On Friday evening, some things sort of exploded on me. In retrospect, they weren't big things, but at the time, they felt like that proverbial straw, and I thought for certain that I was going to crumble into shards of spine and such on the sidewalk between my house and the soccer field. I was having these odd fantasies of me either crumbling into a giant puddle of tears, or igniting into a mass of yelling and screaming nonsense. As I walked,* however, I thought things through, and this is what I told myself:

Zuska, the reason you are in this situation at all, is because you CAN do it. You wouldn't be here if you couldn't do it. You wouldn't have survived being a single mother; you wouldn't have survived law school while raising two girls; you wouldn't have left a bad marriage; you wouldn't have worked through the growing pains with Beloved. You have come this far because you are capable, and you are strong, and you've lived through and balanced and juggled a lot of crap before, and you can keep doing it. That is who Zuska is.

I think it worked. I did slightly jump on J, more than I wanted to after that pep talk, and potentially more than she deserved. I apologized after, let her know what bothered me about her and my own behavior, and then enjoyed a nice dinner at a fun restaurant/Irish pub with her and Beloved.

I'm trying to keep my perspective as I realize that this bar exam is more than I think I bargained for. I spent a good bit of last week realizing that it's much harder than I thought it would be - keeping up with my mom persona while having these study requirements pile up. Hopefully Friday was the tipping point for this phase. The point where I had to confront the reality and find a balance that doesn't push anything too far away. The girls are out of school in a week and a half, though, and I think I'll have another crisis point then. I'll need to readjust the juggling, and their transition issues will be a bit more acute (with the tears and the complaints about leaving for a month or so). I also will have 3 afternoons a week with no childcare. It's only for a week and a half, though, so I should be able to work it out.

* We are a car-less family, as I've stated before. While sometimes it feels old and tiring and inconvenient, we have many more times that we appreciate the sort of life we've chosen. E told me today that when she was walking across town with a group of friends earlier in the weekend, her friends complained that "their feet hurt" and "their legs were tired" pretty quickly into their excursion, whereas she and another friend whose family has chosen the Zipcar/public transit/bicycle/walking lifestyle were still happy to run and skip and were far from winded. I also was thinking of the times that E and I are at her softball field and friends offer rides home -- every time, before I can open my mouth, E tells the friends "thanks, but we're going to walk." She likes to use the time to decompress and to chat. Our walks do provide that for us - we spend a lot of time talking about what we're heading to, where we're coming from, and what happened in our days -- all while walking. I think this story - about how upset I was and how the walk helped to diffuse my stress and upsetedness - is along the same vein. I know that I was cursing the 10 minute walk at the time, but I was also thinking of how dangerous it could be for me to be driving in that rushed state. Wanting to make every green light, feeling impatient at cars in front of me that didn't dash across the intersection the moment the light changed, etc.

I like being a walker, and I love that my kids are walkers.

Labels: bar prep, chaos, parenting

posted by Zuska @ 8:40 PM

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