Sunday, May 9, 2010

Pity Party

I am having a pity party. Everyone is invited! You just have to fulfill a couple of requirements. The first of course is that you have to be feeling extremely sorry for yourself. I mean not just a little sad, really sorry for yourself. You have to be thinking you are the worst mother in the world, and everyone in the world knows it. You also have to be thinking that you have screwed up your kids for ever and ever and they will never have a normal happy life, ever, ever.

Doubting every decision you have ever made in relation to your children would also be a good thing. Remembering every mistake you made, every time you ever yelled, every time you did not yell, every time you looked at them wrong! These all add to the party quite well. Heck throw in the fact that you had a lousy birth with them and dropped them a few times helps also.

Of course you have to look at your life and think of everything you would of should of could of done differently is ideal for a pity party. There are so many things you did bassackwards and that for sure added to the fact that you have screwed up their lives so well.

I love that line in "Fun With Dick and Jane" by the way when they are looking at having to lose their house and she says," then we would have to move and he would lose all of his friends and he would grow up a social misfit with no friends and nothing to show for his whole life". When we watch that movie all my kids laugh and say that is so mom!

The things that would spoil my pity party? Well of course looking at all these really cool people that we have raised the best we could and seeing that, man are they cool people. Like even if they were not my kids I would love hanging out with them. I mean I would even call them on the phone and ask them to go to lunch or something, and I don't do that very often.

In reflecting on my pitiful mood today I realized that in reality I was just feeling "guilty". Man I hate that word! It is a loaded word and I have to write things like the above to realize that I really have no reason to feel guilty. Part of the price of being a Mormon is the guilt train that we all tend to ride, quite often actually.

Can you just imagine we are supposed to multiply and replenish the earth, keep the word of wisdom, be temple worthy and prepare the kids for this, teach our daughters to be wonderful homemakers like us, get our sons to serve two year missions, never have your kids get arrested or in trouble etc. etc. etc.....

As you can see lots of room for guilt on that plate. I have gotten into the habit of taking the whole church tradition out of my feelings about people in general. In other words I ask myself," if I was not measuring this person against the church how would I feel about them?" I think it is sad that I have to do this to set aside my judging, but I do. I was raised that way, it is in my DNA.

The really bad part is I don't just judge others harshly, I also judge myself this way. That, my friends would explain why I have to have pity parties. So the party is over, done with and I am on my way to make something to eat. I made a cake earlier that I dropped getting out and broke my favorite brownie pan and just turned and walked out of the kitchen. Just added to the party really well as refreshments!

Have a great Mothers Day and try to focus on the positives, just like I did :)

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