Wow….it’s been a bumpy ride for me over the last few weeks.
My MIL arrived 3 weeks ago…just a week before the Thanksgiving Holidays. Her arrival was timed with a resurgence of intensity in my Anatomy class. The professor had been busy with a research project towards the middle of the semester and so we had a bit of a lull where not much was presented or tested. The stress for me has been absolutely unbearable over the last few weeks.
First, I have to say that I love my MIL dearly and appreciate so much that she comes and tries to help me out as best she can. She watched the kids on several mornings for a couple of hours to give me the chance to get some studying in, cleaned and shared in the cooking. I am very grateful for all of the help that she gave me. I do care very much for her. The problem for me over the last few weeks came from…ME.
I am a social person, but…I can only do it in doses and on my terms. I find it very hard to have someone else in the house with me all of the time. Though I enjoy the company and conversation, I end up feeling overwhelmed easily. I am just…awkward, I guess. Three weeks is also a lot of togetherness, and the additional pressure that I was putting on myself to do well on my lecture final this morning simply became unmanageable for me. I wanted to show her a good time, get the christmas tree with the kids, decorate the tree, and have a small christmas party for her. It was important to me….but the end result was that I just couldn’t do it all.
Usually, when I study for an exam, I begin several weeks in advance. I try to keep on top of the material as it is presented, by reading and outlining the textbook, creating notecards, and drawing out figures and diagrams. This is a really tedious (and perhaps slightly compulsive) process that requires a lot of time and energy. I try to do this during the afternoon when the kids are napping or watching tv, or evenings when they are in bed. For the last few weeks though, I have felt torn between meeting the needs of so very many people in my house and the drive to finish this class with an A. I put a lot of pressure on myself to do well because of the fact that I worked in the department for several years. I think I have been feeling like if I don’t score towards the top of the class that the professor teaching the course will be less impressed by me. This is obviously pressure that I have put on myself.
My worrying about the exam caused me to not sleep well for the past weeks. I developed a bad headache a few days ago that I just couldn’t shake. I have been over-analyzing all of my social interactions (to the point now that I don’t dare leave my house and run into anyone that I know after having stuck my foot in my mouth all week…truly…the more anxious that I get socially and the more that I care about someone’s opinion, the worse my rambling gets and the louder the volume goes up) and I started bursting into tears for no apparent reason at the beginning of the week. Out of nowhere, I just found the pressure to be too much and I couldn’t suppress the tears no matter how hard I tried to focus on something else.
It didn’t help that Thomas began comparing my cleaning abilities to those of his mom, (I fail!) and started picking really mean-spirited fights with me. My self-esteem has really taken a beating this month. The truth about my mother-in-law is that she has an incredible amount of energy. She loves cleaning and she is really good at it. I just…didn’t inherit that gene. I wish that I was able to harness my energy to provide for my family what she provides for me when she is here. More truth? Almost everything that I have learned about keeping house, organizing my cupboards, and folding laundry, (all things that I am proud of) I have learned from my mil. She has been like a second mother to me in many ways…and I truly embrace what she has taught me. It’s just…hard that I’m not that way naturally…that there IS so much to criticize about me….and even harder to have someone walk into your home and see your shortcomings and not be able to hide from them anymore. In the hustle and bustle of our lives, I am usually able to ignore some of my deficiencies (or at least accept them). My MIL shines the bright light of day into my life and I tend to feel overwhelmed by how absolutely short I fall as a wife, mother and as a woman. It makes me feel very sad about the person that I am.
She and I had a big conversation about motherhood where she discussed her feelings that the modern mom is failing her children by wanting to work outside of the home. Though I argued vehemently for the right of women to follow their own paths and find fulfillment in their lives, I couldn’t deny that there is truth to what she said. There is comfort in an ultra-organized, clean home (not that we live in a pigsty though by any standards)….there is less stress when one parent is at home to focus soley and unselfishly on the needs of her family. I feel bad that I can’t make peace with that part of my life. I am very lonely and frustrated at home. I love my children dearly, but we have no family around us and our circle of friends is very small. I so desperately want to go back to work. This semester has been such an eye-opener for me. The times that I have felt truly peaceful and happy have all been the two mornings a week that I am in school. I love solving problems, working with my lab partners and preparing for class discussions. I just really…love it…maybe I love it the way that my mil loves to clean. But then, as she says…why did I have 5 children then? I guess…my life has changed a lot over the years. I couldn’t have known years ago that I would be where I am today…and I don’t regret having any of my children…I just wisth that I could combine the happiness that they give me with personal happiness and fulfillment of my own.
The past few years, I have also felt deeply disappointed by friendships in my life that have not turned out the way that I had hoped. I met a great group of women here with whom I had coffee once a week. I truly thought that even though we all came from very different walks of life that we would become lifelong friends. We shared a lot with each other about parenting, our marriages and ourselves. I realized during our get-togethers how much I missed having good friends as a part of my day-to-day life.
This arrangement only worked out for about a year….when I found out that two of the girls (sisters) were talking about me behind my back….over silly, petty things. I tried to move on from that and forgive it because I valued the relationships…but…one of the girls started asking me for help with her homework and then was expecting me to actually do her assignments. She then tried to demand that I take her midterm exam from her for a math class and when I refused she outright told me that I was not a good friend because I wouldn’t help her when she needed me.
I felt that this was so unhealthy that I needed to let the relationships go. I can’t imagine every asking someone to take an exam for me….or do my homework….and I certainly would never blame them for not wanting to do it. It was just very disappointing. While my mil was here, the girls started emailing and calling and leaving messages on my phone….I just don’t know how to handle it.
So in the midst of all of these bad feelings I have been having about myself, I tried to study. Last night though, I just lost all ability to focus. I couldn’t stop thinking about an exchange that I had with someone that I know and whom I felt I might have offended. Again, did I mention I can’t leave the house because I am just overanalyzing everything? I called to clarify and ended up where I started…which was feeling badly about myself.
I couldn’t stop crying all night. It just was all of the stress, exhaustion and caffeine catching up to me. I tried to refocus on the material that I was studying, and the tears just fell harder. I ran a bath for myself and sat alone in the tub and cried….and then studied and cried until 1am…when I decided to just go to bed.
Who knew that it would be state-dependent learning though that might pay off on exam morning? I cried as I studied last night and then woke up all night long reviewing organ systems in my mind and then simultaneously going over my bad feelings about myself….which bled into this morning. I decided to just get up at around 5 am or so when I realized that I was just making myself miserable laying in bed. I reviewed everything again…recognizing that I already pretty much knew what I was going to know and had cut my losses already and then got the kiddos out the door and Andrew to the bus stop. As soon as he got out of the van, I burst into tears again…and cried half the way to campus and getting to the exam.
I really don’t know how I managed to concentrate on my exam. Ever so often, a wave of depression just rolled over me and I had to swallow it and move on.
His exam covered the entire CNS, PNS, cranial nerves, circulatory, respiratory, digestive, lymphatic, urinary and reproductive systems. BUT…there were only 20 fill-in-the blank questions to make up 40% of the exam grade. The questions were very random and varied in their level of detail. I feel like I was over-prepared for the level of information tested, but I’m still not certain that I got all of the questions correct. I was actually very disappointed that I studied so hard and learned everything in neuron-twisting detail and then…didn’t get to show what I learned. The rest of the test was based on 6 articles that he had posted throughout the last half of the semester. Most of them related in some way, shape or form to some part of anatomy…but the relationships between lecture and these articles were…tenuous. We never discussed the articles or did anything with them, but 60% of the exam grade was answering detailed questions about the articles relating them to evolutionary history and anatomical structure.
Unlucky for me, but apparently, he posted the questions yesterday for everyone to have the chance to come in with notes ready to go. I, unfortunately, did not think to get online and see if something was posted at the last minute….I mean seriously….24 hours before the exam he did this…It is simply beyond my comprehension. So…I was one of the few people to show up without a clue about the content of the essays. I guess I should have had my campus email forwarded to my iphone too.
The first question I was still able to knock out of the park. It was about glial cells and I found it really fascinating so I read it with enthusiasm and retained. The second question? MAN, I wish I had checked my email…I just didn’t have time yesterday! I could have done well if I had known in advance! I pretty much faked it through and he will know it. I didn’t have a clue. If I got lucky, I touched on a couple of points…maybe. The third question I answered ok…not great, not terrible, but…I suppose it was acceptable. The question centered on an article about teaching mathematical skills to primates. We were supposed to use the knowledge that we have about the CNS and information processing to come up with some sort of coherent response, but…I just…I don’t know…I guess we’ll see.
I came home and shortly thereafter, my mil left for the airport. Andrew called from school and asked to be picked up because he didn’t feel well, so I drove all the way there only to have him change his mind and decided to stay and finish the day. And….I left Aidan and Zoe to watch a Christmas show while I got this off of my chest and ….. here is the result:
I guess this is just God’s way of reminding me to lighten up a little bit!!!!