Single-Girl Shiner & A Momma-Sized Meltdown

The last week was painful!  Talk about a "Single-Girl Shiner", 2 Tinder dates left me with a virtual black eye. The first texted me for an entire month. Every day, usually frequently. We finally made plans to meet up last Tuesday, but then I didn't hear from him after Sunday. I arranged for someone to watch Grace & all - and he just never got in touch again!

Then I was emailing with what seemed to be a lovely guy who is a couple hours away in grad school but who's family lives about 15 mins from me. He already asked to meet for a drink when we came home on Christmas break. When I finally did my Google-due-dillegence on him, I turned up a girl on Facebook who has a profile picture of the 2 of them & her status says she is engaged to him!  I asked him if he was engaged and he said he was and it didn't work out but it wasn't that long ago. Her profile pic was from 2 weeks ago!  Ouch!!!

Taking hits on the personal side combined with 9 days straight of Grace meltdowns, tantrums and constant stream of demands (even when I'm doing one thing for me, she's crying for me to do something else for her at the same time!) - I finally had my own momma-sized meltdown. I curled up in my bed, in my same on shame-filled ball, and cried and cried. I informed my own mother that I would understand if she wanted nothing further to do with me since I've been on my own for 4 years and still unable to pull it altogether.

I had to go to a meeting on the Rwanda trip an hour later where I confided in a friend who is going that I felt like I was falling apart and failing as a mom and she said - welcome to being a mom, everyone does!  She validated all of my stress, frustration and fears and said it was ok.  What a relief - as Anne Lamott said - to hear those healing words of "me too".  One of the other moms there told me she thinks I'm one of the most together people she knows -- I felt bad for misleading her :)