Maeby Today

Do you know what is really hard? Having truly amazing friends who are incredibly talented, motivated and successful. I want to be happy for them because they deserve their happiness and success; they have worked so incredibly hard for what they have and no one should ever begrudge them these things. Why can’t I be genuinely happy for them and proud of them?

Life is hard. When you wake up one day and realize that you have given up on yourself, how do you even make a start at getting yourself back on track? I am so discouraged with myself. I genuinely loathe myself for so many reasons right now. I’m angry not only with myself but with my circumstances. I’m discontent, dejected, lazy, forlorn, lethargic and endlessly tired. 

I’ve been really struggling since arriving in Michigan. Everyone is pleading their case for where they think I should live and I’m so torn. At first, I wanted to blame it on Hank. If he comes to America to stay, it will probably be easier for him to find work in Virginia/DC (after he gets his green card). But that’s not it. I think I finally put my finger on it while washing my friend’s dishes for the third time since being here.

All my life, I have aspired to be a stay at home wife and mother. Now, a lot of people might say that that’s hardly an aspiration. It’s not a place I can get myself on my own, obviously. I feel like I’m what I like to call a ‘nester’. I want my own home to clean and organize, my own children to raise, my own husband to support and take care of. This is, I think, a major source of my current restlessness and discontentment. I need to settle down. I feel like I’m literally right on the verge of achieving this (even if I still have to work, which is totally fine!), and that’s why I’m becoming so impatient.

I just feel like I’m an extra in someone else’s show. People want me to be easily accessible to them and in their lives because, to them, I’m just a supporting character. I don’t want to live with my friends or my parents, though. I want my own show. I want my own life with my own little family and my own stories. I don’t care if that’s selfish. I want some things I can be proud of; things that I can talk about openly with a smile on my face. I want to attend my kids’ soccer games and go to my husband’s work holiday parties. 

Before my older sister became pregnant with her now two year old daughter, she hit a phase of life wherein so was miserable, even though she was happily married with a great job. She told my mom she didn’t feel like her life was fulfilling because she knew she was meant to be a mother and didn’t have any kids. That’s just how some people are, though.

Not everyone feels like their life is over because they get married or because they have children. Some people’s lives don’t even begin until that moment. I feel like I get judged for wanting a family so much. I feel like people are always telling me to enjoy being unattached, enjoy freedom, don’t rush things. Everyone should go explore and get careers prior to having their family. I don’t agree. I don’t agree with anyone that insinuates that all humans are the same. We are not the same. We do not have the same desires or needs. People are so different. Just because you want to have a career and be an independent woman or because you do have a career and are an independent woman who is really happy in life, that doesn’t mean that every woman would find their happiness in the same way. 

I need to settle down. I don’t care if it’s here or Virginia or Tennessee or England or Spain. I really don’t. All I know is that if I have to continue living in other peoples’ homes on charity (or even paying rent for a room), I will die. I can’t do this anymore. I’m suffocating.