Big Heaping Pile of Laundry

This is the post where I'm going to talk about how life being married to a medical student and then a doctor in his first year of residency (intern) is really really lame. This is where I'm going to talk about (maybe even complain a bit) about how having your dad gone all the time is really really hard for kids. This is where I compare this stage of my life to a big heaping pile of laundry. Clean laundry, but still, laundry that needs to be folded and put away and basically looks like a giant mess.

I'm going to vent a little. And I'm not even going to say half of what is on my mind about it all. Only that I want to document what our life has been like for the last few years. Hard. Emotional. Challenging. Not having Tyler around and feeling like I'm single parenting a good 75% of the time (if not more) is really hard. I'm not cut out for that. Tyler's work keeps him away from our family so much. He leaves the house before any of us wake up and is home on some nights barely in time for a late dinner, on others after we're in bed. He misses out on everything. He doesn't get weekends off. He works long stressful hours and isn't around to help out. The kids miss him terribly even if they can't vocalize it. They act out or turn inward and I can see it is because they need him here.

Going through medical school and medical training is like running a marathon and then immediately finishing and running another marathon and then another and then another with barely a breath in between. It feels like a never ending challenge in endurance and strength and one that I feel I fail at all the time. And this isn't even taking into account the financial challenges that come with it. Those are enough to break you completely.

But I'm SO DONE with Tyler having a crazy schedule. I'm SO DONE with being the ONLY parent around. With having to do all of the parenting on my own, every day. The disciplining, the fun making, the meal cooking, the laundry, the cleaning, the taking care of everything here. It is hard to find joy in motherhood and a happy home when really everything just feels incomplete and uneasy. And it's a challenge not to resent Tyler for being gone all the time when I know that he works and does this to provide for us, that eventually it will be more of a normal job and less of a all-consuming life-sucking evil zombie monster.

When I'm sick? Oh well, no one is there to help me out. Tyler can't just call in to work and say his wife is sick and he needs to tend to his kids. It doesn't work that way. When I'm supposed to be in two places at once? Oh well, I have to figure it out or enlist my sister to help so I can do what I need to do. Photo shoot on a Saturday? Time to get a sitter because Tyler is at work again. Church? Been going to church by myself with the kids for months now. And it's all getting really really old. Especially because I know and can almost see that light at the end of the tunnel now. It makes me impatient and depressed.

Yes. I'm venting. I have to vent. I have to include this in our family's story. I have to include that we feel overwhelmed and burdened and incomplete while Tyler is in training. And I know Tyler feels like he is missing out on so much, like he is so disconnected from our family. It's horrible. And I'm not even touching on how I feel about they way they train medical professionals. I can't even go there because in my mind it's just a jumble of bad words and rage.

We really just want our Tyler back. We want to feel like a family unit again, not some disjointed resemblance of a family. And I know it will come. But right now, part of our story is living like this and it's hard and we all hate it and we all will appreciate that much more when we can just be back to our own normal again. And we watch a lot of TV and the kids might get more Happy Meals than normal and I may be indulging in frozen yogurt at Yogurtland more than usual and that's how we cope.

But until then... life is a big pile of jumbled up laundry needing to be dealt with.