A plethora of frustration

I have a hard time reconciling myself to my emotions, how they can be all over the map on any given day.  And by this I mean any given completely uneventful day, a day chock full of normalcy.
When life throws me unexpected curveballs or is in any way out of the routine, I become emotionally sunk, unable to manage the complexities of what I am feeling.

How can I be doing exactly what I want to do and still feel pangs of misery at the same time?
How can I possibly feel guilt and a profound sense of no-guilt at the exact same moment?
It completely defies all logic to me.
Hence, my emotional state.

Towards the end of high school and into college I went through a stage of reading E.M. Forster novels, and one of the things I so related to in the characters was how mixed up and emotionally discombobulated they were.  Like them, I am muddled.

Two months out, D is still having pain and discomfort from his vasectomy.  He is going for an ultrasound on Tuesday and a follow-up with the urologist on Thursday of next week.  Depending on what the u/s finds, he may have to have more surgery.  What we have always heard as being a quick, almost pain-free in-office procedure has turned into a small nightmare for both of us (large nightmare for him since he is the one suffering from discomfort).  There is an actual condition called Post-Vasectomy Pain Syndrome (PVP).  How nice of life to allow us to become aware of this highly uncommon acronym.

I keep thinking maybe I should have had my tubes tied in October.  Or maybe I should have looked into Essure.  But I know my brain, and I know my body.  Had I gotten my tubes tied immediately after M's birth, my anxiety over "what if something happens to the baby?" would have been through the roof.  And if I have learned anything about myself in the past 6 years, it is do whatever I can to minimize my anxiety.  Don't purposely do things to increase it.

And in terms of physical side effects, I can't even wear earrings or use sunscreen/most types of soap without having unpleasant allergic reactions to the metals and/or chemicals in them.  Let's block my fallopian tubes with a metal clip or other foreign substance and see what happens.  I never even considered an IUD because of the metal and what havoc the hormones would play on my mind.  I would have gone back on the pill but D doesn't trust that anymore (a'la Unexpected Baby M).  And what married couple likes the idea of using condoms until menopause is good and complete?

I have talked to enough of my mom friends to know that I am not alone is being mostly (95%) uninterested in sex.  So it just felt like why should I be responsible for preventing pregnancy anymore?  I keep asking myself if I was selfish in not taking steps to become sterile.  Maybe I was.  And so I feel guilt.  But didn't want to be and don't want to be responsible for this anymore.  And so I don't feel guilt at the exact same time.

But I want D to feel better.  To not be in pain.  To feel as he did on April 29th.  Except be completely sterile.

And then there is the frustration of being a SAHM mom in the summer.  I want to be a stay-at-home mom.  I love my kids.  I would not want to deal with all the logistics and exhaustion of having to work outside the home and still be responsible for 98% of work inside the home.  I am doing exactly what I want to do....being able to witness and experience my children growing up on a daily basis.

But sometimes I just want a minute's peace.  I just want a string of a couple days in which there is no sleep-deprivation coupled with little one's boo-boos and bad moods and fights over toys and teething.  I get tired of meeting my family's needs for clean laundry, stocked groceries in the cupboard, warm meals every night, and the desire for me to tend to their emotional and physical needs without allowing for me to tend to my own with any regularity.

How can I be mostly content and somewhat miserable at the same time?

My parents are going on a 2-week vacation this month, and my MIL will be out of town for a bit as well (plus she has responsibilities of owning her own business), so the folks on whom I ask for help will be unavailable.  And D has enough on his plate at the moment without me asking him for help because in addition to his condition he has jury duty the next 2 weeks.

So I feel the heaviness of my village temporarily picking up and moving, leaving me solely responsible for tending to the children.  The follow-up tube surgery visit, the 9-month well visit, the 9-month pictures, the annual cats' vet visit, and the sundry details of just normal life without all these extra goings-on.  Throw in a possible surgery for D just to fray the ends of my nerves a little more?

And what makes me especially angry with myself is that none of this is life-threatening.  The end of days is not nigh.

It is normal stressors with a few curveballs.

Making me face up to how poorly I deal.