A new me

Lately I have been telling my husband that I feel like a new person. I don't feel like I've grown or that some things are different... I feel like a brand new person. My thought process feels different, I feel differently about nearly everything, and my goals and priorities are different. When I trace back how I ended up here, the last 3 years in Washington state (our previous duty station) keep popping up in my brain. Those years changed me. For a long time, I thought those years defeated me. I didn't feel like I was enough. I felt like all of the goals that I had set for my life were pushed off for another 3 years (which they were). I felt like I couldn't make friends. I felt like people didn't understand me. I felt like my family was too big/too crazy or that maybe they didn't like my kids. I felt like life kept throwing us challenges, some bigger than I ever expected to face. I felt like my depression was going to swallow me and that I wouldn't make it out alive or whole. I felt like my marriage was collapsing. I felt like that instead of slowly working towards my goals, I was standing still and probably sinking. I felt like no one respected my role as a stay-at-home parent, in my family and outside of it. I felt taken for granted. I think even more than all of that, my self-worth was shattered along with my self-esteem. Even now, today, my self-confidence is shaken. I find myself second guessing things I never second-guessed before and fighting anxiety and panic attacks. It feels like many of the mistakes I made can never be fixed and will have long-reaching consequences.

But through that I feel like I've tapped into another side of myself that I didn't realize was there. I feel like I have walked through fire. All of the things that I held on to for so much of the last decade are falling away: my role as a stay-at-home parent, my role as a stay-at-home spouse, my support of my family, my independence, my sense of control in that role. Instead, I've let go of those things and I am moving into a different phase of my life. I am going back to school full time and I intend to put my degree to use with a full time career once I obtain it. Ironically, in making my degree plan and career goals a priority, I've had to become less independent and more dependent on my spouse and family. My husband and I have been communicating a lot more about the things that we both need to achieve in the day and about the household responsibilities. Before, I would write schedules and weekly plans and I was the only person executing those duties so I didn't need to find out what days/times worked for my spouse. Now, we have a joint calendar with our shared roles. It has been much more give and take and much more reliance on each other, jointly.

It has only been 3 weeks since the 2 of us started back to school full time. (I have been taking classes for the past year, this being my first time taking a full load.) This past weekend was a nightmare for both me and my husband in regards to homework and managing our 5 children. Both of us set realistic goals and a realistic schedule of what we could get done and when we could do it over the weekend. We both worked hard during the week to accommodate the few things we needed to achieve over the weekend. It ended up all falling apart. Neither of us accomplished half of what we intended. The kids were a mess. The house was a mess. After putting all 5 kids to bed, we spent the next hour and a half tucking them in. 2 (and more) kids were up through the night. Monday morning rolled around and we have been walking around in a fog. My husband is stopping at his second coffee run of the morning and it is barely 0930.

In the midst of that chaos, I found myself for a moment thinking: am I making the right choice for myself and for my family by going back to school full-time? With both parents taking a full class load, we have needed childcare for all 5 of our children. I started to swirl in self-doubt and guilt. That's when I really noticed just how different I am than 3 years ago. 3 years ago I would have quit. I would have said, "I need to be more available." There is something for that. We are parents. We don't have an infinite budget for childcare. We don't have infinite time to get everything done in the day we would like to. We have to be real. But this semester, we did solve all those problems. We do have childcare we can afford. We do have a plan. We do have everything in place. And it just has been hard transitioning from having one parent always available for all the things that come up, to 2 parents sometimes available. I have had to hand things over that I always did before and say no to things that I always said yes to before. Is that bad? No. Is it change? Yes.

Things change. Life moves forward. And while I made an absolute mess of my life in Washington state and while I can think of 100 million things I would do differently, I am here now. I am moving forward in my life with a whole new list of lessons learned. I won't be making the same mistakes I made there. I will be making my mental health a bigger priority in my life (something that I have already been putting into place for 9 months now). I am making space in my family's calendar for me, something I never did before. I made space for every other family member and if there was room, I "indulged." My spouse and I are making these choices together. Not just me pushing my agenda, but both of us laying our cards on the table and making choices that mutually support each other so we can achieve our goals while supporting our family. We are sharing responsibilities and creating a new dynamic. It hasn't been easy; we've been married for almost 12 years and change is hard. But we have realized how big of a priority it is. We have seen the gaps in both of our lives and we are making changes together to accomplish the things we want to/or need to achieve.

I still see the darkness sometimes. I feel the self-doubt, the shaky self-worth, the shattered self-confidence telling me that I'm not good enough. That I'm not strong enough. That I am not enough. That the people in my life are waiting for me to fail so they can say, "I told you so." That once I get through this phase, things will go back to how they were. That everyone around me is indulging me in this new role I am trying to fill, but eventually they will push me back to "my place." I think of how much I am enjoying what I'm doing and I think about the depression of last year and I worry about what I would do if it happens again or the panic attacks I had all last spring. How long will my family support me? How long will my friends encourage me? What if I fail and end up alone?

I don't know.

What I do know is I'm not standing still right now. I'm not sinking. I have support. I have friends. I have a plan. I have an open line of communication with my spouse. I might fail. I might struggle with depression again in the future. I don't feel strong or confident or put-together. I am moving forward. I feel stronger. I feel more confident. I feel more put-together. And there are even times where I feel tremendously loved for who I am. I think the rest will come. I think it will all fall into place. I think I need to find peace with myself before I expect others to find peace with me. I even think if I find peace with myself all these doubts will slip away and I can trust the words people are saying to me. I am a new me, a different me. While everyone else is trying to get to know this new me, I am too.