Where I've Been

To better understand where I am now, I think it helps to know where I have been. So here's the "cliff notes" version.

All through High School I never knew what I wanted to do when I grew up. So after I graduated I took some time off, I didn't want to waste my parents money if I didn't have to. During my break my grandmother talked me into going to art school. This seemed like the perfect fit for me. I've always had this need to be creative. Life was going on and then a few months before my 21st birthday Oldest Son M can into my life.

My life was put on hold, I was now I mom. I got a job at Arby's , it was a crazy life but we figured it all out.

Two years later Daughter A came into the world. By this time I was back home living with my parents, relationships just didn't work out. My parents made a deal with me. I could quit my job and stay home with the kids. All they asked of me is that I took care of the house hold stuff, started dinner, and did any running around they needed me to do. This seemed like the perfect plan to me, I got to stay home and raise my babies and they got all the stuff they needed done and didn't have the time for. So I would have my own "mad money" I babysat friends babies during the day. It was a crazy life but again we figured it out.

A year and a half later my mom died of cancer.

During that time frame I met future Sexy Stud. A few months after my 25th birthday we were married and now a family of 5, since he had Daughter K.

It was decided that I would continue to stay home with the kids. Any amount of money I made at a job would just go straight to daycare, and then some, so it just seemed pointless.

Two months after we were married I found out I was pregnant with B-Monkey and 14 months after he was born, J-Bird came into our lives.

A few years later Sexy Stud took a new job that moved us to another part of the state. J-Bird started kindergarten there and so I started helping out at school just to get me out of the house. We stuck it out for 2 years, but that job and that town just didn't fit us, so we moved back home again.

Two years past and after A LOT of talking Sexy Stud became self employed and moved 488 miles away. We all could have moved with him, but with 2 kids graduating soon ( next year) it just didn't seem right to up root them all again. So the choice was made that I would stay here and he would travel back and forth.

And now we are in the present.

While I have never regretted the choices I've made in my lifetime, I sometimes wonder how different my life would be if I made different choices. I have been a stay at home mom for almost 16 years now, Daughter A will be 16 this October. During those 16 years I put all of my life plans on hold and put all of their wants and needs first. There has always been that little voice inside of me saying " what about me? What about MY wants & MY needs?" I have always shut that voice up saying that their needs are what is important, that my time will comes once they are all grown up and on their own. But lately that little voice is more like a screaming voice with a megaphone on top of it. It's telling me that even though you still have several years before they are all out of the house, it's time for you to get your wants and needs fulfilled . It's time for you to have a life outside of just being a wife and mother.