My son recently got a job where he receives a paycheck every week. While I haven’t made the time to get him to the bank to open up an account (because I keep forgetting), I’ve been putting the checks in my account through a mobile deposit and hitting the drive-thru ATM to get him the cash if I don’t have enough on me.
I was supposed to do this the other day while I was running errands — I desperately needed an oil change, I had no gas in the car, and we were out of toilet paper. Those things were important and I was determined to get them done before I had to be home for a conference call.
On my way out, he asked me to get the cash for his checks, but I returned home without the dough.
Because I forgot
The same thing happened when I was out last week at a doctor’s appointment — my eldest asked me to pick up some protein powder for his smoothies. I forgot.
My daughter’s parent/teacher conference is today and let’s just say my acting skills were on point when she asked me if I remembered. The truth is, even though I had it on my calendar and just looked at it yesterday, it completely left my brain.
And when one of my friends asked me to go to lunch with her later in the week and I had to tell her I’d get back to her because I needed to see how much work I could get done that morning and what my kids had on tap for the day, I forgot to follow up with her.
Like, it didn’t even cross my mind. It was as if the interaction didn’t even happen.
My kids will tease me and tell me I forget because I’m getting old. It’s not the case though. Ever since I became a single mother and I have to keep everything in my brain because there’s no one else to split the mental load with, I forget a lot of things.
When you go from having someone help with the house, the kids’ schedules, paying the bills, taking the car in to get inspected, reminding you to pick up the milk, and just being there to bounce ideas off of, you have a lot of conversations going on in your head.
There’s only room for so much
I wish I had different compartments where everything stayed separate, but that’s not how the brain of a mother works, much less a single mother’s brain.
When you are at work, you are thinking about dinner prep, what you need at the grocery store, how you are going to get your kids from one place to another, and the fact it’s time for you to go to the doctor for a checkup.
When you are at home trying to keep up with it all, you are thinking about that work deadline or the big project. You are wondering how you can get ahead, when you can take a vacation, and if you remembered to do that thing you were supposed to do by today.
You are paying bills while you are making a grocery list because sometimes, that’s when it hits you that they are due
You are cleaning the house and walking by the mirror and all of a sudden it seems like your gray roots have popped out of nowhere.
You walk into the kitchen to do the dishes and notice that the fridge isn’t working, the floorboard needs to be repaired, and you wonder how long that leftover pizza has been sitting on the stove.
The thing about being a single mother is you are the only parent in the house
You are carrying all the weight all the time and there is absolutely zero wiggle room. Instead, what happens if things start falling out of your brain by force because there’s not enough room to hold everything so your mind doesn’t even try.
But my kids get really frustrated with me when I forget their favorite cookies or tell them I forgot I said I’d take them to the mall to meet their friends and we are going to be late. I want to raise them to see that I am not only trying to remember all I need to do, but I am also trying to keep up with the three of them as well and there are going to be times when things fall through the cracks.
Single moms: We need to normalize the fact we are going to forget appointments and gatherings and the darn toilet paper.
And saying you forget is a good enough reason
We don’t have to beat ourselves up any more than we already do. Personally, I don’t think one human brain is supposed to manage kids, work, home, relationships, and self-care perfectly anyway.
We are human, we are doing this alone, and there’s no reason why we need to try and remember it all because honestly, it’s impossible. Believe me, I tried the first two years after my divorce, and I never won that battle with myself.
