Mental Health Break

So, Saturday I took a mental health break from my family, from life. I went to the mall, bought myself a dress. Get this: It was regularly $198, yes almost $200, and I got it for $60. Cha-ching. However, as I wondered Dillards trying to spend my gift card, I felt like I was cheating my kids. Ugh. That damn guilt crept in again. How rude of it.

I ate Mexican, had a beer, talked to strangers and felt totally alive when I left. However, the crowds and the thought of all the flu germs made me exit about 12 miles from my car, to walk in the freezing ass cold to get to it, but I was fine with that. It seems that I had time to think and make up an excuse for buying myself a dress. Why in the hell do I need an excuse to spend a gift card on myself? Well, I guess it is because some of it was from returning too small of clothes for the kids. Whoops, but come one- their closets are loaded to the gills and I am hoping they slow down on the growing SOON.

There are too many times that I want to get away and when I finally do, with Chingy holding down the fort, all I can think about is what I have at the house. I must say, that was my motivation for getting out. Mind you, I won't have many more weekends with my husband, as sale season kicks into gear and I also won't have many times with the kids and he, but who cares? We are a family, we eat dinners together and are in a routine that fits us. And don't think for a moment that I am one of those women who thinks her baby daddy can't take care of the midgets. I know I never need to wonder about that for one single moment. I don't. He can. He does. I am lucky.

I also took a mental health break and went to Denver. That was great. I worked, saw my dad and talked to so many people over three feet tall that it was nuts. Not something I do in my new every day life. I know too many people that won't let themselves have a break for a minute or two that I worry for them. Or am I the one that people should worry about? Am I too okay with walking away from reality for a minute? Is that going to screw my kids up down the road? Nah. It will only make me a raging, broom riding, scathingly irate woman down the road.

Embrace your need for space, freedom, friends. Well, I do for space and freedom, I find it hard to get with friends these days. Case in point- trying to schedule a girls weekend should not be as hard as it is right now. We are all adults, with our own money and our own resources to get from point A to point B. But work, kids, life are getting in our way. Calgon...take me back to Stillwater. I was never so happy as I was then; working a part time, minimum wage job at the beef barn, going to class, skipping it a bit, never knowing if I could eat out. However, there was always cold penny beer and friends to make it all better. I cried over lost relationships, fought with tests, sold textbooks for beer money. Now, I wipe stinky asses, work many part-time jobs to make ends meet, clip coupons and sleep with the same dude every night. Man how times have changed. But, in the end I still need a break from it all, but I am content.

Contentment is way better than being happy. Or so I will say. It makes you laugh, cry, smile and chastice your kids when they do wrong. Being happy was just a day to day thing. I didn't know if it would last. This feeling will. But it seems that I only remember that after I have taken some mental health moments.

So grab you calendars, ditch your kids and head out this week or weekend. Be a free spirit, live again a little on your own. Report back how it went. You won't regret it, I promise.