It would be an interesting scientific study to see how a woman's brain changes over the years after she has kids. Except for the fact that you'd never know what would have happened had she not had kids. I feel like my brain has atrophied. I used to think about all kinds of things all the time. I had no trouble remembering vast numbers of things - from my schoolwork to my schedule. I came up with ideas about how to change things and accomplish things and organize things.
These days I feel like there's mush in my head. I have a super sense when it comes to my kids - their cries and needs and wants. I can hear what they're doing (or not doing) from the other room or even another floor of the house. It's as if I am connected to them in a way that's almost like they're an extension of my body. I just know them, like I know myself. And while they can surprise me, it doesn't happen very often. Where they are concerned I can adapt fairly quickly, I can anticipate their reactions and change situations before they even know what's happening.
Everything else in life is mush. Even my organizational skills - which I would put at the top of things I'm good at - are faltering. I sat in the family room for 20 minutes today looking at the shelves, trying to figure out a way to rearrange things in our house so that they don't look jammed up. I couldn't do it. Not without adding more sets of shelves somewhere or getting rid of some of the things we have. And it's not that those things aren't valid solutions, it's just that, back in the day, I probably would have just taken everything off the shelves, put it all back on and it would have looked brilliant.
I just feel so lazy. I am defeated before I begin because all I can think about it how much energy I'll expend doing a task. Not that I'm saving it - just that I don't have it to begin with.
I miss having intellectual conversations about philosophy and psychology and the humanities. I don't think I could conjure a reasonable argument now to save my life. People talk and I listen and I think, "Wow, those are amazing thoughts" and I have nothing to contribute. I only half follow what's going on because the minute I process it, it leaves what little brain I have left and I'm left with an echo of what's been said. It's so hard to grasp thoughts and hold them these days. And it's so frustrating because I remember a time when it was easy.
I go back and read my old journals. Sometimes it's pure dribble and I'm embarrassed to have written it, but sometimes I still think I was on to something - or I had at least really put two and two together. And I'm surprised by my own thoughts because I haven't had any like them in quite some time.
Mothers (at least stay at home ones) get a bad rap for being rather boring and uninteresting. All they can talk about is their kids and households. And I've turned into that! I could try to challenge myself by reading books, but I swear I can barely get through picture books these days.
I do research things online quite a bit. I've been asked by people in the medical field if I have a medical background - presumably because I sound like I know what I'm talking about. So it's not as if I have no knowledge. I just feel like I have no depth - no application - no life in my thoughts.
I've been talking to a friend recently who is as vibrant and alive as he was years ago when we were close. I can't really remember what we used to talk about, but I remember talking for hours on the phone and always feeling alive - charged - full of energy and potential after we talked. He still has the ability to make me feel that way, but I also realize even more how much I've changed.
I long to feel the way I used to - not dull and boring. I used to feel like I could argue my way into or out of anything. Like I could find a solution to every problem. Like I could contribute in a positive way to the activities and conversations and lives surrounding me.
I know I am shaping my kids each day with what we do together. And I know that being a parent is one of the most important jobs around - and definitely one of the hardest. It's a huge responsibility. And yet, though there are huge rewards, they come so slowly sometimes, it's very hard to keep my perspective above the floorboards and see anything like the big picture. I'm down in the trenches every day, all day, and my views become very limited and skewed.
I love my life, my kids, my husband, the job I've chosen to do. But inside I am still the person I always have been - one who loved art and music and literature and who loved examining the human condition.
There's a part of me that is not able to be expressed these days. It's inside, sometimes writhing to come out, sometimes dormant, slowly dying. There are many days when I don't even realize it's there. But then, someone touches it - and it's as if I suddenly realize that I'm starving or dying of thirst.
I love my friends - I love hanging out with them - talking about our kids and gossiping (in the nicest way, of course) and laughing at who we've all become. But sometimes I really miss who I used to be.