It's been a hard few months. For someone.

I am not writing this for sympathy.  I am not writing this for your accolades or attention or pick-me-ups.  I'm not writing it for me at all.
I'm writing because there has to be someone else out there.

Someone who often feels as if she is drowning in drool and dirty diapers, in tantrums, and nasty looks.  There has to be someone else who feels lost in the heavy pull of guilt when all she can do is drag herself out of bed and make sure the kids survive another day - even though that really is her absolute best.  Someone else who knows that giving it 100% means forcing the kids to eat some kind of decent food and making sure that at least their underwear and diapers are clean and really, that's about it for now.  Someone else who feels that her 100% is grossly negligent.

There has got to be someone else out there who struggles to overcome the mounting impatience that threatens to erupt - as acidic and dangerous as hot, molten magma - when, for the fifth time in one day the four yr. old has a complete and utter meltdown about something as simple as socks.  Someone who sends her children to the corner for time outs when she's as guilty of yelling as they are.  Someone who really cannot take another demonic, banshee wail of a fit without walking out the door whilst pulling her hair out.
There must be someone.  

Someone else who searches through a mountainous pile of clean laundry in the family room instead of through dresser drawers for her kids' clothing.  Someone who forgets when she last washed her hair.  Someone who knows that the dishes need to be washed and the garage needs to be swept, but crawls into bed for a nap instead.

There has to be someone else.
Someone who knows they can do better.  SHOULD do better.  And can't seem to get her wits about her like she knows she ought to be capable of doing.  
And she looks back on her hopes and dreams and aspirations of what motherhood would be - of what kind of MOTHER she would be - and regrets.  Because what she is now is a mere shadow of what she had anticipated.  

There must be someone else out there who loves her children and her husband with all of her heart.  Someone who knows the work she does in the home is of utmost importance and still feels the wide eyes and un-uttered condolences of those who think SAHM is a dirty word.  She knows she doesn't need to apologize for her choices.  That her work is noble.  That her children are her world.  And yet.  And yet...
Someone out there feels like she is failing.  Flailing.  Falling.  Fainting.

She feels beaten, trodden, trampled.  That nothing she does is good enough.  That she will never measure up.  That though she tries so hard at so many things, she is successful at nothing.  And the realization that there is no logical explanation for her to feel this way, just makes the bruises and abrasions worse.
And when she looks at her life - which some people would probably call extremely charmed in all respects - she feels even worse there's no reason.  No reason at all she should feel such complete negativity.  Such inescapable, suffocating depression weighing down on her.
But she can't seem to escape the continued waves of inadequacy.  Frustration.  Impatience.  



Someone else out there is overwhelmed.
So, I write this for her. 

Not for me.  

So she knows.  She isn't alone.

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