Peace of my Project

For me, peace of mind does not come easily. I’m a twenty-one-year-old, single, working, mom of two who is trying to do COLLEGE. No matter what I do I’m busy. If I'm eating, I'm feeding a baby at the same time. If I'm sleeping, I'm sleeping next to a toddler and a baby (they sleep in my bed.) I can't remember the last time I used the restroom or took a shower alone. I get my nails done sometimes...with a 9-month-old in my lap, and my two-year-old in the chair next to me.

My life is crazy and busy. My days are full of rushing, yelling, and strict schedules so I can fit it all in the fourteen hours of daytime. My evenings are a mixture of food flying everywhere and emotional meltdowns...from both me and the kids! I yell and they yell louder. I hold back tears as my baby bits my finger for the hundredth time today.

Sometimes, I must remind myself that stress isn't supposed to a permanent thing in anyone's life. It's not a constant that I need to plan my day around. That feeling of my heart sinking when I think about the next day, isn’t healthy. It’s inevitable that I’m going to get stressed out. I'm going to be overwhelmed, who wouldn’t be. I’m going to get upset and want to bang my head against a wall. It happens, but it doesn’t have to be the deciding factor in anything I do.

My secret to staying sane, to keeping those emotions at bay and resetting my body and mind from the nightmarish day is simple. I put my boys to bed, and I crawl in bed next to them. I sit there with my favorite show on, and a tub of Ben &Jerry’s.

I keep two journals. One for each of my angles, Castiel and Ezekiel. I write down everything good they did that day. Every milestone they hit, every smile they gave me. I write about the food flying, and the tantrums, the yelling, and the poopy diaper explosions. I write about each time they put something gross in their mouths, every time one of them gave me heart attack. I even write about how many assignments I have due, and how mad someone at work made me.

As I write all the good and the bad down, I laugh at the silly things, and cry about the bad ones. During the day I get too busy feel in the moment, so I let it out at night. It forces me to slow down and realize that it isn't so terrible. The tantrums will go away, the food will eventually stay in one place, they'll be potty trained before I know it, my teething baby will stop biting me...someday I’ll be laying in this bed without them, and I’m going to miss every second of them being so small.

I put away my journals full of my ranting about my kids, and my job, about how I hate school, but I need a career. The pages are full of smudges from tears and snot, sticky with melted chocolate ice cream. Most of all though, they're full of the things I get too busy to face each day. They are full of love, and honesty, my regrets, and my promises to do better.

I lay there in bed with the rest of my snack and finish my show. When I put away the ice cream and set my alarms, my heart doesn't sink. My mind doesn’t shut down at the thought of how much I must get done. I smile at what I'm going to do differently. About what I won't get mad at. About what I'm going to prioritize tomorrow. I snuggle up next to my sweaty sleeping monsters that still smell like the maple syrup they got into and go to sleep.