Life isn’t always perfect

Mike asked me a few weeks ago why I haven’t updated the blog, as he’s gently done every once in awhile for the past few months… And I always successfully changed the subject. Until this time.

“I don’t have anything happy to write about,” I divulged. We’ve been in another slump. Another slump medicated by alcohol, fueled by another round of grief, followed up with a staggering dose of anger and bitterness.

“Our marriage isn’t healthy, or happy. We fight all the time about the kids. Nothing is right,” I told him simply.

“So write about that, Erin.” He nudged.

Life isn’t always perfect. I never dreamt of smothering this blog with false perfection or fake happiness, but it’s hard to uncover wounds and lay bare for all to see. Writing has always comforted me, the act of typing, of stringing together my thoughts into coherent sentences. It soothes me as I pour myself out. I’ve called this before my online journal, and that wasn’t wrong.

So, help me heal myself and listen along… I hope along the way you and I both start to see me fall back together again.

My life hasn’t always been easy. I’ve often had to be the strong one – whether it was being raised by an alcoholic mother and later parenting my younger brothers after her suicide, or smoothing the tension and stress in my first marriage as I creatively juggled finances in order to keep the utilities on. Completing school and raising three, then four children on my own. Ending relationships that no longer suited me, or my children. I’ve moved through all mostly unscathed, to come out the other end of things with tougher skin.

I’ve learned that as I enable the people around be by flexing my strength, I disable their own ability to move through and heal from difficulties. I can’t lighten anyone else’s load by carrying their misery or pain. I only make them feel overwhelmingly incompetent and frustrate myself because no one is showering me with praise and gratitude for suffering alongside them.

I’m tired. I’m tired of being the stepmom to a child who committed suicide, knowing that we’ve all grown so much in the past three years and she has not. I’m tired of being married to a man who lost who he was. I’m tired of raising children in a tumultuous home. I’m tired of suffocating my anxiety and anger with alcohol.

Mike and I both know, in our own ways, that we are walking a very thin line in which our marriage is still whole. I’m scared it will soon shatter completely.

So, back to blogging. Back to sharing our lives with you, because we know, whether we make it through this season intact or go our separate ways, we have a story to share. We have hope to give, whether you see us save a marriage, or you see us have the strength and respect to walk away.

I love my husband. I do. But I also have to love myself, and he needs to love himself. Those two are not coinciding right now. Mike and I keep setting big goals. ‘Tomorrow,’ we will change. On the first of next month, we will quit drinking. Next Monday, we will go to the gym. And so on. I don’t think we’ve stuck with any successfully.

Enough is enough. Mike and I have agreed to use our blog, aptly titled The Snod Life to hold us accountable in our healing and our growth, in our moving forward, one day at a time.

This is our life. And it has to get better than this ❤️