I was seating here watching the Project Runway lead up show and I kept going in the kitchen to get something to eat. First it was cereal, than chips, then I was going to warm up left overs, after I dived into some cheese, that is when I realized I was emotionally eating. I wasn't hungry, I was just trying to stuff myself so I would feel something else besides failure.
I have been around sewing machine my whole life, I remember just being a very little girl, four years old, with my mothers help sewing pajamas for my doll that would match the one she was making for a not yet arrived little brother. I can picture the fabric, a soft flannel, with a plant motif on it, in green and beige's. Since then, I would sew all sorts of things, creations that were all my own, without a pattern most of the time because we couldn't afford them. I even remember taking a skirt my mother had for years and trying to turn it into shorts, which I found out, you can't do. I never confessed to it, and I don't know if she ever knew. We were poor and she was manic, so I had to take things into my own hands. I even went to 4-H, and learned more sewing techniques, but I didn't ever take home ec, because I could already cook and sew, and even if it would have been an easy A, I wasn't one that wanted to be bored out of my gored at school. When I made a skirt that was a bit on the edge for my small town, I loved getting complements on it. But it was just a dream I had to become a actual designer, and before I knew it I was married with a baby. We were also poor, so to focus on anything other than making ends meet was just crazy.
After I was divorced and ended up at college, I started to think about what I truly wanted to do with my life, that is when I had an epiphany, I wanted to design furniture not clothes. I wanted to become a fabric designer really. So that is what I focused on, interior textiles. But remember that child I had, he was missing his father, so I transferred colleges in a different state, and ended up at one that was getting rid of their apparel and design department, so I was stuck with awful math classes. Again being poor, and having a child I was sharing with his father meant; I needed to make choices to survive, not ones that would challenge me, or let me live my dream. I took an entry job at a craft store, which was a nightmare, I was selling all the things I wanted to be buying, to redo my home and to sew my dream outfits. After eight months I quit. Since I was soon to remarry I needed a new job fast, I ended up working for an insurance company. No chance of meeting my dreams there, but it did pay really well. Well enough I stayed for almost five years. Until our second child was born.
Now that I have been a stay at home mom, my dreams are even more unattainable. I loved watching shows like America next top model, for the clothes and designers, not the drama, also Project Runway of course, and HGTV's next design star, but now I am finding that I can't do it, I don't want to do it anymore. Watching these shows, with all the idiots that make it on there, makes me really sad. Makes me realize that I have let life pass me by, and I can't seem to get back on that train.
So that is why I was running to the kitchen to eat, because I wanted to stuff all those raw emotions watching this show was bringing up. "you suck, you are a failure, you won't even do anything in life". So I turned off the show, shut the fridge and hopped on here, thinking I could write about my frustrations rather than eat them. But I can't also avoid my dreams. I need to turn them into goals and quit blaming others when I can't complete them. I need to accomplish projects around the house and reset the soundtrack in my head. I need to remember that most of the people chasing their dreams on tv aren't also raising two little boys and a teenager. I am also not completely over the hill. I can still make time, and get things going. I have five years before the youngest will be in school, that is plenty of time to get things in order, and make some goals come true. Even as I type this I feel better, not good enough to watch Project Runway just yet, but good enough to go snuggle with my baby and to keep the fridge closed for a while.
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