It’s the Kids…Always

As WordPress continues to recycle old prompts, I pulled another prompt from The Coffee Monsterz Co to respond to today

What motivates you to keep going during difficult times?

My boys, Kid 1 and Kid 2 are what motivate me to keep going – even through the difficult times.

I think in previous generations, parents have tried to take on the attitude of “I have to do it for my kids. I don’t have time to take care of myself“. But my thought has always been, who will take care of your kids if you don’t take care of yourself as well? For that reason, my kids are my major, external motivating factor in maintaining my mental health.

I’m not perfect. I have my rough days. I have days where I am not motivated. I have moments where depression or anxiety overwhelm me. I have had instances in the past where either my anxiety or my depression has brought me to a screeching halt. However, I have got very good at monitoring, and self correcting at times when I can feel my anxiety creeping upon me.

Paralyzing

There was one incident in particular, perhaps two years ago. It was on a weekend that kid two was with me. I cannot recall if it was on either a Saturday or a Sunday; but kid two was awake and we were getting ready late that morning to take part in some typical daily errands. I think I need to run to the grocery store or something. I found myself nearly paralyzed. I couldn’t get myself off of the couch. I began crying. I tried as hard as I could to hold it back because I did not want to see me breaking down. But it is very difficult for me to pull it together. This was definitely one of those days where the anxiety hit me before I could get on my feet and get moving.

It’s very difficult to explain anxiety to someone who has never actually dealt with it. As I’ve said before, there is a big difference between being anxious about something and suffering from anxiety. I wasn’t stressed out about bills. I wasn’t stressed out about a lack of money or anything else that would keep someone awake at night. I just couldn’t bring myself to leave the house. And I wanted to. I tried. I knew based on previous experiences that if I got myself up and moving, I could more often than not, power through. But it caught a hold of me too quickly on this particular day.

But to bring things back to the original prompt, on most days, in those moments before being anxious snowballs into full-blown anxiety, it is my kids that help me power through. It’s not even anything they say or do in particular. It’s just the thought of them depending upon me that pushes me to keep moving forward.

Boys to Men

Even now, with kid 1 having turned 18 in preparing for college this fall, it’s just as important as ever that I am there to support and be an example to him. I would like to help him make that transition from lead adolescence into adulthood seamlessly as possible.

Let’s face it: there’s a lot of lessons that you have to learn the hard way when you’re going up. It’s not that the old man wasn’t there for me, but I think there were a lot of things I didn’t ask him about. I think there would’ve been a lot of situations where I could’ve gleaned something from his personal experience and wisdom. I hope that I can do that for kid one in a way that I didn’t give The Old Man the opportunity to do for me. The same applies for Kid 2, of course. It’s just that he’s still at a different part of the journey.

I didn’t intend for my response to this prompt to turn into a treatise on my personal mental health. The truth is, even on good days, my kids are my motivation. My kids are the reason that I get out of bed every morning. They are the reason that I “suck it up” – even on a crappy day at work. I love what I do for a living, but there are days when I hate it so much that it’s the paycheck that keeps me going. The paycheck, and what that can do for my children

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