Hello. Good morning. Hello. Good evening.I’m Lexy. I’m 23 and this is my everyday struggle through the only hood I’ll ever want to be apart of. Motherhood. There are ups and downs sometimes more downs. But it’s beautiful and this place helps me see the beauty even on my worst days.
Today I spent an hour crying in the dark in the bathroom. Today I didn’t want to get out of bed when my baby woke. Today I thought why can’t someone else do it. Today I’m tired. Today I am overwhelmed. Today I just wanted to lie down and melt into the bed. Today I wished my kids didn’t exist because I’m just so exhausted. I don’t wanna be a mom anymore. Not to my fiancé whom you would think could take care of himself by now. Not to my step daughter who thinks I’m an evil dragon. Not to my infant who is teething and refusing to sleep even though she screamed for three hours past her bedtime last night. I don’t wanna be a mom today. I just wanna go to bed and try again. Because maybe when I wake up things won’t suck so bad.
I don’t think I’ve woke up this mad in awhile. Why you ask? Maybe because IM THE ONLY ONE WHO EVER DOES ANYTHING IN THIS GODDAMN HOUSE AND YET IM THE ONLY PERSON WHO GETS TREATED LIKE I DONT DO SHIT.
Why is it that everyone, to include our husbands and partners, seems to think that SAHMs do nothing all day? Like seriously I want to know.
Everyone seems to think that all I do is sit at home on my ass all day with my baby and that’s not true. There are a million things that I need to do in the day but can’t because I don’t have the right car. James and I have TWO cars. One of them isn’t very clean and the other is the car that I use for me and the kids. Now he’s supposed to take the dirty one to work so that me and the girls can go places when we need to. That’s the way this is SUPPOSED to work.
Today I need to go to the store and get formula for K. I expressed this to James last night before we went to bed. Hoping it would remind him that I need the good car. Welp, he took it to work and now I’m stuck. Not stuck here because I could easily just get in our “old faithful” and go to the store. But stuck in a vicious cycle I’m all too familiar with. Putting my child in a situation that could deliver seriously terrible outcomes or waiting and praying that we have enough formula to make it to 3. I mean yes I could call a friend or someone with a better vehicle to take me but then my anxiety is there to tell me that’s rude.
I don’t know if people choose not to see all the work that goes into this “job” or they just don’t see it because to them it’s not real work but it hurts. I’m not a super mom by any means and I’m not the cliche housewife either. I am someone who works their ass off to make sure that the things that people don’t consider real problems get done though. And I am someone who is tired of people not seeing it.
I know I probably shouldn’t be this upset about shoe but, and you guessed it, I am.
At the beginning of summer I bought my step daughter new tennis shoes because she was complaining that her toes hurt in the other ones. No biggie. I went to Ross. (All you moms out there trying to get a steal on kids clothes and shoes. Ross. It’s a godsend.) I got her some cute black and white pumas and I got her an 11. Please keep this in mind so you can correctly piece together my irritation.
This past weekend she when to my Mother-in-Law’s house. A norm for our weekends. When she came back she came back in some “new shoes.” I didn’t really care until she put them on and her feet looked like fucking boats. I kid you not. These shoes were HUGE. So I take the shoe off and look at the size. Brace yourself. THEY WERE A 13.5. That is two and a half sizes bigger than the pair of shoes she left in that fit her perfectly fine. They were getting a little tight and had planned to buy her new ones before school starts in August. But I’m like, whatever. It doesn’t matter she can wear the other ones I don’t care if she whines because she wants to wear the new ones.
Flash forward to today. James and I are going on a little “just us” vacay this weekend. Which I am SO excited for. I’m packing Julianna’s bag because she’s going to spend some time with my Stepmother-in-law. I’ve got everything packed and ready to go and I go to make sure her tennis shoes are downstairs because I didn’t see them in her room. Well, they weren’t. I ask J where they are and she says “At grammie’s house because they don’t fit anymore.” I bought jumped out of my skin. I am PISSED. Now I have no shoes to send with her to run, play and HIKE in. And if I send her in the ones that are here she is going to end up with blisters and be complaining that her feet hurt. Like I’m fucked.
So I have no other choice but to put these GINORMOUS boat shoes on her when she leaves later today and pray she just deals with it.
If you need a dish out of the kitchen and notice that said dish is dirty, along with other dishes, you wash them. You don’t just wash the dish that you need and go on about your day. You wash ALL the dishes that are dirty, especially if you are going to cook. Who cooks in a fucking dirty kitchen. Cmon now.
they can feel unpleasant feelings and survive them (such as grief when a pet/loved one dies)
they might struggle with something now, but it will get easier with time and experience, such as a topic in school (growth mindset)
they are amazing
don’t just teach your kids they’re beautiful. Teach them many things but also teach them how to respect themselves, see their capabilities with a bit more optimism, and be resilient.
I felt this would be a beneficial post. For most women. However I will warn you: I have the mouth of a fucking sailor. I get it from my momma, it can’t be helped. Oh whale.
Motherhood is exactly what it sounds like. A hood. So I commonly refer to myself as a “hood bitch” though many don’t know the hood I’m referring to. Motherhood is a gang, maybe not the kind that we are all familiar with but it is and it’s tough as hell. Think of it like this; you have to be “jumped in”, you spend your days doing some really questionable shit, you gotta be tough as nails to be here, and you can never leave. Does that NOT sound like a gang to you?
My experience in this hood hasn’t taught me much yet but I’ve learned quite a bit about how terrible it feels to be an outsider even though you “qualify”. Being a “step-mom” or finding your place in a child’s life that isn’t yours is hard as hell. But you know what’s harder? When you have to do it with little to no support because everyone expects you to do it one way and one way only. I’m living proof that that is not the case. There are many ways and knowing which one comes with practice and patience and a fuck ton of wine.
This gang is rough. They don’t let you in even though you have the same struggles. Even when you’re begging for someone to just hear you out, you still aren’t worthy. The toughest part in my opinion is that it’s not just the mothers, it’s the kids too. So tight are they with their gang that you practically have to bend over backwards to even get an invite. Until one day you get “jumped in.”
Finding out I was pregnant and finally feeling like “part of the group” felt amazing. I did it. I finally got my invite and was part of the gang now. But why do I still feel so out of place? Maybe because it was only half of me. I still had this cloud over me that made me something different. Something other than just a mom. Now I had two titles to work with and only one of them was accepted. So what do I do?
I’ve read the books. So many books. The mom blogs. The parenting forums. All of it. But still there has not been one scrap of advice for us. Step moms who are doing their very best to be a mom to one child and find their groove with another. Especially those step moms with resistant step children and not very helpful partners. So what do we do? Do we grit our teeth and get through it? Or do we reach out? How do we balance our “hood lives” when they are “competing gangs.” It’s like the unification of Bloods and Crips, that shit is never gonna be blended until some seriously fucked up shit happens. So where’s the line? How do we find it? And for the love of god how fucked up does the shit have to get before it becomes blended?
All questions I continuously ask myself. All questions that no one will answer. But hey welcome to the hood we doing a whole lot of gang shit over here.