I have a confession to make.<\/p>\n
Remember my last blog post? Remember how I sounded thoughtful, rational, and somewhat mature?<\/p>\n
Thirty minutes after I published that post, I was locked inside my bathroom, crying on the floor while my kids banged on the door.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what happened: I asked my husband to look over the post before I published it, mostly so he could make sure I hadn\u2019t made any erroneous claims about the Church\u2019s teaching on contraception, but also to check for any grammatical errors. Ten minutes later he said, \u201cIt\u2019s fine.\u201d And I said, \u201cBut is it good?\u201d He paused, then responded, \u201cIt\u2019s fine.\u201d<\/p>\n
I gave him my best wounded-puppy look while dramatically clutching my lower back and making my enormous belly stick out even further. He said, \u201cI don\u2019t want to give you an honest criticism because then you won\u2019t publish it, and I want you to publish it.\u201d Annoyed, I sat down and hit PUBLISH POST. Then I turned around and said, in an extremely exasperated tone, \u201cNOW will you give me an honest criticism?\u201d He told me that I really needed to do some brushing up on basic rhetoric, pointing out several areas where there were failed parallelisms and other missed opportunities to make the post more polished. \u201cBut that\u2019s why I asked you to edit it!\u201d I whined. He said, \u201cI didn\u2019t want to make any changes because you often get really upset when I criticize your writing!\u201d (Note: This is absolutely true.)<\/p>\n
At that moment, the tea kettle whistled. I slowly, slowly got up from the chair and waddled into the kitchen. As I was standing at the stove, unwrapping a tea bag, it dawned on me that I was a terrible writer, was wasting my time, that no one would ever read, enjoy, or appreciate these stupid, random posts, and that I might as well just keep having babies because at least that\u2019s something I\u2019m good at. So, five minutes after I had left the study, my husband heard our children attempting to kick open the bathroom door, came to check out the situation and found me crying hysterically on the bathroom floor.<\/p>\n
After a brief conversation in which he assured me that I wasn\u2019t a terrible writer and I wasn\u2019t wasting my time, but like all things, there is an art to writing and it is one that must be learned and practiced, I felt marginally better.<\/p>\n
But I was angry at him for making me feel marginally better, so I said, \u201cCan\u2019t you just leave me alone and let me cry for a little while?\u201d<\/p>\n
To which he replied, \u201cYou just wrote a post about learning not to feel sorry for yourself, and not half an hour later are asking me to leave you alone and let you feel sorry for yourself?\u201d<\/p>\n
In the interest of humility, I thought I should share that with you. I have a confession to make. Remember my last blog post? Remember how I sounded thoughtful, rational, and somewhat mature? Thirty minutes after I published that post, I was locked inside my bathroom, crying on the floor while my kids banged on the door. Here\u2019s what happened: I asked my husband to look over the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1110,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[78,26,105],"class_list":["post-421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-delightful-absurdity","tag-motherhood","tag-writing"],"yoast_head":"\n
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