My Me Time

Tell yourself I want to be mine today!

Tell yourself I want to go shopping to buy myself a dress, perfume, and a flower. Tell yourself I want to wear beautiful clothes and love myself for myself.

And then, grab your partner and see your children. See their homes, see how much they’ve learned about living life independently and courageously, and how much they’ve improved and sacrificed with their partners.

As you are looking at them, notice one more thing. Notice how much more mature and older they have become. Have you felt the passing of time? Do you remember the days that your kids nagged that they wanted to become independent? And were you surprised how often they came to you to ask if they could live with you again after they became independent? Whether it was with their kids, just with their partners, or even alone.

Sometimes we see them come back to say: “We want or need you to take care of our children most of the time”

We’re their parents, after all, so we don’t get all that surprised but in all honesty, don’t we all want to go to our children’s homes sometimes and pretend to be guests? Pretend to be people who don’t have to fulfill any requests and enjoy our children’s accompaniment? Sometimes we want to stay at their house for a couple of nights without being asked for anything.

Or even, sometimes we want to go back to the house that is ours only. Our own independent home is just for us.

Have you ever looked into your children’s eyes and thought to yourself: "did I do something wrong along the way?" When you continue hearing their never-ending list of requests and expectations as they build their own lives and families, don’t you think to yourself: “How do they still not know that I want to spend time on myself? How do they not know that I want to live alone, with their father, my life partner, and maybe enjoy things like traveling that I couldn’t do when I was younger because I wanted to take care of them?”.

Sometimes We might even want to look at them in the eyes and say: “Learn to spend time on your children Like I did. Learn to schedule and plan. Make time for your children and partner by maybe working two jobs instead of three, or maybe stop spending so much time with your friends.”

But somedays, sometimes, they hit the hard bullet by offering us money to babysit their children. But even then, we’re not surprised because we’re their parents.

How good would it be if our children could think about all the hardships and sacrifices we made to help them grow up peacefully? So that they could give us more “Me Times”.

So to all the young couples out there, how about gifting life to your parents again by allowing them to live for themselves? And to all the parents who want to enjoy life, how about you start today by setting boundaries, living YOUR life, and reducing expectations?

Written by Mina K.G.N

Cover Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash