I'm special

Before I get started: October is National Breast Cancer awareness month. This is a cause near and dear to my heart -- in more ways than one! Don't forget to do your monthly self exams!

Sometimes Mr. Daddy and I will be having a conversation and then a few minutes later I will come out with some comment, seemingly out of left field. Mr. Daddy will be like "Huh? Where did that come from?" But in my mind, the the conversation and my comment are totally related. Sometimes he'll make me take him for a ride on my train of thought, after which he'll usually reply "It must be hard being you."

This post is going to be a little like that.

This weekend I was watching my requisite TLC shows and saw an advertisement for a show that was tailor made for me. The show follows brides-to-be as they try on wedding dress after wedding dress in search of the perfect one. (I was going to link to it, but amazingly, even though I must have seen the commercial a go-zillion times this weekend, I can find no reference to this new show on TLC's website. Huh. Your loss TLC!) Anyhoo, I love wedding dress shopping. I've only actually done it twice -- once for myself and once with my sister-in-law -- but I could happily go wedding dress shopping every weekend if I could get away with it. I think, though, that the salespeople would start to get wise to me after a while.

And I must say that wedding dress shopping with my sister-in-law was COMPLETELY unfulfilling. First of all, she's like a size two or something and she knew exactly the kind of dress she wanted and was not willing to try on anything else. Maybe it was my inner princess coming out, but I loved having fluffy dress after fluffy dress brought to my dressing room and having my bridesmaids zip and button me up. When else do you ever have a chance to try on such gorgeous dresses and feel completely like a princess? She tried on two. TWO. And she bought one of them. Pitiful. Just pitiful. By the by, if ANY of you out there are going wedding dress shopping anytime soon, I am MORE than happy to go along as a personal assistant.

Then, thinking of wedding dresses made me think of one of my favorite Friends episodes, the one where Monica, Rachel and Phoebe are sitting around in wedding dresses. I have a memory of a scene -- I think it's the one after the credits, although I can't find it online anywhere -- where Monica says something like "I just know that I'm never going to feel this special again."

And then I started thinking about when was the last time I felt special, like the center of attention? And it was probably my wedding day. Which was ten years ago. Yes, I got some accolades when my kids were born, but we ALL know that from that point on it's really about the babies. Yes, you carried them for nine months, you went through umpteen hours of labor, you delivered them either the old fashioned way or via c-section -- either way, no easy task -- but really, the star of the show is the baby. On my birthday right before Bubba was born, my boss at the time gave me a card in which he had written "Happy Birthday. Enjoy it. This is your last birthday as Leandra. From now on you'll be Bubba's mom."

And you know what? He was right. I quit being Leandra and started being Mommie. I have put aside myself in so many ways. We all do, I think. We HAVE to, to some degree, to be good parents I think. Babies don't care if you want to finish your chapter, if you want to go out with friends for a rare night out. Try to plan something--they'll be sure to come down with latest virus to come down the pike. Dont get me wrong -- I loved every minute of it. But there's a difference in putting yourself aside and losing yourself completely. And I lost myself for a little while. I quit reading. I didn't have any outside interests. No hobbies. If you asked me what I wanted for my birthday, Christmas, I couldn't tell you.

And then I started thinking about my blogging and I realized that this has been my way to reclaim some of myself. Writing down my thoughts has helped me remember who I am, what I like, what I want. This is the first forum I've had in a long time to talk about ME. Which sounds very selfish when I see it written here in black and white. But do you know how long it's been since I talked about me? I've talked about my kids endlessly. I've talked about poop. I've talked about spit-up. I've talked about lack of sleep (and YES, I do blog about these things here, too). All of these thing AFFECT me, and my relationship with my children has helped make the person I am today, but they're not ABOUT me. The inner me. The me-ness of me. I missed me.

And THEN I realized (are you still with me on this roller-coaster thought-train ride?) that I like reading blogs (and bloggers' comments) because I'm learning about YOU. Because you're special too. Don't forget that.