By Kristina Hammer of The Angrivated Mom

I am a married-but-single mother — i.e. I am betrothed to my soul mate, but he is unable to co-parent alongside me because his job keeps him away from home sixty to seventy hours a week. He is the family provider and the children’s extra special Sunday playmate while I am the stay-at-home-mom/ship captain/prison warden/public relations director/service coordinator/keeper of allthethings. And this is, by far, the hardest job I have ever had.

Before mommyhood, I worked in an upscale, posh fruit market and deli with over two hundred register codes to memorize. I worked in Bingo halls, ice rinks, and daycares, and for many years, I held down a second job as a nighttime security guard. After college, I worked as a Health Unit Coordinator, managing patient care in some of the most fast-paced, unpredictable units of the hospital: Labor & Delivery, Pediatrics, Neurology, and the I.C.U. But none of those jobs fully prepared me for the stress, exhaustion, and physical drain of “Mom Duty.”

And I’m breaking under the weight of it all. This mama is breaking under the pressure.

Going into my first pregnancy, I was a bit younger than the average first-time moms. In my naïve, twenty-two-year-old mind, I was sure motherhood would look as it did in American Baby and Baby Talk magazine. (Boy was I wrong!) No matter how many Mommy-and-Me classes we went to, how many playgroups we auditioned at, or how well I adhered to the advice in articles like “How To Find Your BMFF (best mommy friend forever) at Gymboree” and “Build Your Mommy Crew In Style,” I never felt welcomed. I never made a single friend.

There is only so much fight in someone, and by the time I welcomed my third child — five years later —my fight was gone. Dried up. Vamoose. My tribe would never be, and I was surprisingly okay with that. A natural introvert by nature, it was torturous bearing the barrage of mother-baby socialization necessary in order to find a gaggle of girlfriends who weren’t single, childless, Molly-loving club goers. Those kind vanished, never to return again, the first time my newborn baby cried in their presence. So when the third was born, I finally let go of the fairy tale magazine idealism. All it had done was leave me friendless and on the brink of insanity.

By the time my fourth child came, I had fully adjusted to motherhood without the stress of social pressures and, subsequently, without any outside support.

Four kids and one mother — 24 hours a day, 365 days a year — with only varying levels of school during the year to break up time between a few of the kids. Add household management to the mix, and all the bullshit associated therewith, and my hands are so full, I am losing my grip on it all.

My sleep is random and sparse, constantly interrupted by one little person’s needs or another. My body is perpetually ready for bed and continually fighting wakefulness because it has no idea when sleep is supposed to happen anymore. The chores have gotten farther behind than I ever imagined possible — and I have given up on the idea of ever having a presentable looking home. (Not even a flawlessly clean home, just presentable.)

And looking around, all I see is failure: overflowing piles of paperwork, stacks of laundry that will never be folded, dishes in the sink for days on end, and a smell emanating from our dingy carpets the kids are surprisingly not nose-blind to, but actually seem to prefer.

Days turn into nights which turn right back into daytime again, sending shock waves of confusion through my brain as it tries to decipher time and date.

I feel trapped in the twilight zone of stay-at-home parenthood, where every day seems just like the last and the memories of each blend together in jumbled chaos.

In all of my painstaking endeavors to become an attractive, “friendable” mom, it has become apparent to me that motherhood is an isolating, punishable, and taboo feat in which society makes you feel as if you haven’t done enough. It is a lonely and daunting role which threatens to consume you, if you let it.

For a long, long time, it seems, I have done just that.

I have focused solely on the parts of motherhood which were unexpected and/or unattainable. I was blatantly ignorant to the value of what I had staring me right in the face. Becoming aware of the fact that I am miserable by my own fault has been liberating. I have realized I was only mirroring the rejection I felt from my endless attempts at finding my best mommy friend. I was finding fault in my inability to be a real life Wonder Woman and keep up with life in its high-speed chase towards death, to prove there was value in the opinion of a bunch of mothers whose stories I only knew the back page summary of.

And you know what? My way of getting through is A-OK . I haven’t made the leap off the insanity cliff yet and, actually, I am probably a lot further from the edge than I ever was before.

Motherhood is the most arduous, back-breaking, demanding, and wearisome role I have ever been graced with, but it is the most rewarding and fulfilling, too. I have the opportunity to see my children grow. I can take the time to talk to them, play with them, learn with them — and from them — and I am able to share a bond we wouldn’t have had otherwise.

So what if I’m not good at managing household repairs and spring cleaning regimes? My children’s laughter fills the air and their smiles brighten the rooms of our home, bringing joy to even the most mundane of household chores. We are busy making memories and memories can be quite messy at times. So can dealing with temper tantrums, sicknesses, and injuries, too. Not to mention those natural kid disasters which “nobody” and “somebody else” were fully responsible for causing.

Life as a married-single mom tests my limits and capabilities on a daily basis. For whatever reason, I was meant to go this journey on my own, but, for the first time ever, I am so damn grateful that I have. I have proven to myself that I can. That I am. That I will. I am simply a married-single mother whose course is a little off the beaten path but still in the race. I am the mother I was meant to be, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Nothing at all.

A version of this post originally appeared on The Angrivated Mom.

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About the Author

Kristina is The Angrivated Mom of 4 kids who drive her to insanity and beyond on a daily basis. They’ve turned her house into a zoo full of pets and the challenge if keeping it all running is daunting. She is a writer by nature and poet by heart, but only a blogger by nurture. You can find her ramblings at The Angrivated Mom, on Facebook at The Daily Rantings Of An Angrivated Mom.