crazymama

I miss my life before kids. There, I said it.

I miss being bored on a Saturday afternoon and deciding on an impromptu movie and dinner with my husband.

A few months ago a friend who knew me mostly pre-children visited for a couple of days. She doesn’t have children but is the same age. We reminisced about the simpler times and I felt jealous at her freedom.

I guess what I really miss is being irresponsible and having no consequences to pay for except those that effect me personally. This feeling makes me want to do dirty, immature things whenever I can.

Like smoking while drinking.  I have had the same pack of cloves that I bought when my friend was visiting in November. But every time I start to tie one on I want to smoke one. I know its bad for me. I like that its bad for me. While I am smoking I feel like I am recapturing the carelessness of my youth and I feel good. Until the next morning, that is, and my throat feels like I have been swallowing battery acid all night long and I start coughing up small pieces of my lung.

I miss feeling womanly and desirable. I am only 31 (almost 32) and some days I feel like I am already dried up and shrively like a prune. 4 years of sleep deprivation and 2 pregnancies really have done nothing for my looks. I remember once when I was 19 and was got dressed up to go to a club in Orlando. I knew I looked good. A random sailor walked past me and said, “You look good, girl, and you know it.” And I did.

Now, most of my beauty routine is just an attempt to hide the inevitable. My morning routine consists of cleaning my various parts, scrutinizing my face for stray whiskers to pluck, then staring at my naked body in the mirror and realzing that I really am turning into my mother inexorably, one body part at a time.

I sit here eating All Bran with soymilk on a Saturday morning feeling like an asshole. I never ate shit like this when I was 20. Regular bowel movements, cholesterol levels, and weight control are important, right? Live hard and die young are not in the game plan anymore. I have two little lives that depend on me now.

I understand why Britney shaved her head. There are days when I want to do that exact same thing. Give people a reason to stare. Get myself out of my humdrum routine and out of my comfort zone.  I still fantasize about doing this. I still might.

I will be damned if I begrudge myself a little recklessness every now and then. Feel free to cast a disapproving glance in my direction when I get totally wasted at a party and then discuss how wasted I was and hung over I am the next morning. Hell yeah, its immature. That’s the point. Lecture me on the dangers of smoking as I light my stale, 4 month old clove and inhale the cancer causing chemicals deeply into my virgin lungs. I want to feel dangerous and edgy and risky and since shooting up heroin and then blowing a stranger in a dirty bathroom stall aren’t on the menu this is what I have and I will cling to it.

I hear my daughter crying in her crib after an extremely impressive 30 minute nap. Back to the grind. Duty calls.