Confessions of a 20-something mother

[daPyr0x]

Confession: Lately I'm finding myself strangely attracted to the scent of my own hands. I bought some random hand soap and it smells like a girl.

Confession: I managed to spend 3 hours wandering around a music festival without saying a word to another person. It was quite the feat.

Confession: I have no idea where home is.

[Petra456]

Confession: Seeing the nesting thread bumped seriously made my heart ache. I can't believe how bad I want to move out and have a place I can actually call my own, a place where I don't feel like i'm being a burden. It honestly makes me feel like a loser that i'm still here. I don't want people to think I still live at home by choice.

[megxers]

Confession: Talking to my high school friends brings out the absolute worse, manipulative **** side of me. But I kind of enjoy it in small doses. How absolutely mean we are to each other. "Do you want to go to a concert? I still hate you but we should hang out."

[Rei]

I actually avoid almost everybody I may have known in high school.

[neo-dragon]

Why do so many people end up hating their high school friends? Mine are still my best friends in the world, and the fact that I've managed to spend time with a number of them over the past month has just about made my summer.

[megxers]

I am still unnecessarily in love with my high school best friend. We get along pretty well and talk near daily, all things considered, but I have had some major failings out with some of my other friends, due to drama of the inane/insanely personal/etc kinds. Some of them this has become more of a joke with, because we realize that deep down, we still really do get along, but others will refuse to acknowledge my presence in a room. So for me, I don't actually hate that many of them, but some people I was casually acquainted with in high school, I will actively avoid in the gym/etc.

[Rei]

I don't hate my high school friends. I just didn't have more than one or two, and I did have a lot of people who made life difficult for me. So aside from those very few, I just prefer to avoid them all.

[Gravity Defier]

I don't hate my high school friends, I am saddened by them. I don't even hate the rest of my high school classmates, though I strongly dislike how many of them treated me during our time there.

The thing is, I am not the same person I was in my teens. A lot may be the same, most may be the same, but the parts that changed matter and they have a hard time recognizing that. We fall into all the same old patterns and I become very unhappy, falling into the old me. Nothing that happened back then, nothing at all, was so positive that it makes it okay to feel that unnecessarily unhappy now for their sake or for nostalgia's sake. Now, don't get me wrong, there were happy moments and I appreciate them but I can't go back to them and I wouldn't want to even if I could.

Cool for you if your experience is different.

[Petra456]

Why do so many people end up hating their high school friends? Mine are still my best friends in the world, and the fact that I've managed to spend time with a number of them over the past month has just about made my summer.

Same here, they're some of my favorite people in the entire world. For the past year i've hung out with them at least once a week (sometimes two or three times, like this week).

[steph]

I felt like even though this isn't a confession, it kinda belonged here in my thread, my confessions of being a mother.

Tyler is starting kindergarten tomorrow. Actually in 12 hours. I've been excited about this day for awhile now. He's SO ready, academically.

But, as the time gets closer, I'm worried for him. Is he emotionally ready? Honestly, I don't think he's any less emotionally ready than the average kindergartner, but that doesn't stop me from worrying. He breaks down at gymnastics if he's not the fastest runner. He's been hitting kids if they hurt his feelings. He get so grumpy when he hasn't had enough sleep. (He gets that from me.) I know kindergarten is a learning process for all of that, but once I send him out into the world, there is no taking it back. He'll be home every other day and in the evenings for comfort, but I won't be there to pick up his piece if he falls apart at school. Will the teacher know how to handle him?

Mostly, it's just that I can't believe this day is here. A lot of you remember when he was born, and it wasn't that long ago. Yet here we are. He had his 5th birthday last week. We bought all of his school supplies and picked out a back pack. Last night was back-to-school night where he met his teacher and played on the playground. Beforehand, he was looking for his Magic Tree house Pirates' reference book so that he could teach his class about Pirates. (Silly Boy.) Today, we chose a new shirt to wear on his very first day. I filled out the papers with information about him so his teacher could get to know him. Tomorrow, I'll cook him breakfast and he'll get dressed and we'll pack his lunch and give him his milk money and put it all in his new backpack along with his folder and we'll take pictures and I'll probably be the annoying mom who cries, even though I'm not really sad that he's starting school...that makes me happy. It's just that he's been with me for the past 5 years and I'll miss him and I'm not sure how we got here already. I feel like I'm barely an adult and now I'm sending my child off to school.

I know he'll do well academically and I hope he'll do well emotionally. I pray that he'll make good choices and reflect the lessons and morals and values that I've worked so hard with my sweat and tears and heart to give him.

Wish me luck?

[fawkes]

Good luck! You'll both do great ^_^

[ValentineNicole]

My confession:
I feel like a baby for saying this, but today sucked. It's right up there with some of the worst days of my life, and I'm totally not justified in saying that. It really shouldn't be THAT bad. But I woke up crying, I had to call in to work, my knee got dug into to get "drained," I feel crappy, I can't find my phone, and I should have been asleep hours ago. I can't WAIT until Saturday.

[Gravity Defier]

Good luck Steph and Tyler; may it be the beginning of a long, successful academic adventure.

[zeroguy]

Why do so many people end up hating their high school friends?

I like pretty much everyone I knew in high school; but I've only spoken with one or two in the last year, since I live hundreds of miles away from all of them now (as far as I know).

However, any friends I had before high school I generally haven't seen since... well, before high school, and I think there are many that I would not like if I had somehow stayed in contact with them. I thought it was becoming pretty clear that most of us just had different interests and were going our separate ways; we only really were friends due to geographical convenience or we happened to be in the same class or whatever. Once those limitations are lifted... I dunno, it seems like it starts to become more apparent that you conflict with some of those friends, and other friends just seems to make more sense.

[steph]

Tyler had a good day! There were lots of pictures, no tears, quiet at my house, fun at school and ice cream to celebrate afterward! I hope all the rest of the days go this smoothly! (knock on wood.)

[ValentineNicole]

Thanks to Cokerewards.com, I now realize that since June 17th, I have drank 205 diet cokes at home. Geez. I think I need an intervention.

[megxers]

My favorite aggregate website changed to a more modern look. I LOVED its old, simple, easy to read, easy to find old articles, format. I am kind of sad they changed it, even if they made it harder to scroll but easier to find things by website. I dislike change on my daily routines that have become rote muscle memory...

[Mich]

Confession: I have to fight the urge to respond to posts with a stupid "You're an x" where x is some noun or adjective-noun pair from the previous post with an embarrassing frequency.

[starlooker]

I'm honestly not all that upset about one my bridesmaids and one of my childhood best friends not being able to come to the wedding. I mean, you know, I feel sad and all -- sort of, if I make myself think about it really hard -- but they seem to feel way worse about it than I do. I love them both, but I'm just kind of like, "Well, I know you tried, these things happen, we'll have to get together some other time." And I talk to them and they are feeling SO remorseful and sad and horrid about it, and I'm kind of like, "okay, that's cool, so, what's new in your life?" I feel bad because I think they expect me to feel worse about it. And I just don't.

Seriously, I think I do not have the genetic loading for bridezilla. At all. I mean, with the bridesmaid it was like, I asked myself, "Well, okay, replace her or don't?" And it took about two seconds to figure no, due to 1) the dresses already being ordered and 2) Who would want to hear, "Hey, the original bridesmaid couldn't show, so do you want to step in?" And we're obviously (well, obviously to me although not to anyone else who hears the situation) not going to cut a groomsman just for the aesthetics, so we'll just be odd-numbered. And that's okay from where I sit, really.

[powerfulcheese04]

I bought a wedding dress last week!

I really didn't intend to buy on that shopping trip... but I found one that my mom and I both looooooved. And, of course, it happens to be on clearance, and therefore won't still be there in November/December when I was really planning on buying a dress. It was also knocked down $100 for clearance and an extra $50 for the store-wide sale going on.

So... I have a dress!

[daPyr0x]

Confession: In the 6 - almost 7 - months I've worked with my employer I've already built up more animosity than I probably should towards them. Most of it I've picked up through my co-workers.

Confession: I feel the world caving in on me. No wonder how much I remind myself that I'm working on it, and that I'll be in a far better place in a year; my debt and failure to escalate in my career path have me feeling especially hopeless. I feel completely trapped in my place in the world. My goal merely to afford enough to buy a decent house in the Philippines or somewhere equally inexpensive and just disappear completely to spend the second half of my life in peaceful solitude. A loner, I am.

[Gravity Defier]

I miss merry-go-rounds being in playgrounds.

[Confessions]

Confession: I suddenly feel unwelcome, as though it's time to delete my online presence in it's entirety and start over somehow.

[Gravity Defier]

Confession: I suddenly feel unwelcome, as though it's time to delete my online presence in it's entirety and start over somehow.

Hello there, Confessions. Feel free to not engage in conversation with me, though I hope you don't mind my responding to this. If you do, however, find it wildly inappropriate, please PM me and I'll wipe the post should anyone come in behind me and make it impossible to delete. I've had variants of this conversation with a few people and most likely, even on the board. After all this time and all my posts, it's hard to keep what goes where and to whom straight anymore.

I think hearing someone say "I feel unwelcome" are some of the hardest words to hear, in any social sphere, but for me, at least, especially when it pertains to Pweb. It's even harder to realize that something generic-you did or did not do may have contributed to that sense of not belonging. It won't always be the case that a person is made to feel that way by the actions or inactions of others but more often than not, I think it's a sense of feeling either ignored or misunderstood, or fearing being ignored or misunderstood.

Without knowing who you are -and even knowing such a thing may or may not shed light on anything- it's hard to say what may have contributed to your feeling that way but if you're an oldie, surely you know many people have felt this way before, likewise if you're a middling, and if you're on the newer side, rest assured that I have yet to speak to a Pwebber who hasn't felt that way at one time or another.

It's one of the pitfalls of this form of communication and interaction. You get to know and familiarize yourself with styles of expression and communication but you lack the extra help that comes along with facial expressions, tones of voice, and mannerisms. All of those little idiosyncracies that sometimes make a world of difference; sure, I'm not responding in text to every post that strikes my fancy but what people can't see and hear -the smile over something happy, the laugh over something funny, the frown and furrow of the brow over something upsetting, the tears over hurt feelings- still happen. No one is ignored, though I have to admit, many people are misunderstood.

Getting to know as many Pwebbers as I've been blessed to get to know, it breaks my heart every time I've heard someone question if they're liked or even noticed, and wonder if their absence would be felt. Absolutely. I can't pretend some aren't going to be noticed more but Pweb being such a small community, we feel it, even if we can't immediately put a name to it. While in CO, I saw numerous signs that read "Lyons" and I thought of Shawn, who made no secret that he felt out of place amongst us (and my occasional attitude with him didn't help matters at all). There are many, many reminders just like that for many, many members.

Depending on how long you stick around and how close to people you get in that time, you might start questioning why you've done so when many of your friends you first made have disappeared from all around you. You start questioning what's wrong with you for not moving on the way they seem to have. Not only have I asked myself that, I've asked the reverse: what's wrong with them, that they think this place is somewhere to move on from? I don't think either question is exactly wrong to ask, though I think they may be unfair; they place blame where blame really isn't appropriate. No matter which side of the fence you're on, feeling it best to stay or leave, it's a choice that you and you alone can make.

It'd be easy to dismiss posts like this; afterall, how many people, myself included, have said they were going to or simply attempted to leave, only to find themselves back here?

How easy would it be to dismiss this place as just another place online? I suppose, for this question, it varies by person and their experiences here.

I hope, regardless of your past experiences, you'll find someone, anyone, you trust, respect, and like and that you'll be able to ease your way back into your comfort zone. If you can see it in yourself to do so, talk to all of us.

It's not easy, being part of something like this, and I often think to myself how outright weird it is to say "my friend" about people I've never physically been around. But at the end of the day, all the questioning and "Do I or don't I belong?"s aside, the answer is really quite simple: if you found your way here, you probably belong.



And if your comment had nothing to do with Pweb, it was still fun chatting with you.

[powerfulcheese04]

I feel unwelcome or un-noticed sometimes. But then mostly I realize it's because I'm relatively scarce here because I get so busy with school. I do think pweb is somewhere that if I invested more time here, it/you guys would invest more time/interest back.

(Mostly just my 0.02. Not in reply to anything specific Alea said.)

[Gravity Defier]

Speaking of Kim and interest...do we get to see you in your dress soon?

Please?

[Rei]

Yes, really, you can't just post about it and not share pictures!

[starlooker]

I am really, really glad I started taking a bonafide anti-anxiety med in addition to the SSRI. I wish I had not fought against that idea for so long. I don't feel high or stoned or woozy. It's a low dose. Basically I feel like there's no reason I can't accomplish the things I want to accomplish. So, I've got serotonin, I've got focus, and I have confidence. I think we've finally found the right combination.

Seriously, there is NO WAY before yesterday I would have ever asked the credit union people about the cost of the car in the parking lot, much less taken it for a spin and applied for a loan and pro-actively explained my credit report (which is actually in the "okay" range.) I would've gotten stuck being scared to ask about the car.

The phone phobia -- it's like, "Why SHOULDN'T I call these people? It's their job to do this sort of thing. And if they can't, oh well, we'll figure out something."

I'm a lot happier and I feel a lot more like myself for the past two days. A lot more hopeful, a lot more capable of making plans and carrying them out. I hope it lasts. I really hope it lasts.

[Claire]

I can't believe I'm not starting school today. I can't believe I'm no longer a student. Its even harder, still being in my college town, and seeing all my younger friends start classes. Its disconcerting seeing my roommate (who started grad school this week) leave for classes in the morning, and not be able to go with her. I love school. I'm not ready to be a college graduate!

I just need something to keep me busy, which is why Thursday (the start of my fellowship) can't come soon enough!!

[starlooker]

I'm stuck in the grips of some kind of weird pre-marital financial nesting crisis. Donny's job loss, blessing in cheap disguise that it is, is not helping. Not so much due to the lack of income but because it makes it hard to talk to him about it. And makes it hard to really plan.

I cannot seem to force myself to stop playing with FinanceWorks. Budgeting and budgeting and budgeting and there's never, ever, ever enough money left to save for the long term things I want for us.

God help me when the student loan payments come due.

It's a weird transition my brain is making from short to long-term thinking, maybe. Okay, fine, long-term future, but couldn't I just go ahead and pay for it all now?

The amount of massive guilt I am experiencing for buying a radio for the car is pretty damned intense.

[daPyr0x]

Confession: I died a little when I read the following comment on a friend's facebook; "You will have the engery and the inthoeaszume for your up coming sale.
Alex and I belive you will kock there socks off and inligtin then."

[Gravity Defier]

I have to start a BabyTime program in two weeks and I'm terrified. I do not feel comfortable enough with that age group (birth to 24 months) to be okay with leading a potential group of mothers who know their babies, when I can't even talk to my 8 month old niece as anything but a fellow human being. I mean, I don't really coo at her, other noises are awkward and short-lived, and high pitched speaking is more likely to come out of my mouth for my dogs than her. I'm supposed to sing and mime bouncing and tickling and other baby stuff for a bunch of strangers? Can't storytime be enough? I can handle the 3-5 year olds.


The weird little anxiety this is causing is vaguely reminiscent of the discomfort I felt throughout my entire high school experience. Like I'm going to be called out on my bullshit any second now.

[Jayelle]

If you want some advice (from both being a mom and leading Baby times at the library), PM me.

[Luet]

I went to a demolition derby at a county fair tonight. Granted, I had no interest in going and only went to accompany friends...but still. I feel like I have to shower to scrub the redneck cooties off of me. It was quite the experience.

[Gravity Defier]

After some serious staring and deductive work, I figured out why things looked off on the Y:TLM downloads I had. Now that I've figured it out, I feel like the dad from 10 Things I Hate About You; you know, hopelessly dated and behind the times, which is why I don't venture into this sort of thing on my own to begin with.

"I'm down, I've got the 411, and you are not going out and getting jiggy with some boy, I don't care how dope his ride is. My momma didn't raise no foo'!"