WARNING!!

Raw emotion and filter-less narrative coming up. DO NOT continue to read if you are going to mock, ridicule or patronize anything I say (OR THE LENGTH). I don't have the emotional energy left and I know there are some of you mockers out there, maybe even reading too much already.

...as kids and teenagers, we make plans. We decide on future dreams and careers and they become the center of our universe. At least mine did. I went on a field trip to a Deaf and Blind School when I lived in Colorado and decided, as any 6th grader would, to devote my life to kids with disabilities and that my new found career was going to be to help these children. As a senior in high school, still motivated by the impact of that field trip, I was deeply inspired by a Special Ed. teacher as I was a peer tutor for other students with disabilities and decided that this was going to be my role model for the kind of teacher I wanted to become. I wanted to be just like her in every way and went to college and worked hard and labored for my own tuition and triumphed as I felt the sweat of the toil pay off and shape me into my own version of what I had so admired. I wasn't at BYU to go into education just to have something "to fall back on," like so many of those little girls had touted in their opening presentations. It wasn't about working my butt off and doing it all on my own so that I could get married at 20 and have kids 9 months later and THEN in 15 years start teaching! No offense to anyone who has done just that but it was NOT my desire or hope or plan. And if anyone knows me, really knows me, I have plans. I plan things. I need to follow a plan. I live with those plans. I usually have plan A, B, C or whatever, but its planning that really fires me up, gets me going. I've been planning since 6th grade.

I always had the PLAN to have children and get married (opposite order, of course) and do all those things that I know I have been created to do, but teaching and working and creating and inspiring and helping and TEACHING was my one first love. I started teaching the day I graduated from BYU and hadn't stopped until last year.

8 years.
So many different opportunities, places, schools, kids, teachers, faculty, experiences...8 years.
My heart just aches thinking of the call I got this week from my old school district to send in a letter of my final resignation.
8 YEARS! I'm sorry to those of you who don't understand the magnitude of that time frame, but that has been a LONG time!
Giving it up has been one of the most difficult things I have had to do. I even took a year leave of absence this year, grasping onto a microscopic speck of hope that I would be able to go back to my old job. And now I sit here in fits of tears knowing that there is a different PLAN for me. Not crying because I reject the new plan or I am sad for the new plan, but because it is different and scary and I feel inept and its not the old plan that I am so comfortable and happy with.

And to top it all off, Bren got hurt today at the babysitters. And more than sadness or anger I am feeling GUILT for not being there when he got hurt. He is fine and the scratches on his face will heal, but the pain in my heart for leaving someone else to be the mother will continue to hurt me. Not because I CHOOSE to have someone else be the mother, but because I have to.

Instead of devoting my life to a full-time career like I have done for so long and putting so much time and energy into it all, I am switching gears and learning how to be at home and care for my babies. I want to be home. I can actually say that and finally mean it, but not do it because its not possible right now. It hasn't ever been possible. That's the hardest part. When I finally miss enough at home and determine that missing anymore would be detrimental, I can't be home. I want to be home, I NEED to be home. It is a new life for me. It's been a very difficult adjustment.

But then I have had dreams about my old school and the teachers and in the dreams I felt like they didn't need me and my head hung at realizing how replaceable I was. I have sobbed in these dreams like I was mourning the loss of a family member and I have woken emotionally exhausted. I have realized that a lot of my sadness is related to my need for the communication and dialogue and daily interaction that I used to have in a school environment. I miss being at school. I want to be at school, I need to be at school. But I can't be. Not anymore.
Not like it used to be.

This whole year has been a rebirth for me....like my own Spring because being a mother is now finally becoming more real. I feel like I have been holding on to the old me, even when Cameron was born and I was learning how to reprogram my life for a child. I even now still feel like I don't know how to let go of my selfishness and my yearning for the times when I used to have my own sleep schedule, my own afternoon boredom to enjoy, my own mess to pick up, my own time in the bathroom. Its not that I regret having children, I just regret not feeling like I am the mother I want to be. I know there is time and always improvements to be made, but it is slow getting there. I have held on for a long time to the hope that I could do it all - be the Mrs. and not miss things anywhere else - as a mother or a teacher or a wife or a friend or a daughter. And the plan is that I'm not going to be able to do it all. Some things have to give and the sooner I accept it, the sooner I can really become what I had hoped for so long ago. Just a really great ME. Whether that's as a teacher or as a mother or as a wife, it needs to be great and I am SO FAR from it. The adjustment is more difficult than I ever thought it would be.

Can you believe that I am THIRTY and just now kinda figuring these things out? I mean, I know Oprah said that she's finally just figuring out who she is at 50, but kids add a whole different element! THIRTY??

...And then the question is - do I dare even publish this? I guess it's like confessing. I guess I have to admit that I didn't pick being a mother first. I didn't. I'm not that girl. You might be that girl, but I wasn't. I guess I'm starting to find my life, as I am "losing" it for my children. I'm finding that its a balance and a struggle and ok to still need to be ME and live as ME, even if the "me" is new because instead of only curriculum and Parent/Teacher conferences, it is also dirty diapers and Signing Time videos and sleep schedules and the Naughty Chair and endless laundry and picture books and SO MUCH MORE sprinkled with life lessons and teacher speak and homework hints and academic/social expectations and more school supplies in my basement than I will ever use. I guess I can maybe do it all, in a way. But I will need to do a lot more planning....