The Journey to Self-Acceptance for a Tried-and-True Dunderhead

All Aboard the Hot Mess Express

In roughly 2011 or so, I began a “mommy blog” (though I loathe that term) called LoveButBlog (I love my family, BUT I love to complain about them, too). It enjoyed some mild success and helped me land some pieces on Scary Mommy and other sites several times. My basic theme, common then, is that I was an utter hot mess. It went against the grain of always needing to be perfect, yet it was a common blog theme at the time (which is why it probably only saw moderate success). It seemed that we, as moms, were going against the whole Pinterest perfection we saw online. I remember my dad asking me once, “Why do you want to put it out there for all to see that you’re a ‘hot mess’?” Oh, Dad, have you met me? I have never kept anything close to the vest, for better or worse. When I was in grad school getting my MA in Counseling Psychology, my advisor (watching me practice on these poor subjects via a two-way mirror) would often call into the therapy room and advise me to SAY LESS. Hey, what can I say? I was ahead of my time.

I also recall during a parent meeting at preschool when the headmistress (my term for her; can’t remember her actual title) said something to the effect of, “We’ve had complaints of parents speeding into the parking lot at dangerous speeds during dropoff.” And maybe I was imagining it, but everyone seemed to turn around and look at me.

That’s who I am, in a nutshell. Do I get things done? Always (well, almost always). Do I do it at the last second, going Mach II with my hair on fire? Also yes.

And the thing is, those hot mess mom blogs are all pretty much gone now, but here I am—still undeniably a hot mess through and through.

I follow a lot of women and mom-centric Facebook groups, and a post that I saw about six months ago hit me like a punch to the gut.

The anonymous person said something to the effect of:

“Has anyone else in this group ever felt like they were born to be a failure? Like instead of the Midas Touch, do you have the opposite? Everything I have ever done has pretty much been a flop. And while I’ve been really good in the past about picking myself up by my bootstraps, dusting myself, and trying again, I’m wondering if I should just accept that I am doomed never to succeed?”

Oof. Direct hit. Woman down. I felt so sad for this person but also for me, as I have often felt exactly the same way. And while no one I know probably thinks that way of me, as I have enjoyed (again!) moderate success in my career and I have two wonderful boys who I don’t deserve, I have failed time and time again in many things I’ve tried. Going back to the blogging I did when my boys were young, I remember following many people who were also getting going in that arena. One of them was Glennon Doyle. Here I am, a Sports Writer who lives paycheck to paycheck. Glennon Doyle is a multi-best-selling author and a podcast host for one of the most successful podcasts out there. Hrmph.

While I am a very proud member of the “Lift Each Other’s Crowns Club” and love and admire Glennon Doyle, it hurts to think we both probably had the same goals. Still, one of us took off like a shooting star, and the other washes off her paper plates to get more use out of them (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Alas, I know that the comparison is the Thief of Joy, as I am nothing if not self-aware.

Getting back to the Hot Mess Express, I had often tried to think back to when it began and to be honest, I think it was from the moment I shot out my mom’s cooter. Sorry for the graphic expression, but the HotMessNess seems to have been a birthright that I never asked for, and yet here we are. I used to lose everything, and I mean everything, going to and from school. It drove my parents to insanity. Although I was a straight-A student, I got a lot of “talks in class” and “very disorganized” on my report cards. In college, I walked into a psychology class and was handed a test, and I had no idea it was coming, as I apparently didn’t know how to read a syllabus.

Fast forward to me as a mom. Whew. This is an emotional topic for me, as I love being a mom, and I’m a great mom if I do say so myself, but this innate dunderhead within me does make it challenging sometimes. When the nurse at Cedars Sinai came in and examined my cervix on the day of my older son’s birth, daring to tell me it was “go time” and interrupting my relaxing epidural-induced euphoria and Grey’s Anatomy-watching time, I completely panicked. The fact that I would be in charge of another living human being hit me like a ton of bricks, as if I hadn’t had nine months to prepare. I turned to my mom and said, “I can’t do this. How can I be a mom? Me? ME?!”

Me, who has no idea how to do her taxes.

Me, who pulls up to the wrong side at the gas station despite having her car for years.

Me, who only recently was told she had a discounted sticker still attached to her sweater during an interview.

My mom, in her infinite wisdom (who also passed this gene down to me, BTW), hugged me tight and said, “Marnie, you’re going to be the most wonderful mom ever.”

If I could only give you one story to explain my life as a parent, it would be the time my ex-husband (a whole other story), and my boys called me from his car in a panic, and they were on speaker phone.

“Mom, you have our backpacks in your car!” they exclaimed.

I was on my way to a doctor’s appointment and looked in the backseat. Yep, there they were. Of course, being divorced doesn’t help, and the argument could be made that they should know where their own backpacks are ahead of time, but, well, life. I pulled over at the next exit and threw the backpacks on the side of the road, as this was (fortuitously!) the exit they took to get to school.

Truth be told, my faulty decision-making plays a big part in this, much to the dismay of my family of origin. Case in point, I am continually adopting animals that I have no business adopting due to my crazy busy schedule and lack of funds. And yet I do it over and over. And it even affects my dating life, which is, in a word, nonexistent.

I recall a friend asking why I didn’t date about a year or two after my divorce. At the time, one of my adopted pugs had begun to lose the use of her back legs, and in doing so, she became fecally incontinent. She was only about 10, which isn’t that old for a pug. And she was mostly in good health besides the poop issue. So we lived like that for two years. TWO YEARS!

“I would date, but the idea of having a man sleep in my bed when there’s a chance that either or both of us could wake up with dog doo-doo on our faces makes it a bit intimidating,” I recall saying to my well-meaning friend.

So here we are. I’m 52, and I’ve recently been diagnosed with ADHD, which is no big surprise. I’m on meds, which have seemed to help, and I do have methods that I’ve developed to overcome my scatterbrained nature. For example, I ask my overworked Alexa to remind me of things at least 50 times a day. But I’ve had to accept that this is just part of who I am, and it has its perks. It made me funny; if I didn’t laugh at myself, I’d cry. Like, a lot. It’s made me approachable. It’s made me empathetic. And, again, I’d put my mothering love up against someone else’s mothering organization any day of the week, as my boys know they are cherished and unconditionally adored. So, yeah, hot mess or not, I think I’m gonna make it.