I’m back to finish my bitin blog post. 🙂 Thanks for coming back to read the rest! Just a recap of my  first blog entry:

1. Much to my surprise and the surprise of people who knew me, I became a housewife.
2. I liked being a housewife.
3. I liked it so much that I got so caught up and was losing who I was outside of it.
4. That feeling of losing myself kinda crept on me and I didn’t realize it ‘til I was stuck in a rut.

So, how did I realize I was stuck in a rut? My marriage hit an epic proportion funk. Going through the how’s and why’s would take another entry so I really won’t delve into it (besides, I think oversharing in the second part of my first blog post is just as much as a no-no as trading ex stories on a first date. You kinda have to get attached to me first before I drop major dysfunctional bombs).

Our problems were not directly related to the issues I described, but like my wise old philosophy teacher said, when this thing that you hold so much value into is taken away, your sense of self crumbles (It did not help that my job and my personal life were one and the same).

To be clear, my husband and I are on the mend now. But that rough spot made me realize that I put too much stock in our relationship and in that particular role, that I was lost without it.

 

Through extensive soul-searching, I realized one thing;

I was not “just a housewife.”

(yes, after extensive soul searching, this two –part blog entry can be reduced to this one sentence).

1. Not “just a housewife” in a sense that in and by itself, there is a value to what I do. I bring significance to our lives that goes beyond financial compensation.

Most of my issues were rooted on equating my value not on how much work and effort I put in but on how much I can contribute financially. I had this notion that my role was not as significant as my husband’s because he was the breadwinner.

When we went through issues, I decided to take a  housewife sabbatical. I had business in Manila, so I took the opportunity to take some much needed me-time. Cut the long story short, house went haywire without me.

That’s when it dawned on me that for our household to work, my husband needed my input as much as I needed his money. :p Seriously, I realized that because of the work that I carry out, it was easier for my husband to carry out his part. What I do is of equal value to what he does. I am not his minion, I am his partner; and what I give to the household is just as integral and indispensable as what he gives.

 

2. Not “just a housewife” in a sense that I existed and was someone before I became one.

Like I mentioned in my first post, I already had an idea what a housewife should be. And I tried, as much as I could, to tailor my interests and my personality to this idealized notion in my head.

The ironic thing about it was, the more I tried to keep up with my image of being the “model” housewife, the less I became the woman that my husband married to begin with.

Before I became a housewife, I was a feisty, opinionated, undomesticated adult-child who also studied Masters in Psychology and took a minor in Philosophy. And although Google managed to help me become more domesticated, I realized that because of my personality & background, I [have the makings of a busybody] had so much more to offer than the “ideal housewife” that I was trying to become.

I realized that like any other career, when you bring your education, work training and personality into your current role, you make your job so much richer, so much more unique. You make it yours. And nobody else can do it the way you do. Rather than forcing myself into this cookie cutter image of what I think a housewife should be, I should bring my own brand, my own sense of self into it.

3. Not “just a housewife” because there are so many other roles that I play.

I think my biggest regret now is realizing that I neglected (sometimes even rejected) the other roles and other aspects of myself.

I think part of the reason why I was feeling so uni-dimensional was because I failed to nurture my other relationships and my other non-housewife related talents and characteristics.

So I started blogging again and started going to Manila to meet friends and family more often. It’s clear to me now that I also need to take care of other people and cultivate the other functions in my life.

Getting into this funk made me realize that being a housewife, being a wife,  was just one part of who I am. I’m also a daughter, a sister, a cousin, an aunt, a friend and more importantly, I am me. So taking away the role, taking away all these roles for that matter, I am still me. And I need to put value in all these things and in other personal endeavors that make me more me.

I have to admit, while I’m writing this down, I’m still in the process of putting these thoughts into action. Because it took a while to wrap my head around the idea that I need to start putting in time to becoming more authentically myself; and it’s even harder when I started factoring in responsibilities and other people’s needs in the process.

As always though, my favorite philosopher and life guru, Dr. Seuss puts things in perspective; “be sure when you step, step with great care and great tact, and remember that life is one Great Balacing Act”