a harsh winter indoors and i have not had the time to find a new home and give it new soil, how bad a gardener can I be. I guess quite a bad one because i killed some petunias - forgot to water them for more than a week, I thought they would be as resilient as my grass, that i have taught to survive without water. Actually no, i did not forget the petunias, i thought of them all the time. I looked at them as i stepped out of the house taking my daughter to the soccer class and sighed, i looked at them as i brought her back and promised myself i would water them right after i had fed her and the baby, and then i thought of them late at night in bed, bone tired as i kicked myself for not having watered them yet again and not finding in me the strength to rise, disarm the alarm, and risk waking the baby up, i instead chose to stomach the guilt and loose sleep over my petunias. So, no i did not forget about them, and yet they died, so it is a worse degree of failure because perhaps their death could have been better explained if I had forgotten about them, at least it would have reflected better on my resume. Yes, the petunias would not have cared either ways, do you think in their last dying breath they would have forgiven me, for at least i had good intentions, i meant to water them? No, neither do I. And did i ever tell you of the time i almost killed a mint plant, almost, because it takes a real genius to kill mint, it survived, and that has been added to the list of one more thing I am not good at.
Oh and I didn't tell you, I have a full time helper. See that makes my failure worse, because how many stay-at-home moms get to have full time nannies. But that is another failure in my cap, because I don't know how to manage her, I feel like she is judging me, wouldn't she think why is this person making me pickup after her why can she not do it herself, and i can, I am perfectly capable of cleaning my washrooms, vacuuming, and all the chores that are on her plate right now, only i feel like i should not have to do them now that she is here. And now that she is here, i feel like I should be more productive, I should do soemthing with my time, especially because i have help so as to justify hiring the said help in the first place, and that is the source of stress like nothing else. So my husband does not understand why i don't call my friends, or why i don't go and get a massage, or just window shop at the mall and relax when i have a full time nanny? I cannot tell him why I don't read books like I used to, why I haven't written a single sentence of the stories i was supposed to write once i got the nanny, or why i don't even write on my blog any more. But I can't, because all those activites seem too frivolous to justify paying someone so much money to look after your kids. Who in their right minds would let a stranger bond with their kid, when they are getting their nails done? I can't. So I don't get my nails done, I cannot remember the last time I had a pedicure. So when i met this person on the street and she asked my why my eyebrows looked so bushy (which is not a polite question to ask really) i tried to mumble something about being busy with the kids and she so completely stared in me in the eye with the look 'I don't believe you for a second' (which is not a polite look either) and then she had the audacity to ask if I had gone back to work, and when i said no, she asked if i still had the nanny and i apologetically nodded,and she sighed. The sad big sigh of a woman with real work who did not have the time to soothe the made up problems of women like me. I almost agree with her, I don't know how other women do it, and i feel sorry for them, but to me, my problems are not made up, they are real very real.
To make myself feel useful, I am trying to do some work for my husband, it is the most garbage work of all, who likes opening mail and paying bills and keeping track of paperwork, but that is what i get to do in the name of getting away from housework. Sadly I want to do it, because really more than doing the paperwork, i want to get away from the above mentioned housework, which i am failing miserably at. In the beginning, i would end up fighting with him over processes and things that i thought should not be done the way he has been doing them and should instead be done my way, and then one of the kids gets sick and i cannot work for a week and then he has to take over and of course he does it his way, and now i cannot even fight with him about it, because it was my own fault to not have done it, he was picking up after me and you cannot yell at some one who is helping you. The trouble is that, this whole thing started as me helping him with paperwork, but now, when he does something it becomes like he is helping me, because i am the incompetent fool who cannot take care of a simple task assigned to them. And by now you will probably not believe me but - and i mean this with all due modesty - the thing is, I am a very, and I mean very, very smart person. I am. I know I have not made a good case for it so far, but I am, and you will just have to take my word for it, I guess.
So, the question is how can a reasonably smart person like me, be failing so royally at everything?
And i don't know. I don't know what i am doing wrong, how to stop doing it, where to get help, and who to talk about this to. My husband is too busy, I feel guilty burdening him with all this when he is working so hard day in day out to give us this life of comfort, it is mean to constantly make him feel like the comfort he thinks he is giving me is not so rosy after all. I cannot complain to my mother because she had a harder life than me, her kids were very close together and she took care of us single-handedly and life back then was harsher and more demanding by today's standards. Besides, i know what she will say, it is the same thing most of my friends will say, so i cannot talk to them too, the same wisdom of, stop stressing it, you are doing fine. I don't buy that, because I know i am not doing fine. If i was doing fine, I would feel fine, and I don't feel fine, ergo i cannot be doing fine.
So, i am in my own private hell. Today i almost cried in front of the nanny, and you don't do that, so i stopped myself, then she heard me complaining about something she did to my husband and you don't do that, that is so not right, so here i am hiding in the basement of my own home writing this blog, because i don't have the guts to go face her, because she will thing what kind of fool am i, and you are probably thinking what kind of a fool i am and i don't know, i don't know what kind of a fool i am, really. See, another failure, I don't know the word that describes me. What donkey does not even know the word that describes them.
I look at my kids and I think - should be taking the toddler out to museums, and science centers, and more field trips, should be reading more books to her, should spend more time teaching her things. She is bilingual, but i want her to learn french and spanish, and i want to do math related activities and plan science experiments and ... i could spend all twenty four hours with her, but i have a baby too. Poor thing, she gets the shorter end of the stick, she just gets fed, and bathed and i barely have any time to read to her like i did with my older one, or play with her or do any activity specifically designed for her. She has to be content with activities that are for the older one, so even though she does not know her A,B,C's she is learning how to read 'HAVE and THIS' because at this point in life, no, i cannot make two lesson plans, so I tell myself it is better, she already doing advanced stuff. The trouble is even I don't believe that.
Then i look at my home and i see i need to organize the garage, the shoe closet, and the baby has outgrown half of her clothes that need to be put away, but why put away i am not planning to have another kid, so may be i should donate those clothes, should find the number of soem place that picks up clothes for donation, when, don't have the time to make calls. And the toddler is outgrowing her clothes too, so i must put those away in a proper bag and label them with the appropriate age they are for, so i can find them in time when the baby is that age, which means when i put the bag in the basement the basement has to be organized enough that i can actually find the said bag at the said time. And since organizing the basement seems like such a luxury item on the to do list - luxury because who has the time to organize basements when dinner needs to be cooked - those old clothes lie in a heap at the bottom of the older ones closet and every morning when i open the closet they serve a reminder of the whole twenty four hours seven days the i probably should be spending organizing my home.
I walk outside from this mess, and i see weeds, weeds growing relentlessly in the grass, in the flowerbeds, in the nooks and crannies of the stones laid to make the pavement, the same weeds i had pulled out last week, some even yesterday, not that it did me much good, for here they are shamelessly thumping their noses at me. The flowers need tending, they need plant food, the jasmine plant is outgrowing its container, the poor thing had the forbearance to survive a harsh winter indoors and i have not had the time to find a new home and give it new soil, how bad a gardener can I be. I guess quite a bad one because i killed some petunias - forgot to water them for more than a week, I thought they would be as resilient as my grass, that i have taught to survive without water. Actually no, i did not forget the petunias, i thought of them all the time. I looked at them as i stepped out of the house taking my daughter to the soccer class and sighed, i looked at them as i brought her back and promised myself i would water them right after i had fed her and the baby, and then i thought of them late at night in bed, bone tired as i kicked myself for not having watered them yet again and not finding in me the strength to rise, disarm the alarm, and risk waking the baby up, i instead chose to stomach the guilt and loose sleep over my petunias. So, no i did not forget about them, and yet they died, so it is a worse degree of failure because perhaps their death could have been better explained if I had forgotten about them, at least it would have reflected better on my resume. Yes, the petunias would not have cared either ways, do you think in their last dying breath they would have forgiven me, for at least i had good intentions, i meant to water them? No, neither do I. And did i ever tell you of the time i almost killed a mint plant, almost, because it takes a real genius to kill mint, it survived, and that has been added to the list of one more thing I am not good at.
Oh and I didn't tell you, I have a full time helper. See that makes my failure worse, because how many stay-at-home moms get to have full time nannies. But that is another failure in my cap, because I don't know how to manage her, I feel like she is judging me, wouldn't she think why is this person making me pickup after her why can she not do it herself, and i can, I am perfectly capable of cleaning my washrooms, vacuuming, and all the chores that are on her plate right now, only i feel like i should not have to do them now that she is here. And now that she is here, i feel like I should be more productive, I should do soemthing with my time, especially because i have help so as to justify hiring the said help in the first place, and that is the source of stress like nothing else. So my husband does not understand why i don't call my friends, or why i don't go and get a massage, or just window shop at the mall and relax when i have a full time nanny? I cannot tell him why I don't read books like I used to, why I haven't written a single sentence of the stories i was supposed to write once i got the nanny, or why i don't even write on my blog any more. But I can't, because all those activites seem too frivolous to justify paying someone so much money to look after your kids. Who in their right minds would let a stranger bond with their kid, when they are getting their nails done? I can't. So I don't get my nails done, I cannot remember the last time I had a pedicure. So when i met this person on the street and she asked my why my eyebrows looked so bushy (which is not a polite question to ask really) i tried to mumble something about being busy with the kids and she so completely stared in me in the eye with the look 'I don't believe you for a second' (which is not a polite look either) and then she had the audacity to ask if I had gone back to work, and when i said no, she asked if i still had the nanny and i apologetically nodded,and she sighed. The sad big sigh of a woman with real work who did not have the time to soothe the made up problems of women like me. I almost agree with her, I don't know how other women do it, and i feel sorry for them, but to me, my problems are not made up, they are real very real.
To make myself feel useful, I am trying to do some work for my husband, it is the most garbage work of all, who likes opening mail and paying bills and keeping track of paperwork, but that is what i get to do in the name of getting away from housework. Sadly I want to do it, because really more than doing the paperwork, i want to get away from the above mentioned housework, which i am failing miserably at. In the beginning, i would end up fighting with him over processes and things that i thought should not be done the way he has been doing them and should instead be done my way, and then one of the kids gets sick and i cannot work for a week and then he has to take over and of course he does it his way, and now i cannot even fight with him about it, because it was my own fault to not have done it, he was picking up after me and you cannot yell at some one who is helping you. The trouble is that, this whole thing started as me helping him with paperwork, but now, when he does something it becomes like he is helping me, because i am the incompetent fool who cannot take care of a simple task assigned to them. And by now you will probably not believe me but - and i mean this with all due modesty - the thing is, I am a very, and I mean very, very smart person. I am. I know I have not made a good case for it so far, but I am, and you will just have to take my word for it, I guess.
So, the question is how can a reasonably smart person like me, be failing so royally at everything?
And i don't know. I don't know what i am doing wrong, how to stop doing it, where to get help, and who to talk about this to. My husband is too busy, I feel guilty burdening him with all this when he is working so hard day in day out to give us this life of comfort, it is mean to constantly make him feel like the comfort he thinks he is giving me is not so rosy after all. I cannot complain to my mother because she had a harder life than me, her kids were very close together and she took care of us single-handedly and life back then was harsher and more demanding by today's standards. Besides, i know what she will say, it is the same thing most of my friends will say, so i cannot talk to them too, the same wisdom of, stop stressing it, you are doing fine. I don't buy that, because I know i am not doing fine. If i was doing fine, I would feel fine, and I don't feel fine, ergo i cannot be doing fine.
So, i am in my own private hell. Today i almost cried in front of the nanny, and you don't do that, so i stopped myself, then she heard me complaining about something she did to my husband and you don't do that, that is so not right, so here i am hiding in the basement of my own home writing this blog, because i don't have the guts to go face her, because she will thing what kind of fool am i, and you are probably thinking what kind of a fool i am and i don't know, i don't know what kind of a fool i am, really. See, another failure, I don't know the word that describes me. What donkey does not even know the word that describes them.
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