I found one odd website where people just write in questions and leave it open to anyone's response. A woman wrote the passage below, and even her title struck a familiar spot inside me. I could have easily written this post!
***WHAT AM I NOW?
I recently became a homemaker without kids, and I'm feeling weird about it. I used to have a busy professional practice. I developed a serious chronic illness, struggled with work for some years, then finally had to take some time off from work. During this absence, my husband and I discovered that we are both much happier to have me at home. I was never that crazy about work, we get along fine without the money, and our lives are more enjoyable because I'm not constantly exhausted and miserable and have the time and energy to do things to make our life nicer, basic things like cooking and cleaning and doing leisure activities that I never had the energy to do before. We are now thinking that perhaps I just won't return to work. I can do whatever I like--work part time, pick up some work now and less work later, whatever; it's a family business and it's all very flexible. However, the social aspects of this change are very confusing to me. When people ask me what I do, I still say "I'm a [member of a certain profession]." This feels like a lie. I'm not really working right now and don't know if I will in the future. People know that I'm home and not at work. But it feels to me that unless you're extremely wealthy or extremely poor, it's socially unacceptable to be "just a housewife." I am adamantly opposed to going around telling people about my health problems. I'm a private person. And I'm not disabled, I just don't have the physical stamina or mental acuity to work the way I used to, and, well, life is just better this way. The problem is not only how to present myself to new acquaintances, but also how to frame my new life to myself. It seems that if you have kids, even if they're in school all day, it's okay to stay home. You're a stay-at-home mom. Or if you are an artist, or a writer, then it's okay to stay home, even if you make hardly any money at it. If you have enough money, then it's okay to spend all your time with your horses or whatever. But I don't fall into any of these categories and I fear, quite reasonably, I think, that people with think of me disparagingly. Am I wrong? How would you view someone in my situation? Can you help me find a way to frame this both to myself and to others? Thank you.***
Wow, I wanted to reach out to this person and say YES, this is me, this is how I feel and I thought I was the only one out there! But it was posted anonymously. And in 2011. There were plenty of responses, and I would say they were all positive. Lots of other folks wrote to say they are in a similar situation. Others wrote to say there is absolutely nothing "wrong" with not working "by choice" and living off one income.
J is happy with our decision, as long as I am happy with it. I'm not UNhappy being at home. I'm almost 50. I worked full time- sometimes 7 days a week and two jobs at a time, sometimes 12-14 hour days, sometimes working all day while going to school at night, and all of it while juggling the duties of wife- for 30 years. I should just recognize how fortunate I am, that we can pay the bills on one paycheck and still have a bit left on which to have some fun.
I still struggle with my current identity, as the writer above stated- Who Am I Now? When people meet us they ask what we do, and we all answer with our job titles and company name. No one ever says, yeah I just sit around the house all day doing nothing. Sure I could say I'm an artist and give the name of my Etsy shop and hand them one of my business cards, but even to suggest it sounds lame. That's not a "real" job, it's not a "real" business. When people ask J he gladly states that I make pottery and sell it online, but I think he over-exaggerates it a bit like a proud parent lovingly boasting of their first-grader's accomplishments. If I answer that I'm a housewife, I think of June Cleaver, mopping floors with her starched apron while a roasted rack of lamb sizzles in the oven for dinner. Anyone who reads my blog, knows that my cooking and cleaning skills leave a lot to be desired. A lot. But I have an amazing husband who takes it all in stride and never complains, never asks for more, never demands. He just wants my good health and happiness, my smiles. He just wants a kiss and hug every morning before he goes off for the day. He wants the same to welcome him home every evening. I give all of that and more, gratefully.
So do I even need an "identity", one that the public accepts? Do I care if I don't have one? Is an identity just a fancy word for a label, a box that society feels the need to put me in? People never ask, who are you, they always ask what do you do? Why do I have to "do"- can't I just BE? Can't I just be me, and have that be enough? I know I should just be satisfied with the arrangement J and I have between us, of me staying home from now on, and have that be enough and all that matters as long as the two of us are happy with it. Can my job not be "making a big fresh salad for my husband's dinner instead of forcing him to eat Taco Bell every night?" I was raised by a career-before-she-had-kids-stay-at-home mom who, even after my sister and I were older, never went back to work. I asked my dad recently about that, he said he never once wanted my mom to go work outside of the house ever again, and he didn't resent her for being at home while he went off to a tough job every day. J is okay with me being at home, why can't I be okay with it? Is this just part of my chronic depression, that I never feel like I'm worth a damn, like no matter what I do or don't do it will never be good enough? And good enough for who- me, J, everyone else? J loves me the way I am, and there is no "everyone else" as far as I'm concerned. So it must be ME that I have a problem with.
I am not interested in pleasing anyone else out there. J and I both recognize that everything is so much better now that I'm at home. Life is easier for him, he has less worries, less chores, less stressful moments, better meals, a cleaner home. Life is better for me. If I could just get rid of the guilt, if I could just give up the idea that I have to be an "equal" partner and on that issue how society really just means one thing- money. I could never in a million years make the salary J makes, even working those 12 hour days I could only bring home about a third of what he does. So why do I think of myself as less of a person for it? He reminds me of how much money we are saving by me staying at home, in hopes of lifting my melancholy, of raising my self-worth.
J tries his darnedest to always boost my spirits. He heaps praise on me- I know he is being sincere in his own way, but I know the praise is not deserved. I don't want him to be one of those husbands who feels the burden of always bolstering my moods. That's not his job, that's not his function in the relationship. J always seems to put my needs before his own, and I in turn try to put his needs before mine. It always balances out in some crazy way. Maybe that's what marriage is all about, maybe that's why it's working for me this time around. When I was working full time, I spent all my energy on the job, and I had nothing left for home, for J, for our marriage.
If someone asks me, "so what do you do?", why should I be embarrassed at saying I stay at home and make sure my husband has clean clothes to wear, has lunch to take to work every day, has his prescriptions always filled, has a neat and tidy living room to relax in every evening, has clean bed linens to settle into at night. Where is the shame in that? And I'm sorry that I couldn't do ALL of that PLUS work 60 hours a week at the office. Maybe that just means I suck at being a woman. Still, isn't it noble, to take care of one's home and hearth and family? Okay, so it really means I spend my mornings scrubbing up cat vomit and clipping coupons and unloading the dishwasher- but aren't those things that must be done anyhow? J is the only person in the world that matters to me, what he thinks, what he feels, how he's coping with life. I don't want to seem as though my entire "being" is wrapped up around my husband, but if my identity is wife, lover, partner, friend, soulmate, cook, secretary, homemaker, whatever- then I know I should be happy with that, because he's happy with that. I guess, screw the rest of the world, I don't have to answer to them. Well, that's what I want to say anyhow. But in my head, I can't let go of the thought process that makes me ask- and forces me to answer- who and what the hell am I? And am I ever going to be good enough?
MISS GEE
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