Who Do You Call When Life Gets Too Heavy?

I think I would’ve gone off the deep end by now if I didn’t have my mother.

It’s 2009, and I’m sitting in the back seat of my mom’s gray minivan. The windows are down, and it is summertime. I dig through my mom’s brown leather purse for cherry ChapStick. It smells of Trident spearmint gum and Curve Crush perfume. As I’m horrendously applying this cherry ChapStick all over my lips—and the skin around them—I glance up at my mother in the driver’s seat, singing along to Beyoncé’s “If I Were a Boy.” Oh, how beautiful my mother is. I hope to be as fun and beautiful as her when I’m her age.

I’m almost my mom’s age now. She already had my brother and was pregnant with me at this time in her life. I’m yet to have children, and I’m already feeling the stress of adulthood. I can’t imagine this getting any more difficult than it already is, but I know it’s bound to happen. Kudos to my mother for making adulthood look fun by disguising it with a chic brown leather purse and belting out the lyrics to a hit song from one of the most loved artists in the world as she drove down the highway with the wind in her hair. I’ve found that adulthood is more often like driving down the road in the rain with a leak around your windshield, flipping through every song in your playlist because you just can’t find the right one to cradle your feelings for a moment.

My mother has always been good at hiding scary things. Every night as a child, when she tucked me into bed, she made sure my closet door was shut so no monsters could get out and get me. As a teenager, she would reassure me that the world wasn’t going to end in some crazy natural disaster out of nowhere. (Yes, natural disasters can happen out of nowhere, but because my mom said it wasn’t going to, then we were safe—right?) I’m sure she loved having a hypochondriac as a child.

Now, as an adult, the scary things are a little bit different for me. Unfortunately, I can’t just hide from these things. And no matter how much power I thought my mom had when I was a young kid, it’s not enough to hide these real-life situations as an adult. Some of the scary things are my battle with anxiety, my financial worries, whether I’m being a good enough wife, whether I’m going to run out of time to have children, whether I’m going to have enough time to conquer the things I want to do before having children, whether I’ll be successful in my career, etc. You know… the kinds of things most people my age are usually worrying about.

Though the outcome of some of those situations may turn out to be exactly what I want, they are still scary right now because they are unknown. You know when you’re turning the handle to a Jack-in-the-Box and you start turning it slower, so the music slows down? Your body starts to tense up with fear and anxiousness because you know what’s about to happen. That is where I feel like my life is currently at. I’m stuck between a life that is getting me by for right now and a life that is everything I want. I just need to turn the handle a little bit further. Sometimes, we all just need a little bit of help turning that handle. For me, my mother is the one who encourages me to push a little bit harder.

Before I decided to go through with this blog, I spent the last two years driving to my mother’s house at least twice a week to sit on the barstools at her kitchen counter and tell her how I knew I was destined for so much more than what I was currently living. Did I ever attempt to do more than that? Did I ever attempt to put myself out there and actually start putting in the work for the kind of life I wanted? No. I would sit on her barstool, crying and only talking about the life I wanted—about the things I wanted to do but never gave myself permission to do.

Now… my mother can only do and say so much to get me to man up and fight for myself. It boils down to me and what I am willing to work through to get what I want. Do I have discipline? Yes. Do I have perseverance? Yes. I’m quite stubborn, actually. Do I have the courage? Yes. Do I have all of the character skills I need to pursue my dreams? Yes, I do. This is because of my parents, who instilled these qualities in me as they raised me.

However, if there is one thing I can say that my mother has instilled in me, it is to believe in myself. This is my biggest struggle, but it is there. That is why you are reading this right now. Throughout all aspects of my life, my mother reminds me that as long as I believe in myself, I will make the right decisions. Whether this is relationships, jobs, speaking to others, or staying disciplined with things as small as turning my homework in on time—as long as I believe in myself, I will find a way.

After a long conversation with my mom, I decided I wanted to make this blog. I have always loved writing. It has always been a passion of mine. I also enjoy talking with people who can deepen the conversation and keep an open mind. Speaking does not come as easily for me as writing does, though. Through this blog, I can finally let my thoughts flow. I can make it as deep or as shallow as I want, but they are my thoughts, and they are flowing. And if there is one person who is going to be fearlessly kayaking this thought-current of mine, it will be my mother. Every. Single. Time.

Since my mother has been my biggest supporter in opening this blog, I felt it was only right to name it after her in some kind of way. The title of this blog is nothing but the truth. I call my mom every day. Sometimes over really big, scary things that I’m hoping she has a way to hide me from. Sometimes over small, silly things—like how I walked past a woman at Walmart who was wearing the same perfume she used to wear when I was a kid, and it made me think of her. Any time of day, my mom will pick up. Well, not actually. If she is in a work meeting, she denies my call quicker than a child trying to watch YouTube on their mother’s phone. But any other time, she is picking up immediately, eager to listen to me. Eager to help me in any way she can.

My mother isn’t just my mother; she is my best friend. My hope is that every person has someone who loves and supports them like my mom does me. And if you do, go tell them how much you love and appreciate them. They deserve it.