Sometimes

Sometimes I hate motherhood so intensely that I want to scream.  A ripping, piercing loud scream. 

I can feel it starting somewhere in the pit of my stomach, and it longs to be set free---yet I subdue it.  Who could know looking at me from the outside, that I have such ugly thoughts?  The picture of content mother, I am.  With my quiet patient voice, my mommy voice---but I’m not.  Not really.  I hate this thing I’ve become.  Part mother, part wife, and none of me.  It makes me ache, at what I’ve lost.  Nagging kids, always needing, always wanting, always here…..  All day, all night, every waking morning----they need something.

Yet this is just sometimes….

 It doesn’t stop, and I wonder will it ever stop?  What is it that won’t stop?  That’s just it, I don’t know.  Sometimes I don’t know what the “it” is.  “It” is always changing.  Is it motherhood?  Is it marriage?  Is it lack of fulfillment?  Is it life?  Is it the pure essence of everything all balled up together? 

I don’t know, but there is always this nagging feeling that there is more out there.  That I’m missing something.  So I frantically gather all these different things to try to appease that feeling in some way.  Yet I still come up lacking…

Is life so unfair, that you’re never truly happy until your old, and your body no longer cooperates with you?  Is it that old woman, sitting in the coffee shop smiling at me, as I smile at my kids, that I’m destined to become?  That old woman who looks as though she holds all the answers, and looks content to just sit and sip her coffee. “It goes by fast, so enjoy it!” the old woman tells me with a knowing smile.  What I really want to say, as I smile back politely is, “It can’t go by fast enough!”   Yet I know there is truth in what she says.  I can look back at my twenties and realize I spent too much time and effort worrying about things that didn’t matter.  Yet in this moment of parenthood, and thirtyhood it is hard to just “enjoy” it. 

Yet the word sometimes, is really just that---sometimes.  Sometimes is so great because it’s just that—sometimes—not all the time, but sometimes….  And sometimes it’s different. 

Sometimes I enjoy the kids with their grubby faces, and their never ending attention.  Sometimes I look at my husband, and am so thankful that of all the women he could have chosen--God gave him to me.  Sometimes I love my cluttered house, with my yet unpainted walls, and many unfinished projects.  Sometimes I love being so busy, that the day flies by.  Sometimes I don’t.

Sometimes.  What a great word.