I think I'm making my families lives...less lively. The past five years have been wonderful and frustrating and beautiful and difficult. Challenging. I've been incredibly fortunate to find love. With that love, that grew from childhood, came parenthood. And 8 years in, jump out of the car on the freeway and run as hard as you can to keep up or fail the child that's already in some ways been failed. Or at least left to try to adapt in a very uncomfortable situation for a kid.
Stress, is something we're familiar with. Everyone is, but we have stresses that help us in a lot of ways. Our stresses tend to make normal stresses easier to adjust to in some ways but of course when we're being affected by our stresses they seem to intensify others.
I work in a physically demanding field and I have always stayed on top of my fitness, because I knew I needed to from a fairly young age. It helped me to continue the work I do, that helps keep me moving. The last three years, it's been very difficult to find motivation and extra time to work out the way I should be. Knowing that I have two other people depending on me and now living with me, I can't not see what extra work I can find to get in extra hours every day because I know I can't be comfortable or relaxed not having some financial padding. She works too, but she really enjoys her job. I'm very jealous of that, but incredibly happy for her. I can't say the same about my job, but I'm good at it. I take pride in the fact that, as big as my company is and as much as they've grown in the time I've been with them, they've never until recently felt that they need another person working with me in my region, which covers several counties and 9 locations. The other 17 locations are covered by 10-15 people. I started with very little experience. Enough to handle most basic tasks, and within 6 months my supervisor was laid off and I was told to take on his responsibilities (of which I had very limited knowledge) and I have managed myself, and just learned as much as possible because I had drive and was not going to fail.
Fast forward to parenthood and finding less and less time to exercise and finding more excuses not to. My mobility has severely decreased. I'm not comfortable, ever. I can't stand in one spot so I do this wonderful dance that everyone very kindly pretends not to see, but I feel it. I feel that loss of control just a little bit more than I did yesterday. I saw this with my mom. It's what motivated me when I was younger to stay active.
I don't live anymore. Not like I used to. Now I have wonderful, brief moments where I'm doing well enough to take a trip somewhere on the weekend but I'm watching my family live without me. That's not their fault and they're not doing anything wrong. They need to be able to live. I just wish I felt good enough to do that too
