I would love for everyone to believe through my posts and Instagram stories that I am the cool mom that has it altogether all the time. It is true, I can be super cool, I can handle a lot because I am a ridiculously hard worker.  But I am also a demanding tyrant and too honest, like hyper critical honest. That coupled with my need for things to get done quick and perfectly, also makes me rather impatient.  I am unsure of what forged these character qualities in me that in another world would make me a seriously successful boss lady but I can tell you that it started rather young.  I was always neat. I had my Barbie dolls lined up across my desk, each one dressed and with their hair done. My bed was always made with my blankets neatly folded in my closet. My shoes and clothes were lined up in my closet the same way.  I was so compulsive about my room being clean that I would even copiously organize under my bed until there was no hint of lint or dust bunnies.  I was a very unusual kid.  I had a difficult time sitting down to do my homework because my room had to be perfect before I could. I was the same in college too. I spent more time dusting my desk than I did writing papers.

I truly believe a Psychiatrist would have definitely diagnosed me with an obsessive compulsive disorder. These behaviors were influenced deeply by my own mother, who unlike me was not cool or loving in any capacity, but much like me was a neat freak and impatient.  I would say I have far more patience than she ever did but I am so much like her in that regard.  To make matters worse, she put all the responsibility of satisfying her compulsive cleanliness on me.  The house had to be spotless before she got home.  If it was not, she would go on a rage calling me every name in the book. She especially liked to call me a “fu&*ing b*&ch”.  That was her favorite term for me.  I was all kinds of evil words if I didn’t have everything including her bedroom and her bathroom spotless and smelling fresh.  My siblings and I joke about how we would take Pinesol and soak a sponge and wipe down all the walls so it smelled like a Bavarian forest in our trailer.   That seemed to make her feel better.  The pressure of having to clean her home made me resentful, especially to my siblings who were both messy and not particularly helpful.  The only space I could keep perfect, was my own bedroom. They couldn’t bring their germs and messes and candy wrappers and dirty clothes there.  And I knew it was the one place my mom could walk into and approve of always.  I believe the other reason for my compulsive behaviors were from sexual abuse and that’s a whole other post in itself.

Fast forward to falling in love and five kids later.  I still resent messes.  Like, I hate having a messy house.  But something interesting has happened over the years, I have actually lowered my standards considerably. Not because I have wanted to but because in order to survive my extremely messy kids and equally as messy husband (God sure picks the personalities that help grow us) I have had to let things go, to a certain extent.  I still run a good ship. But its fluidly tight.  Some days I am on my game and my kids are having the time of their life and I am telling my OCD to shove it, and other days I am totally raging over the disgust that littles bring.  And by raging I mean I am stamping around ordering my husband and kids to get their crap off my floors and spaces and put them away where they belong.  I am sometimes crying in a corner somewhere wishing I could run away and change my name. Wishing I could live in some super chic and modern apartment in Norway with white furniture and no animals or children and a rumba running around all day while I make soaps and write and sing happy songs.  Sometimes, I even curse under my breath and sometimes out loud, of course at inanimate things like the dog food strewn along the ground or the piss underwear stuffed back inside a drawer full of clean clothes that I then have to wash.  I literally have to pray my way through it all and have to ask God and my family for forgiveness a whole lot.  Half the time I feel insane. A lot of times I have to just pack up and leave the house and go take the kids elsewhere where we can have fun and forget the heaviness and stress of the filth and mess. I know right now someone is reading this and saying, “What is she talking about? Her house is always clean when I visit!” True that I always maintain a certain neatness, but my house is never as clean as it should be.  Usually the floors are sticky with substances I can’t even determine and my Achilles heel, dog hairs. I can see them, I can feel them, and they make me angry.  There are always drips of pee around the toilet.  I can see them and I can smell them even if you cant. I can see that small white smudge on the arm chair. I am like the terminator, I see it all and am constantly scanning.  I know it drives my kids mad and gets on my husband’s last nerve. If it were up to them they would live in a hoarders nest overflowing with empty chip bags,  bathroom garbages spilling over with doo doo papers and laundry piled to the ceilings.  But God gave them the psycho neat freak mom with way too high of expectations of all of them.  I try my hardest to be reasonable because I don’t want to be my mother, but she does show up in me. I can hear her voice in my head calling me names and saying my cleaning isn’t good enough.  And when I do I have to stop myself and weigh what is important. My time with them is so short and I have to make it as meaningful as possible.  And I give it my all but I have faults and failures that make me a bad mom sometimes.  That make me a grumpy sourpuss that is griping and complaining about insignificant things like tufts of dog hair and too many cups in the bathroom and gum wrappers behind dressers, and unmade beds.  I know these faults are there and I have genuinely worked hard to overcome them, but the truth is, this is just who I am. I am a mother with a lot of trauma who has somehow turned out pretty good but I know I will never be ideal or anywhere near perfect.  I hope my confession makes you feel not so bad about your own failings. Remember, parenting is cleansing for the soul and it brings growth to us as well as it does our kids.  And it is important to identify our weaknesses and pinpoint where those behaviors started and give it all to God in prayer because only he can produce in us lasting change.