Yesterday my wife and I started watching a new show called Mom. The story focuses on Anna Faris' character and her stuggles to be a good mother. Ofter she blames her bad parenting on her own mother, who has just recently come back into her life.
The show is, at the end of the day, a sitcom. It does tackle themes of addiciton, drug use, and becoming a better parent, but it does so in a comedic, sitcom-y way. Sometimes this works really well, but other times it falls flat.
Recently I've been feeling the tiring effects of burnout.
Whenever something like this happens I like to drown out my feelings with noise, usually in the form of YouTube videos. I have a sneaking suspicion that that is more common of a response than any one of us would care to admit. It's uncomfortable to marinate in negative feelings and really get to the root of why they're there in the first place. The much easier path is to put the entertainment box in front of our face so that we can forget, even for a moment, that they exist.
Sometime in middle school I decided to watch How I Met Your Mother.
Netflix was in a transition period, and was still sending physical disks to people's houses. I wasn't going to wait around for each DVD to arrive in the mail, so I found a website online called watchfreetv.com or something. This is also how I watched The IT Crowd.
My wife and I are currently in the process of watching the show again. She's seen it like 5 times already, but this is only my second viewing. It's interesting to notice the things I remember from the first viewing, and the things that hit me differently now a decade later.
My mom had to get hip surgery.
Apparently she has genetically bad hips. Her and her 3 sisters are all dealing with this fact. One of them is currently trying alternative methods to try and fix it: things like stem cells, and hyperbaric chambers and whatnot.
My mom is 54 years old and had to get hip surgery.
My dad was texting me updates while I was at work: “The surgery went fine”, “We’re in the recovery room”, “Her blood pressure is normal”. Just a routine surgery that went according to plan, I thought. I told my dad that I would call him after work.
Sunday had arrived once again.
I loaded up the car with 2 weeks worth of laundry and pulled out of the apartment complex. My wife, fighting an unknown sickness, would not be joining me. Without her voice to fill the silence my mind drifts into a hypothetical future. I think about a future where we have our own washer and dryer. I think about a future where I'm not in college and I don't need to rely on my parents. I think about a future where I don't need to drive 40 minutes to do laundry.
Pulling into my parents driveway I notice both of their cars are gone. I’m admittedly relieved, as this means I can have a nice and quiet day of folding clothes. This, however, makes me feel guilty, as I don’t get to see my parents that often anymore.