Keeping it Real

Ever since I was a young child, negativity has been my game. I'm pretty sure if you had asked me if my sippy cup was half full or half empty, I would have put on an emotional breakdown rendition of "I need more apple juice!"

It's just my default setting. 

My junior high diaries make Romeo and Juliet look like well-adjusted teenagers.

Which is why I married a man who has never felt slighted in his life. I have to actually get offended for him sometimes. "Babe, that guy shot you." 

"You're getting a little negative. I've always thought I looked kind of like a buck. He didn't mean it. We should have them over for dinner sometime." 

So I've made my New Years Resolution this year to bury some of my negativity. Notice I didn't say, "Be more positive." That's like me vowing to lose 20 pounds again. I just want to get less negative and rise to emotional, neutral Switzerland. 

Having this resolution will probably require the retirement of mom blogs and life blogs and discourses from people trying to "keep it real." 

I think, in this recent quest for "realness," we have unknowingly become a society that idolizes every experience, good or bad. We have become "faux-authentic." We have strived so hard not to worship perfection that we have bowed down to the messes of life instead. 

What started as an opponent to Pinterest womanhood and Pinterest motherhood has taken over and is now the leading voice. And that voice has magnified sticky fingers and messy houses and clueless husbands and made them more than the speck on the map of life that they are.

They aren't great. They aren't the worst thing. They just are. They're things that have happened for thousands of years but were never anything to write home about. 

I never really thought much about this until I a) decided to be less negative and b) began to struggle with infertility. 

I would read these lifestyle and family blogs and think, "If this is what my life is going to be like, why even try?" As a default negative person, I feared that motherhood would sap any happiness or positivity I had left. 

They all try to seal it with a big, encompassing bow of, "But I wouldn't trade it for anything." No. You don't get to do that. That's like those people who say something rude and then go, "No offense." That's not how this works, AGNES. And I'm just big-boned.

I'm not saying that motherhood isn't messy, that life isn't messy. I'm not saying you're going to love every second. I actually prefer that you don't. I'm especially not saying that you only post or talk about the perfect times. 

We can be real without taking out a billboard saying, "Hey, look at me. I'm real. Look at how real I am!" 

I have a friend (she knows who she is) and I love her posts. Sometimes her toddler is wearing a lifejacket in front of the Christmas tree when it's 30 degrees. Sometimes the kids think the fridge water dispenser is an in-home water park (I'm probably giving it away here).

She doesn't write a haiku about how her kitchen is messy. She just posts a funny picture. She doesn't write a doctoral thesis on how the dog threw up on the couch. She just gets Bounty, 409, and a deep breath and cleans it up. She moves on. She forgets that the dog threw up until he does it again. And then she forgets again.

This is real, real life. 

In 2017, let's magnify the small moments that matter. 

Everyone has laundry. Everyone's toddlers occasionally need to be exorcised. 

But not everyone gets to see what you see when you wake up. Not everyone gets to hear the words you hear from those you love. 

Only you get to experience that. 

And that's real.