Everything to Everyone

I've noticed a common phenomenon among women my age (myself included) ... I like to call it E2E Syndrome. (Everything to Everyone). Every woman in her 40s I know seems to be suffering from it.

We all work, have families, most with kids, some with husbands...but all sufferers find themselves torn. Torn between where you are and where you aren't. Not enough hours in the day to be wife, mother, daughter, girlfriend, confidante, employee and self. So of course, SELF is what suffers.

One friend asked me the other day if I wanted to get together once a month or so just to DO SOMETHING. I wistfully imagined something that didn't require us to cut anyone's food, take anyone to the bathroom or struggle to fasten anyone's seatbelt but my own.

Another friend commented the other day that she needed some sort of creative outlet but the best she could manage to accomplish was to commit to NOT working on the the commute home and devoting that time to reading a book.

It's not really good enough.

Don't get me wrong, I love my husband, kids, family etc... but I don't think this is exactly what the feminists of my mother's generation had in mind. Choices, yes. But too many choices have left us all with this tremendous sense of guilt and exhaustion.

Want to see the flip side? Today, my mother sent me this article which supposedly came from a 1955 issue of Good Housekeeping. I got a good chuckle out of it. I've since learned that it's a bit of an urban legend but illustrates my point nonetheless. Would any of us really give up the path that's been paved for us. I doubt it.

But I'd still like to pee alone every now and then and have a few minutes once in a while to be nothing to no one.