Dan at Single Dad Laughing wrote a post on perfection, or really the act of showing how imperfect we really are. Being real. It’s hard for a lot of us to be real. I know I’ve struggled with it my entire life. Sometimes now? I think I’m too real. That maybe a part of me need to go back to pretending. That it’d be easier for those around me. I don’t know that it’s the answer either. Either way, today, I thought I’d show you all some of my imperfectness. If you’d like to share, that’d be great too.

I ignored all of the signs that my husband was unhappy in our marriage. I’m only really looking at it now, in therapy. Three weeks before our divorce is final. I think I believed that it would be okay, because we’d been together forever.

I used to picture us as little old people, hanging out on porch chairs together. Bugging our kids and grand-kids together. I didn’t look at today, because I was so focused on someday. Maybe if I’d looked at today a bit more, I’d still be married.

I put my kids in the hippy school, because it’s a great program, but I am so far from being a hippy that it’s almost funny. I guess it would be funnier if I wasn’t secretly judging the parents. I don’t fit in, that has been made clear over and over and over again. To hide the fact that it hurts, I judge them and their hippy ways, in my head.

Some days I get sad when no one comments on posts. Some days I wonder why I bother with comments at all, since it’s almost a physical need for me to write.

A woman at BlogHer09 told me that she didn’t believe a parenting blog, with fake names and no photos, was a real blog. Someone I really admired basically told me I wasn’t a real writer because I don’t post photos. I’ve let that comment haunt me for over a year. Even though I spoke at the keynote that year and heard tons of lovely things said about me and my post, that one comment is what stuck with me.

I work at home. Yet every time one of the girls has a school field trip, I feel guilty that I can’t take time to be a part of it. I work contract. I only get paid for hours I work. Yet I hate that I have to make the decision to support us, instead of going to downtown day, going to the museum or attending field day.

I over think. To the point where I sometimes give myself panic attacks. I try not too, but I do.  Some nights I don’t sleep at all, because I can’t stop thinking. It’s easy for others to tell me to just think of lovely pretty things, in fact sometimes people do. They don’t have my brain though. They haven’t lived through some of the things I have. Some of those things are horrible. Things that haunt me, give me nightmares, taunt me and make me well…over think. If I had an off switch, I swear I’d use it.

I say things in the heat of the crazy, that I don’t even mean. I know some people say, you wouldn’t say it if you didn’t mean it. With me, it’s when my head is so crazy that I truly say things I don’t mean.

I suffer from Depression. I’ve had a few good months. In fact, I’ve gone about four months now, which is the longest it’s been in years between bouts of it. I also know, it’s not really gone.

I’m not very good with my money. I was when I had more. I’m just not now.

I do not like cooking. It’s too much work. It doesn’t come natural too me.

I’m sarcastic.

I’m lazy.

I don’t care if my house is super clean. It’s clean enough. It’s semi-presentable. But it’s also very lived in. I have three children under nine years old. I’m a single mom. I have a long haired seven year old Australian Shepard that sheds everywhere. I don’t mind lived in. I don’t care if your house is spotless. I don’t judge others for that. I just don’t see a need for it.

I watch too much TV and I play on Twitter way too much. I honestly don’t care to change that. Not at this point in my life.

I wish more than anything that I lived in California. I feel like I settled with Logan too easily on that. I feel like I should have fought the decision that was made for me. I hate myself for giving up at the time that I did, because I’m not sure I can make it here.

I trust people too easily in some respects. I say things I shouldn’t and then I’m made out to be the asshole in a situation gone bad. Sometimes it is my fault. I can be an asshole. Sometimes it’s not my fault.

I feel guilty for things beyond my control. I apologize for things that I perceive I did wrong, whether I did or not.

I don’t like confrontation. Friend. Family. It doesn’t matter. When I do it in a friend situation, I’m then done talking about it. That has lost me some friends. Because I’m too stubborn for my own dam good. When I don’t do it, when I should, that is just as bad.

I am terrified of dentists. To the point of just never going, even though I have major work needed right now.

I am scared I will be alone. I am scared I will never get to have another baby. Frankly, I am just scared.

I’m not perfect. Not by any means. I wonder if anyone really is? I wonder whose idea of perfection matters anyway? Who says they get to decide?