This is what happens when I’m left home alone with the kids while Snoring Daddy flies away to Vegas for a big convention.  I start thinking.  

Why CAN’T I be Super Woman, damn it?

*I’m stamping my feet now and I’m this close to rolling on the floor kicking and screaming like an unreasonable two year old.*

It’s a valid question, don’t you think?  Weren’t we girls of the 1970s and 80s taught that we could do anything?  Be anything? Have it all and DO it all?  Not only that, but we should damn well do it all well.

We are women, hear us roar! 

Bring home the bacon, fry it up in the pan, wash that pan, and while we’re at it we better look hot, act classy, be a sex-kitten in the bedroom, and piss-perfect-patient in guiding our children.  No fuck ups allowed.  Ya’ll hear me?  And as far as the men go?  They are the icing on the cake. Totally superfluous. We shouldn’t need them.  Ever.  Not even in the sack because we are modern women and that’s what dildos are for.  I know you all heard me that time.  Furthermore, you should grow some testicles so you can inseminate your own damn eggs. Women should be able to do it all and be it all on our own.* Lean on a man?  What are you high?  YOU are WOMAN!  ROAR damn it!

*Okay maybe I got carried away with that bit about not even needing men to procreate. Just go with me here.  I’m making a point. 

This is the line of bullshit we were fed with conviction and we swallowed it all in a giant gulp.  And what happens when you get greedy and gulp food that’s not good for you?  You get heartburn, that’s what.

I was raised by a single mom and she set the bar high for me.  No, she wasn’t perfect.  She made mistakes.  But it doesn’t matter.  I still judge myself against her example.  And I find myself lacking every time.  I’m not as strong as I always thought I would be–as I always thought she had raised me to be. 

I can’t do it all.  I can’t be a good mother, wife, and homemaker all while losing weight, AND trying to advance myself academically so that someday I might pursue some kind of career with a future.  Something always suffers.  Usually it’s me.  I can’t do it all well, so I suck at all of it.  It doesn’t help that my life is haunted by the recurring theme of loss and self-sabotage. 

Every time I get close to a goal I stop and I take ten giant steps backward. 

You know what I was good at?  Being single and being a student.  That’s about it.  Even when I had a career I wasn’t that good at it.  There’s too much politics in professional life and I’m not good with politics.  Career politics or social politics.  For me, it’s all a treacherous minefield of what-ifs and should-haves. 

Then I tried adding getting healthy to the mix.  I couldn’t juggle that much and I dropped a ball.  Actually, several balls the size of Violet when she was rolled away in Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

So to all you real women out there, here’s a question.  Should I trade in one of my x chromosomes for a y?  Because obviously I don’t live up to my womanhood when it comes to multi-tasking.  I can only do one or two things well at once.

Hello, I’m here to trade in my vagina for a penis.  Thank you!

I was single and living alone with my cats (yes I had four of them even back then, just call me crazy-cat-lady everybody else did). And I was fine.  Oh, I was in debt up to my eyeballs.  But I was fine, otherwise.  Oh…and I was lonely.  But I was fine.  Really.  I was fine.

Fine.

FINE, OKAY!

Then I fell in love.  And when I fell in love I voluntarily handed over every independent bone in my body for a quivering spine of jelly.  Or at least that’s what it seems like now.  I made a mistake.  Not the falling in love part.  That was a gift.  It was what I did with that gift that is the problem.  I made it my whole world.  It became everything to me.  The romantic lonely girl in me lost herself.  Voluntarily.  I stopped going after the things I wanted in life.  I stopped taking care of me.  I stopped making friends.  He became my best friend.  My everything.  And that wasn’t something he asked for.  It’s a burden to him, in fact.  Again, my mistake. My poor self-esteem combined with fulfilled romantic longing to put the smack down on every ounce of independent individuality I ever possessed.

I stopped looking out for myself and my future.  I stopped pursuing goals.  Academic goals. Career goals. Health goals. I had my MRS and the love that is supposed to go with it according to all the fairy tales.  In some ways I was like an addict lost in a drug-induced haze.  My judgment was impaired.  Just. . . gone.

Then I had children, and I lost myself even more.  I won’t even go into all the losses and grief impairing my objectivity and ability to reason over the past 8 years.

Now we come to the really bad part.  I’m not even good at being a wife and mother.  I suck.  So, I handed over every other part of myself for something I suck at?  Dude. Come on.  Spell it with me. 

S. T. U. P. I. D.

Now, of course, I don’t regret being a mom and having children.  It becomes a cliche because it’s true:  I love those kids more than anything.  I just regret that I am not more for them.  What scares me most is the thought that if I had to do this alone, all the time, I am not sure I could.  I’m just not that strong.  I can’t do it all and be it all–for them or for myself.

I want so many things.  I want to be the wife that doesn’t nag and just accepts what and who her husband is.  I want to be the mom who speaks softly and patiently and rules with a gentle hand.  I want to be healthy and wear cute clothes and sexy little numbers with 5 inch stiletto fuck-me-heels in the bedroom.  I want to have an advanced degree and get a job that fulfills me outside the home and brings home the bacon and fries it up in the mother-effin’ pan. 

Is that so much to ask?  *stamp stamp stamp!*

But I’m not all those things.  I always seem to miss the mark.  I make strides and stop just short of the goal.  What is it with me and success anyway? 

The reality is that I’m grossly overweight, I wear too-tight jeans because I don’t want to buy the next size up.  I wear long t-shirts and sweatshirt hoodies to camouflage my stomach.  Unsuccessfully, I might add. I moan about all this but continue to eat crap and don’t get exercise and KNOW that this behavior gives me exactly what I deserve physically and psychologically. 

I over-commit myself and struggle to meet academic deadlines because I’m too tired or I procrastinate.

Sabotage? Anyone? Anyone?

I lose patience and yell at the kids.  I struggle to stay consistent in enforcing the discipline systems we put into place.

I nag the love of my life and demand a lot of him as a friend, husband, partner and father of our children. Because I need him to be way more to me than he should have to be.

Then I sit with my heart burning because I bit off more than I can chew.  Again.   I knew better, as usual.  Yet I can’t quite find it within myself to be realistic.  I want so much more than realistic.  Reality bites.  

The reality is that I am unable to fill those Super Woman boots I always thought would fit someday, but I keep dreaming and trying anyway.  No matter how inept I look in leotards and a cape.

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