Hello, hello? Is this thing even on? Can you hear me? Will someone just talk to me?!?! Please!?

I need to hear the sound of my voice again. Not my mom voice – high-pitched and so sickly-sweet it gives me a migraine just thinking about it ringing in my ears. I want to use my normal voice. The one I use with everyone who isn’t restricted from buying alcohol, tobacco, and medical marijuana or from entering the adult toy stores and bars that are our reward for that ancient birth date. Hell.

If you look like you’re still in college, you will more than likely be getting the mom voice from me, too. I am utterly disgusted by it these days. I want human contact with someone who isn’t three feet tall and wearing training pants.

Life is so mundane and monotonous for me. At thirty-three (and a half) years old with four children ages 4, 8, 11, and 12, I have been reduced to a lonesome state of perpetual insanity. A stay at home mom with the weight of the household resting cumbersomely on my weary shoulders, I am being crushed by the responsibility of it all; the needs of the children, the wants of my spouse, and the demands daily life.

[easy-tweet tweet=”This role I have undertaken has become the bane of my existence.”]

There is no made-for-TV movie or magazine article perfection in my reality. No weekly playdates with the girls I went to high school with, who are as close knit as ever still. No adventurous date nights sans the stressing over childcare arrangements. No membership to gyms, community centers, or country clubs. Our income level doesn’t allow for anything frivolous. I am not in a position to be the social butterfly I need to be to fulfill the longing for consequential human contact.

Beyond the passing conversations with strangers during errands, I am being deprived of human connection; of communication. The isolation I feel over the solitude of my motherhood experience is haunting my soul substantially.

I yearn for the days of early adolescence again – craving the intimate, three-hour long gossip sessions with my closest girlfriends as I sat on the basement stairs in the privacy of my own little world.

As a mom, I am lucky enough to make it through five minutes of automated prompts without hitting the wrong key and unintentionally ending the call while screaming at my kids to stop climbing onto the garage roof. It would be a fantasy come true to have another girls night sleepover at 17 – staying up all night, smoking pot, and discussing the meaning of life until we fell into slumber with the rising sun. Now, I couldn’t afford to go out to dinner with a single friend, let alone drinking and dancing or spa hopping, if I had the friend to do so with.

Trying to keep a friend when I can’t be the kind of friend they expect is next to impossible, as implausible as it is to get out the door on time without a kid missing a shoe, having to poop, or deciding to injure themselves seriously enough for the first aid kit. Oh. That last one only happens to my family? Figures. That’s about the same kind of luck as I have in the adult conversation department. It freaking sucks… Bad.

[easy-tweet tweet=”The lack of brain stimulation is killing me.”]

Don’t get me wrong. I talk to my children all damn day long. They never shut up from the moment their eyes pop open until they finally fall out at night; after seventeen rounds of the I’m Not Tired game, that is.

I tell them what to do, how to do, and what and how to do it all over again. At least four times. I listen and respond to endless requests for food, beverage, play, rewards, treats, and my multitude of services in the fear, refereeing, and can’t wipe my own butt yet departments. The number of books I have read and stories I have told must number close to the billions, at this point. The questions I have had the pleasure, shame, and honor to answer for the growing minds of my children are infinite. Yet it’s all spoken in Motherease – that angrivating (think angry + aggravated) pitch and simple layman’s vocabulary which gets on my last nerve.

I want to talk to grown ups who get the program. Who speak with depth and soul. Who curse unwittingly and are fluent in twisted sarcasm. People who know me inside and out and understand that all I am able to give them in return is what they are giving me – meaningful conversation and heartfelt companionship.

Alas, my need for fulfilment outside my family will have to wait. It is the one thing I am unable to find a way to do for myself. I can still steal a few minutes here or there to feel sexy with my husband, to unwind at night with a little something for adults only, or to exercise and keep my body feeling healthy. A few minutes is never enough to satisfy the urges escaping from the well of desire within my soul when it comes to connecting with another human being beyond the realm of my marriage.

So I’m here. Just waiting until these kids of mine are grown enough to take back the one piece of my life I have had to sacrifice to be the woman my family needs.

Motherhood sure is a lonely place sometimes. It’s a good thing that these little ones are so damn adorable, because the love I receive in return makes all the loneliness aching inside me worth it in the end.

Thankfully, nothing lasts forever. One day, I’ll feel the solitude of the empty nest creeping in and I’ll wish for these days of social distraught and high-pitched mommy talk once more. It’s motherhood’s greatest catch-22.

In the meantime… Is ANYONE out there listening to me? Besides the walls, of course. We already know the kids are not.