it feels impossible

just a quick shout into the void

Yesterday morning on my way to get a haircut, I texted my husband telling him how free I felt being in the city alone, just responsible for myself. He was at SXSW two weeks prior for five days, and I asked him if that’s how he felt when he was away.

“Yup lol”

I survived solo parenting for the time he was gone better than I expected. Using some of my “work from away” days to forgo my company’s hybrid schedule helped so I didn’t have to rush home from the office, to child care pick up, to making dinner all in the span of 90 minutes. Having childcare obviously helped, something I’m thankful to be able to pay for every day—even though it’s basically as much as our rent. And finally, knowing that there are single moms who do this 24/7 kept me from wallowing too deep into a personal pity-party.

Leading up to his departure, Bill encouraged me to take time for myself and to go see some friends and be social. I appreciated this, because I’m learning that as a parent, I really, really, really need time out in the world where I’m not responsible for anyone else but my own needs to recharge and reset. But, while I was in the thick of running solo for the week, I wish I had used some of that off duty time setting myself up better for success. I could have more extensively meal prepped, gotten ahead on some work, etc., but using my free time for those purposes would completely negate the point of free time.

That’s the push and pull of managing your time as a parent. There’s of course never enough of it, and what’s there moves as fast as quicksand. It often feels more convenient to pour all of my time into the family and household to keep things running, even when I know that pouring some of that time into myself is actually what’s beneficial for all of us.

What this really boils down to is the fact that our society now requires two adults to collect a paycheck to keep things afloat if you want to at least tread water as middle class. When my grandparents and parents were raising kids, you could generally be a middle class family with only one working parent. These days, unless one of the parents is pulling in a mid-to-high 6 figure salary on their own, both parents have to work¹. And if both parents are working, there’s no one left to manage the household the way that non-working parents of the past could. I’m sure it was not a walk in the park by any means, but I bet that only having to focus on that—instead of having to juggle a 40 hour work week and put in the hours to keep the family functioning—was far easier.

When I tell people about my frustrations of working and parenting and the lack of time to do as much as we need around the house, I’ll often get something along the lines of:

~wElL nYc Is So ExPeNsIvE yOu ShOuLd MoVe~

To which I like to remind people that I’ve lived here for 15 years, which is the longest I’ve ever lived anywhere in my life. Bill has lived here for 18 years. This is our home.

Living in a diverse community is important to me. Especially a place where I can walk down the street and see Black people and other racial minorities as much as I see white people. My neighborhood, while still quite gentrified, has the best array of diversity of any place I’ve ever lived.

The lower cost of living cities in the US are mostly red states. States where religion is being forced into schools (but only Christian religion. It doesn’t count if you’re Buddhist, Jewish, or Muslim, of course), where some curriculums are teaching students that some Black people benefited from slavery because it taught useful skills (wtffff), where members of the LGBTQ+ community are having their rights stripped away, and where women don’t have autonomy over their own bodies. I don’t care to raise my daughter in any of those environments. Of course I’ll acknowledge that while NYC isn’t perfect, it’s still incredibly more progressive than a red state.

And practically, both Bill and I have to be able to go into the office to keep our jobs.

I realize the impossibility of actually making more time. I am truly trying to do and care less about certain things.

I’ve accepted the fact that this is a season where I’m always going to feel a little behind at work because leaving the office at 6 pm versus 4:45 pm or 5 pm—when I need to leave for childcare pick up and to get to see my child before they go to bed at 7 pm—makes a world of difference.

That low-effort meals, despite the joy I feel when indulging my time into a dimensional recipe, is what’s for dinner.

And in my idealized world, we’d have more structural social support for families and a government who put their money where their mouth is when they talk about taking care of families.

There’s a big gap between the mom that I want to be and the mom that I actually am. And while I know that I am a good mom, I wish I had the ability to close that gap a bit.

This will all be fine, and I will survive.

All the moms I know do.

But I think it’s important to put this side of motherhood out there too.

The hard parts matter, and it’s okay to shout into the void of your own little corner of the Internet if you want to.

Thanks for listening, I feel better already.

Get this week’s playlist here. <3

Meghan

1. Obviously this is a generalization, but it’s common among my circle and my peers, annnnd the data supports it.