Divulged, Engulfed

In our household, instead of Sunday Funday, it's Saturday Funday - it's long been established.

So imagine my astonishment when I got up this brilliant gorgeous Saturday morn, showered, and did not feel the least motivation to head out.

The putting on clothes... the applying sunblock... Eeek!

I'm against doing anything I don't want to do. I don't need to know why. And so... I didn't.

RJ is a sweetheart for going along... pretty much with anything. Without judgment. Without so much as a question.

But I'm bewildered.

Is it the crazy work schedule that finally wore me down? The unpredictability of life itself that's been eating at me?

We ordered pizza. We stayed in. It felt goooood. Peaceful. Sane.

When I told RJ about the sanity I was reveling in, he said something to the effect of "Is sanity something you struggle with?" to which I answered, "Constantly."

I am reminded of the one day my mother got really mad at me when I was in elementary school. One day, I decided that I didn't want to go to school. I missed the pampering when I'd be home sick, the privilege of being homebound, but most of all, the NOTHINGNESS. No responsibility, no clock-watching, no putting on clothes. Or socks. Uniforms.

Since one couldn't just possibly take the day off a such a tender age, I decided that, indeed I was sick that day. Even after the adults took my temperature and announced that, clearly, I wasn't.

Still, I insisted that I was not fit to head to school. And no one was gonna make me. And so I stayed home. And my mother was infuriated. But off to work she went and in bliss I stayed.

This is the core of my problem. To say that I am simply lazy or an ill-adjusted adult would not paint a just picture. I didn't ask for this. This life. This thing called LIFE.

And thus, still, every once in a while, I want a sick day. World, please, just go away. I don't want to be part of you. I never asked to be here. I don't have it in me. Day after day after day...

I have shared with RJ a bitter childhood memory: often, on Sundays, my mother wouldn't get up. Noon would come around. Then 1 p.m. And she'd stay in bed. She wouldn't be necessarily sleeping. She'd just be lounging, reading the paper from the previous day. In other words, enjoying herself and the little time she had to herself.

The behavior bled resentment. I thought, if she loved us, she'd want to be with us. She'd get out of that damned bed.

Not to mention the practice further complicated the food issue. We waited. For her to get up. For her to get ready. For her to choose a pair of shoes deemed appropriate for the day's activities. Meanwhile, our stomachs were growling.

Surely she didn't care. Not about our suffering. Not about our anguish. Not about the years of an unhealthy relationship with food to follow and haunt us. Well, just me.

I'm pretty sure deep down that is one of the key reasons I didn't want to have children. That way, there's no chance of hurting someone that deeply. Whatever I may be doing wrong, I wouldn't be hurting a child.

But what does it mean when both RJ and I sleep till noon? When life is too much to face. When it is ALWAYS too much to face.

Thanks to FB, even my usually tacit mother, in a rare moment, recently reminisced and shared a sentiment from her career-driven years, "Sometimes you're exhausted, but there's no one to tell. So you just keep going."

A new FB friend comments that my posts are all "eat, drink and be merry", and says that she's envious.

Seriously? That's one shot out of seven days. Don't be oblivious to the highly censored and filtered that is our online presence that caters to the audience.

The world doesn't see the days I'm eating salad and cold rice in my car, dear. Glory gets documented. Not the dreary moments. Not the loneliness and the doubt and the big question: Why?

We didn't ask for this. No one did.

I'm starting to wonder if my mother at one point or another also thought, "Not this. Day after day after day..."

Or her father before her, who finally committed suicide. Because he never asked for this. No one did.