Last night, I spent 20 minutes in my car, just crying. Legit ugly howling, mental breakdown kind of crying. The overwhelming amount of stress just came tumbling all down. I lost my keys, my husband and I had a spat, my kid threw a tantrum because I turned offf the TV, and just everything else that has been on my mind just came pouring out in one big emotion; one ugly feeling… Loneliness.
We moved away from our family and friends a year ago and moved to a place where I didn’t know anyone. Finding a support system here has been one of the hardest things I have done in my adult life. You hear it all the time: mom tribe, mom community, mom squad, etc….
But what you don’t hear is how hard it is to find people you can be 100% real and honest around.
I’ve tried so hard to “click” with people. It’s hard to do when you have no human contact outside of your husband and children…and that one coworker who you like. So of course when I talk to an adult, I get the worst case of the word vomit… and I guess that’s where my demise comes in. I’m also guessing my extreme social awkwardness does not help my case at all.
Maybe I sounded too needy, too emotional, very awkward, and just maybe someone you simply didn’t click with either. I cry. I vent. I laugh. I worry. I get angry. The loneliness is real. I AM A HUMAN BEING.
And it’s been such a struggle to act like I have it all together. How is it that you can be surrounded by so many people and yet feel so alone? I’m not sure what the point of this is, honestly. Maybe I’m just trying to vent this out to the world. Maybe I just need a platform that lets me shout at the top of my lungs. Maybe I just want to tell moms that they’re not alone in feeling alone. That they’re not the only one struggling to make friends. In a town this small, it’s awkward to run into people you’ve met in attempts to find friends who’ve just kind of disappeared. It’s OK to be awkward and angsty and maybe even OK to be tired of it all. Go ahead and cry in your car. Yell into a pillow. Leave the dishes for tomorrow. Have that piece of chocolate for breakfast. We are all entitled to feel what we feel.
Sometimes being strong means being vulnerable. Being us is not an easy task, especially when we factor in the loneliness. We often lose ourselves in helping run everyone else’s lives. We just need to remember that at the end of it all, we are awesome and strong. We can do this. We can continue on with our day to day because it’s what we do. We carry our families forward, but most importantly, we carry ourselves forward.
