I’m debating writing this. Because it’s going to make me sound like a bad mom. Yes, even worse than the post about my children going to Dave’s side of the bed at night. But I doubt this will surprise anyone, so here we go…

I’m writing this from the local Starbucks. At 5:45 p.m. “But, Laura,” you ask, “aren’t your kids home from school?”

Yes.

“Oh,” you say, “Dave is home with them, then.”

Uh, no. Dave is out of town. Tonight is back-to-school night at the kids’ school, so I got a babysitter, because I had to, right? Yes, I did. But here’s my IKEA plush-couch confession: I don’t have to be at the school until 7:30 p.m. I asked the sitter to come at 5 o’clock. I gave the kids a kiss, took my laptop, and headed out the door. I ate dinner by myself at a restaurant and read the newspaper. Now I’m here, writing.

The suburban strip mall where the restaurant and Starbucks are located is a favorite family destination in my little neck of the woods. There’s a ballet studio and a Dojo and a Baskin Robbins and a grocery store and, of course, a Starbucks. I am one of several hundred mothers who bring their kids here at least once a week for some reason or other. So it’s weird to be here without the kids. Especially when I don’t really have a good reason not to have them in tow.

But this is something to know about me: I love my kids, but I don’t love being a mom. These are two very distinct things in my mind. My kids are great–really, really great. They’re funny and smart and engaging and I thoroughly enjoy talking to them and watching them do their weird little kid things (Noah collecting garbage to make a spaceship; Gwyneth lining up her Barbies along the wall and dancing for them). Being a mom, however, is a job. It involves keeping schedules and filling out paperwork and cooking meals and enforcing good manners and supervising showers and making lunches and going to back-to-school nights. It’s not a job that I particularly enjoy. It’s a ton of work, and not work I’m very good at. If there were an ad in the newspaper for the job of MOM and I applied, no one in her right mind would hire me.

But I am a mom and I love my kids, so I suck it up and (usually) shut up and do my job. But I also recognize that to be a happy mom—a mom who doesn’t sit in her pajamas all day with a vodka on the rocks, a cigarette dangling from her lips, watching soap operas and telling the kids, “I had a good body once, you know? A real nice body…”—I need time away from what can often be described as the drudgery of motherhood. I know I’m not unique in this regard. Every mom I know needs an occasional break from the routine—a chance not to hear, “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” in perfectly spaced three-minute intervals. That being said, I seem to have a stronger need for it than most, or I’m just more honest about it. Regardless, I know that if I don’t remove myself from that role regularly, I get really, really grouchy. And then I need to put more money into the kids’ future-therapy fund, and I’d like to get to a point eventually where I can save for their college education, too.

So I got the sitter two-and-a-half hours early and, here I am, at Starbucks. Alone. At the table next to me is a mother with her kids. They’re asking her if they can type on her iPhone, asking her how to spell something, asking her if they can have another cookie. They seem like delightful kids. Not bratty. Just eager and curious. Much like mine.

I hope they’re having fun with the sitter.

So it seems I offended a few people when I wrote in my first post that my high school friends are the funniest people I’ve ever known. I don’t want to name names, but two friends in particular—we’ll call them “Derrick” and “Sven”—are taking it pretty hard. As you’ve probably guessed, Derrick and Sven are not friends from high school, and they pride themselves on being funny. Because they are. Very. Derrick is funny in a Family Guy kind of way—turning the noun “bone” into a verb in most conversations. And Sven is funny in the sarcastic, underhanded-insult kind of way. Actually, Derrick is funny in that way, too. Or just mean. I can’t figure out which.

But their fragile egos got me thinking about, well, fragile egos—of which I am a proud owner since 1971. For the most part I’ve learned to live with it. I accept that, like that dark freckle right in the middle of my throat, it’s not going away—at least not without a painful, scarring procedure.

I find comfort in the fact that I’m not alone. Everyone owns a fragile ego. The degree of fragility might vary, but we’ve all got one. Anyone who says otherwise is either lying or delusional. We all have those pieces of ourselves that stand tippy-toed on a razor-thin ledge, where our balance is tenuous at best. All it takes is the slightest nudge to topple us over the side. And we scream the whole way down because, for God’s sake, we’re adults—shouldn’t we be over this by now?

I should know. I’m consumed with self-doubt on an almost hourly basis about pretty much everything: myself as a writer, mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend. The only thing I feel consistently confident about is my under confidence. I fail in a dozen different ways every day at being the person I want to be. On my worst days, I ask myself what’s the point? I’ve been this way for 38 years and even if I manage to rub out one insecurity, another is always waiting in the wings, eager to finally get its chance in the spotlight. It’s a Sisyphean task. And really, aren’t we all going to die eventually anyway?

But then something happens that reminds me that of course I have to move forward. Of course I have to keep pushing the stone up the mountain, no matter how many times it rolls back down.

I was talking to my horse trainer, Rebecca, the other day about how many times I’ve considered trading in my sensitive, hot-headed Thoroughbred for a push-button horse—the kind that doesn’t really care what you do on his back, he’ll do what he’s supposed to. All you have to do is hold on for the ride. Rebecca looked at me and laughed. “You would be so bored,” she said.

And of course she’s right. I would be. And wouldn’t we all? Not with the horse necessarily, but with a push-button life? A life that required no more of us than that we just show up? A life that never brought us to the ledge and forced us to peer over, wondering what it would be like to fall? A life that was permanently tethered?

I try to remind myself of this when I’m teetering on the ledge with that asshole from the grocery store checkout line or a rejection of a story idea or my own crappy parenting skills standing close behind me, whispering in my ear, “Close your eyes,” before the palms of their hands land square in the middle of my back. I remind myself that the only reason I’m on the ledge in the first place is because I took a risk. I made myself vulnerable. I made the choice to step forward. It sucks sometimes but the alternative is worse. Far worse.

And so I tell myself that the only way I can keep my balance is to stay there, take a deep breath, and keep my eyes wide open. Because the view is spectacular.

I dreamt last night that my kids (ages 5 and 6) woke up at five o’clock in the morning. In my dream—nay, nightmare—I stumbled from bed and yelled down to them, “What are you doing up? It’s the middle of the night!” They replied, “But it’s already light out.” To my horror, they were right.

I awoke this morning feeling exhausted, as if my sleep really had been interrupted, and slightly mad at my children for it.

It’s so hard sometimes to be me…and even harder to be my kids.

So, yes, to say I’m not a morning person doesn’t even begin to describe it. Waking up any time before 7 a.m. qualifies as “the middle of the night” for me. From a very young age—and long before they could tell time (actually, truth be told, they still can’t)—I taught my kids that there was no getting out of bed before the big hand was on the 12 and the little hand was on the 7. The message their whole conscious lives has been: “Don’t wake up Mommy or things are going to be bad…‘Gitmo’ bad.”

The fear I’ve instilled in my children has its benefits: Rare is the day when I’m roused from bed before 7:30. But it also has its price: I’m convinced that my children are the only kids in America—scratch that…my children are the only kids in the world who, when wakened in the middle of the night by a bad dream or sickness, walk to their father’s side of the bed.

Seriously. Who does that?

I’ll tell you who: Children who fear their mothers. Children who would sooner drink lighter fluid than wake the sleeping dragon. Children who, when asked what activity their mom enjoys the most, answer “sleep.”

I’m trying to change this perception. In the morning, when I go downstairs to get the kids their cereal, I do my best to erase the fatigue draped across my face and be bright and cheerful. If they wake Dave in the middle of the night, I’ll get up—or, okay, I try to get up…it’s a work in progress, people—and offer to get them a glass of water or comfort them or walk them back down to their beds. “What’s wrong, honey?” I’ll ask sincerely, while I rub their backs.

I don’t think the kids are buying it. They always regard me with such suspicion when I do this—in that “What have you done with my mommy?” kind of way.

But Rome wasn’t built in a day. I’m confident that, with time, my rehearsed maternal comfort will break through the wall of fear my children have built up over the years, and they’ll start coming to my side of the bed at night. And when they do, I’ll no doubt turn to them and say, “What are you doing up? It’s the middle of the night!”

Best let sleeping dragons lie.

I’m trying to wean myself off Facebook. If I’m honest, that’s the main reason I started this blog—to replace one screen-based addiction with another, seemingly less vapid one (emphasis on “seemingly”). If Facebook is my heroin, this blog is my methadone.

I’ve spent the better part of the last year since I was sucked in to that black hole of status updates and YouTube links defending my addiction. I like to point out that, as a writer, my work is very solitary. I work at home, alone, and have for the last eleven years. I often go entire days—well, for the seven hours my kids are in school—without seeing or talking to anyone, unless you count the dogs—and I talk to them more than is probably healthy. There are no meetings; no lunches with coworkers; no water-cooler gossip. Not that I would have it any other way, mind you. Mostly I love the solitude and find myself very grouchy on those days when I actually have to get up and shower and put on makeup and drive to a meeting—marveling the whole time at people who do it everyday. Still, even if I wouldn’t change it doesn’t mean it doesn’t get lonely sometimes.

So along comes Facebook.

I actually resisted going on Facebook at first. I was one of those people who would roll my eyes and say with such disdain, “I don’t get it. I mean, what’s the point?” But my friends kept pushing me, so I joined. Although “joined” is a little too polite of a word to describe what I did. “Joining” is what someone does when they rush a sorority, or become a Boy Scout, or find Jesus. I didn’t join Facebook so much as become its dutiful servant. Glassy-eyed and with a Stepford-wife smile plastered to my face, I drank the Kool-Aid in big, satisfied gulps.

It started out innocently enough. I reconnected with a lot of my fellow drama geek friends from high school—many of whom, I’m proud to say, are the funniest people I’ve ever known. And then up went the pictures of all of us with our Madonna hair and Cyndi Lauper eyeliner. And then came all the funny stories—of the couples who got it on in the costume closet (“Come on, people, I had to wear those dresses!”); of the pot-smoking on the catwalk; of the sneaky ways we would seek revenge on our sadistic drama teacher. But it wasn’t just reminiscing. Many of these people had been dear friends of mine. They had shepherded me through the heartbreak of first love; protected me from the slings and arrows of high school gossip; and propped me up when disappointment threatened to pulverize my fragile ego. In many ways, we raised each other. Finding them again was like reuniting with long-lost relatives, but without the pressure to spend Christmas together…and I was grateful to Facebook for it.

If I had just left it at that, that would have been fine. If I could have said, “Wow, we’ve had some laughs! Let’s keep in touch on email, okay?” And then become that person who floats in and out of Facebook once a month, leaving a witty comment here and there, but otherwise demonstrating through her restraint that she does indeed have a life outside this cyber-time-suck.

But “casual user” was never a term that applied to me. I was the Sid Vicious of Facebook addiction. I posted pictures. I wrote the “25 random things about me” and then wrote every single iteration of it that emerged—because, you know, people totally want to know that shit. And when that wasn’t enough, I posted videos. Now, I’m not talking about existing videos of the kids dancing or a day at the zoo (although I posted those, too), I actually created original content just for Facebook. I would record myself talking to the camera and then post it online and tag half my friends’ list and wait for feedback. Because that’s how sick I was.

Notice that I’m saying “was” and “did” and using a lot of other past-tense verbs—as if I’ve gone through rehab, thrown away my needles, made new friends who will support my sobriety, and sworn off the junk forever. Uh…yeah. I can tell you right now that’s not going to happen. Facebook is a cruel mistress, and I can’t completely break free of her grasp. But I am slowly moderating myself.

I check Facebook less frequently and post fewer comments and no longer update my status every time a new thought pops into my head. I’ve even gone off of it entirely for several days at a time. And when I return, I find Facebook’s luster a little duller, her siren song a little less seductive. The status updates that I used to find mildly annoying (“Sarah is wondering what to make for dinner again—UGH!” “Ellen is taking deep breaths and remembering Proverbs 4:12.” – don’t bother googling it, I just made it up) now feel like a nail gun to the forehead. Everyone’s mobile uploads of the “prettiest sunset I ever saw” and “OMG! Check out this bumper sticker!” now meet my apathetic stare. And I swear if I see “LOL” or “LMAO” one more time, a litter of kittens is going to pay the price.

I try to be generous—reminding myself that no doubt many of my friends roll their eyes when my name pops up on their page, with all my forced cynicism and poorly cloaked ploys for approbation. After all, where do I get off? Me, who once changed my status update three times in an hour? Me, who posted a picture of myself sitting on an airplane toilet? Me, who went to my high school reunion and had people recognize me solely from the videos I’ve posted? I am indeed the pot, giving the kettle a steely glare.

But then I remind myself that that’s what Facebook is all about, isn’t it? A chance for each of us to reveal ourselves to one another—no matter how interesting or boring we may be. A chance to see the day-to-day lives of people we would otherwise know nothing about. A chance to learn the political and religious views of the person who sat in front of you in algebra and who, until recently, you identified only as “that kid who farted all the time.”

Really, whatever criticisms can be hurled at Facebook and its propagation of mind-numbing minutiae and shameless self-promotion, in the end it’s a space for people to show others who they have become. When I think of it like that, I’m proud to be a junkie.

“Laura is proud to be a junkie.” Damn, that would be a good status update.