So long expectations

~ what messes our life up most - is the expectation of what our life is supposed to look like~

I read that the other day and it has been popping up in my mind over and over. One of the things I feel like I have been struggling with is the pressure to live up to __________. That empty yet burdensome _________ being many things for me. The perfect mom, the perfect wife, the perfect friend. Not even perfection so much as the pressure I put on myself of being enough. I know it's pressure only I am putting on myself and the reason I keep thinking of the above quote is because it's the reminder I need. The constant lesson I need to refer to. Stop having expectations of what MY life is supposed to look like. That means stop looking into the future. Stop looking into who I may or may not talk to or spend time with tomorrow or next week. Be in today. If I take out expectations than I am allowing myself to live in the right now. Stop comparing myself to the wonder moms in the blogs I read. Yes they seem impossibly perfect with all their shit together, but that is only what they are allowing me to see. Read them, take a thing or two from them but stop expecting myself to live up to them. I am not them. I am me. And flaws and all I am still wonderful. I don't always see myself that way, but my husband never fails to remind me of all the qualities that he loves about me. My son, he doesn't see a single flaw. He loves unconditionally. If my friends based their like of me off my flaws, they wouldn't even be my friends so I know that they aren't keeping track. Nor is my family who never fails to be there for me when I need them. The only one tallying my flaws, my misgivings and "failures" is myself. I need to learn acceptance. Acceptance not only of the things I love about myself but the things that make me cringe about myself. Good and bad they make me who I am. 

I don't know what tomorrow holds. I don't even want to think about it. I don't want to imagine my days a weeks from now or what we will do over memorial day weekend. If I do that, than I will undoubtedly  create expectations for each. It is right now, this moment that matters. It's watching my son use is toy front loader to dig in the dirt.  It's admiring who our dog Remi seeks the sunniest spot in the yard to lay down. It's the birds whistling away in the trees. Big moments, insignificant moments, they are all happening right now. I need to always remember to relish in each of them as they happen. Not when they might happen, or how I imagine they should happen days from now. Just Now.