So I work a lot. My husband does the same.
We started our retail business almost 9 years ago, I was freshly 19 years old and very naive. Here I am at 28 and we are on our third store front location, starting up the internet sales aspect of our business, and I took on another part time job elsewhere…. just to make time for something I’m interested in without feeling the guilt of taking personal time. I care that much about what we do, I respect it, I cherish it, and I am blessed. However, it all comes with a sacrifice and sometimes I just want things to be a little simpler.
I am up, anywhere from 6-9am, everyday. Hour of chores between the dogs, cats, horses, laundry, dishes, cooking. Shower, and off to work. During my 10 hour shift (sometimes split between the 2 jobs), I work well, and sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I’m lazy and I hope that’s ok. After my shift ends at 9-10pm, I head home (anywhere from a 15min- 1 hour commute) for another hour of chores (same as the morning), cook a usually thoroughly healthy dinner, and fall asleep to a movie… say between 1am-3am.
There is no time. I stretch and stretch and add more to my responsibilities and I don’t know why. I don’t understand why we do it. What our purpose is. I’m fairly a happy person in real life. I try and see the best in things and look for the little moments that really make me feel grounded again. Bringing me back from a whirlwind of time speeding by. I was not raised this way, but I have come to conform to please my husband and in hopes of building our life. So someday, I can be the woman I really want to be. I want to be a mother, a great one. I want to provide a clean home, a full vegetable garden and I want to know how to make a tasty loaf of bread. But those things take time. Time that I don’t know if I’ll ever really have.
I was raised in a pretty fucked up situation. I was thankfully never sexually abused, but my childhood did involve a lot of abuse, instability, and drugs. I sank myself deeply into novels and my own imagination. I read more books each month than most have read by the end of high school. My angels, wherever and whoever you may be, managed to keep me from becoming barefoot and pregnant at a young age, and off of welfare after 17 years old. No offense to those that are in that situation.. believe me, I lived it. All I know is that my father instilled in me the beauty and magic of LIFE. This does not involve lots of money and toys, but more of catching grasshoppers, naming plants, fishing, camping, climbing trees, playing sock football on rainy nights. Laughing so hard by just looking at someone that you end up crying and falling to the ground. I love those memories and I want so badly to hang on to them. That is so far from who I am today, all I can see is specks of that girl.
The business we own has been around for 23 years. Before I even knew of my husband, I had been a customer there with my dad. Very fond memories of renting movies and video games, pizza, scary stories and tall tales, and of course… ice cream. My husband also shopped there growing up, however we have a nice age gap of 9 years, so I don’t believe our paths ever crossed. I think this is why I hang on to the dedication of our business. It’s meant to be in some way. To succeed. To make many more memories for our customers kids and so forth.
I dream often of the life I could of had. I see their little faces. See what kind of parents we could have been. How much I would like to experience with them. For myself. For sharing pure joy with others and finding inspiration in the little things.
My dreams will have to ever be set aside. The disappointment in his face is too hard to bare to push any further on changing things. So I trudge on. Hoping someday to maybe have a little bit of both worlds. And because I do love him.
-L
Soaring Foward 