Everyday life

Did you know that working full time makes it a lot harder to keep up with blogging? I've just noticed...

We're pretty much settled in our new home now, all three of us (four counting the hamster, but I'm not sure he really qualifies as a person. And the fishes totally don't count.) Mistress is working from her office at home or travelling - both to her office at work for hours from here, and all over Europe for meetings, workshops and stuff. She's been gone quite a lot lately, and it's a bit of a hassle. But I'm surprisingly okay with being alone with the kid. I'm exhausted when she's finally back again, and it's very obvious who it is that does the laundry and cleaning in this home (a clue: it's not me), but we get by.

But that working full time thing? So not my thing. I recently re-negotiated to 6 hours/day instead, and it feels a lot better. I earn less, and I wont get my license until June (instead of April) but I won't go bonkers or run straight into a wall again, and that's important too.

The apartment feels like home, and little S seems to like her new pre-school. But... this part of the country isn't our home. We don't have roots here. We don't identify with this place. It might be and adjustment thing, or it might simply be that we're a couple of academic lesbians in a working class town.

Strengths, weaknesses and forgiveness

One of my main problems is that the responsibilities of a relatively poor thirty-something mother to a small child requires a skill-set is utterly unsuited to my strength and abilities. Kids and homes need structure, routine, predictability, order, the same things done at specific times at an even speed throughout the day. It's all about remembering time, keeping track of schedules, finding things, keeping things in order, focusing on several things at once, sorting information and keeping your calm.

I suck at all those things.

And since this is the work load I've got, I go through my days feeling constantly inadequate, with a never ending nagging feeling of not being good enough, of letting down my kid, and even worse, of letting down Mistress. I can't seem to shed the idea that she will look at me with disdain and cast me aside, seeing me unworthy as a partner and as a slave, since I'm so bad at the things I'm supposed by the circumstances and society to be doing.

And, since I spend a lot of times doing things I'm inherently bad at, I lose focus of the things I'm actually good at. I mean, I'm not useless. I just have some areas that I'm unusally weak at. But I also have some amazing strengths.

I'm full of life and laughter and fantasy. I'm imaginative and a good story-teller and an excellent mingler. I'm good at making friends and making people feel appreciated and at ease. I'm a good people person. I read very fast, and I learn very fast, and I have an intuitive nack for grokking systems, I can understand very complex things at a glance. I'm practical too, I'm good at carpentry and gardening and sewing and constructing things, and I'm good with animals. I'm physically strong, I can lift heavy things and work hard. I can take care of myself.

Actually, I'm good at almost everything that doesn't include paperwork, administration, order, routine, keeping an even speed at work or doing boring stuff for a long time.

I've been trying my hardest for the last year to be something that I'm not. To live up to a role, that of a classic mother and housewife, that is extremely illsuited for me. I've done this in part because I've thought it is what Mistress demandes of me. Because I thought that what she most needed was an equal partner in the house, or even more, a housewife, someone to take care of her home and her kid. I wanted to be that.

But what it got us was me being sick. In the end, I succumbed to exhaustion and eventually depression. I can't do it. Not that I don't want to, or am afraid to try it, what happened was that I broke down trying.

I have to rearrange my everyday life to get better and to stay better. I have to seek out and spend time at things that gives me energy and self-esteem, and accept and forgive myself for not being good at the things I'm weak at.

We've talked about it, and the thing is that Mistress has made it very clear that 1) she knew this about me since she met me fifteen years ago 2) she doesn't mind covering for my weak sides and complement my weaknesses with her strengths and 3) as long as I am myself I can't fail. She will never ever tire of me, abandon me or despise me, and I believe her.

And to her, she much prefer having a healthy slave that she has to tell to do the vacuuming and empty the dishwasher, to having a depressed, exhausted one who really really tries to remember but still forgets...

So right now, I'm scratching my creative writing itch by blogging, while she's busy playing with little S, much as she has all day. And I wish it was the other way around, but right now, I'm focusing on getting better, and instead of beating myself up about being a lousy slave, wife and mother I'm full of gratitude for the things she does for me, and proud of myself for taking care of me and making constructive choices in order to get better.

I'm never going to be a good housewife. But that doesn't mean I can't be a valuable partner, a good property and a good enough mother. But I do need to focus on my strength and allowing myself to do the things that comes naturally to me and is easy for me, instead of beating myself bloody over things that is near-impossible.

And yes, if I was a single mother, I would've been in debt, living in filth, having a child with dirty clothes that ate things out of boxes most days. Or, perhaps, getting help from society in various forms. That's my reality. That doesn't make me less valuable as a human, though, and since I'm blessed with a fantastic partner, our home is clean and our child is healthy and we have enough money. I just have to forgive myself for not being the one that makes it happen.

It's not a matter of not trying

I need to stop reading about "giving service" to my Owner. Or rather, reading about other people and their view that it's a necessary and integral part of being owned, of being a slave. I've read it to many times, and it's clinging to my mind like a burr. I don't like it.

The thing is, that the things that most submissive seems to describe that they do as "service" seems to be what most women in traditional heterosexual relationships do; have the main responsibility for the home and the kids, if there are any. Do the cleaning, do the laundry, plan the meals, shop for groceries, pick up around the house, clean the bathrooms, tend to the pets. Be the house-wife. More so, of course, if they stay at home and the partner is the provider, but it seems to hold true for those that work outside of the home too. "Giving service" seems to be an endless amount of housework.

And actually, I so wish I could do that. A not small part of me think I should do that. If not as her property, than as her wife and as a mother. I should do my half of all housework, and as the submissive partner, I ought to do even more.

But I can't.

What I can do, what I have done the last year or so, is try. Try try and try again. Make every effort to keep it all together, to take initiative, to remember routines, to get off the couch and do things in time, before she does them; I can try to make myself do the vacuuming, or write a grocery list, or pick up my clothes from the floor. I can try, and I do try.

Unfortunately, the actual end result is very very modest. Not very much vacuuming gets done. The clothes mostly stays on the floor. The grocery list stays half written, and the washing machine stays half full, with the dishes still on the kitchen table.

For the longest time, I've believed all of those around me that want to tell me that it's a matter of effort, of will, of ambition, or maybe of lazyness. That if I only try a little harder, of course I could do all those things. But I don't believe that any more.

I'm depressed now. I need to find what things in my life takes energy from me, and what refills my supplies. And the idea that I ought to do a lot of things that my peers do with little effort even though it's very very hard for me, is one of those things that takes energy. And so I have to ditch it.

Mistress reminded me that it is me she choose. "I could have been dating T." she said, and yes, she could. He's a good guy, no doubt, but rather boring, even though he showed good taste once upon a time and flirted with Mistress. Yes, she could have hooked up with him and had a normal, ordered, boring life with a man that definitely is better at vacuuming and cooking than I am. But she didn't, she choose me.

"And I love it when you do stuff" she told me, and reminded me of the flowers I got for our patio. For how I always go all in when I clean the bathroom. She told me that she likes my crazy projects, all the little things I do that makes our life together better, funnier, more interesting. No, I can't keep a routine for the life of me, and get sick when I try to hard. But I still do valuable things for our family. Just not the classical house-wifey stuff.

We made a pact. I promised to never roll my eyes or sigh or look grumpy when she tells me to pick clothes up from the floor or start the dishwasher. And she promised to never roll her eyes or sigh or look grumpy when I don't do anything like that if she doesn't tell me to. Because it's not doing them that is the problem. It's the actual "get off the couch and do them now" that is ridiculously hard for me to do.

Summerplans

Exam today, exam tomorrow, my brain is mush.

But next week I have summer holidays, and hopefully wont need to use my frontal lobe at all until September. Or something.

I hope to be able to for once be Mistress' little housewife during June (I have a job starting in July), even though I'm not really good at it. Stepford wifely I'm Bette Midlers charachter before the transformation. "Have you done the dishes?" "No, but I've finished the chapter." I hope a lot of time on my hands, and a sincere will to please may make up for some of my lack of ability.

But mostly, I need to rest, slow down, get healthy and do things that replenishes my energy levels rather than draining them. A lot of free time and summertime and friends will most probably do that.

But first, statistics exam tomorrow. I can't wait...