I Wear The Mask and Fake It To I Make It

I debated whether or not I was going to publish this post for a myriad of reasons, but mainly because I feel an intense shame in these moments. Many of my friends tell me that they admire my transparency, yet there are things that I hold back, so am I really transparent? I decided to share the post with the hopes that maybe it’ll help someone else feel less alone. So here goes…

I don’t know if its Winter Blues lingering or if I’m just so far down in a funk that it’s impossible to see the sunlight, but something is wrong. Is it possible to feel smothered and lonely at the same time? They don’t seem like they should go together, but that’s how I feel lately.

I am so smothered by love and responsibility that some days I feel like I’m being suffocated.

Suffocated by the love Sesame and Mr. S show me all day… Is it possible to be too loved? Or maybe I just don’t feel like I deserve this amount of love?

Suffocated by my research… Is anyone really going to listen or read my ideas? When are they going to figure out that maybe just maybe I don’t belong in the academy?

Suffocated by daily responsibilities… How many times am I going to have to load this dishwasher today? Why does the laundry never ever end? Am  I really sweeping yet again? Why do I keep forgetting to call and schedule doctor’s appointments? Do they really need dinner again today? How did I manage to forget to grade those essays this week?

Yet in these same moments I feel completely and utterly alone. I don’t mean the good kind of alone that includes tea, snacks, crochet, and a Netflix marathon. This is certainly not the alone that results in long hot showers or a DIY mani/pedi with a Law & Order: SVU marathon playing in the background. Or the kind of alone that results in making it through an entire novel in one day.

No, this is the type of loneliness that makes you feel like no one understands you. The kind of loneliness that results in tears streaming down your face and you don’t even know why. The type of loneliness that prevents you from eating or accomplishing anything remotely productive. It’s a loneliness that you still experience in a room full of people.

Yea that’s the type of loneliness I’m experiencing lately. I feel it as a cuddle with Sesame in the morning. It eats away at me as I prepare lunch and dinner for my family. It smothers me as I try to spend quality time alone with my husband. It swallows me when I go in my home office to work while Mr. S entertains Sesame. It engulfs me at family events or while I stand in the classroom teaching.

I try to put on a happy face and smile through it all, but I know my eyes tell the truth. I see pictures of myself smiling, but my eyes are sad. I share funny ancedotes about our day and the ways that Sesame amazes me, but I often leave out the number of times I’ve locked myself in the bathroom to cry alone. Or the many nights I’ve battled insomnia while the guys sleep peacefully.

Some days I find myself singing “when something seems bad turn it around and find something good” (it’s a Daniel Tiger song); and using all the things that are good in my life to push me out of bed that morning. I mean the good certainly outweighs the bad, yet here I am writing the bad.

I’m trying to stop the bad from swallowing me whole, but in the meantime I’ll wear the mask.