drugs

I really do love my children, and what makes me sure of this is that I don't do some of the things I would like to do because I care about their well being enough not to do them.
On really bad days I have dreamed of running away from my life and just relaxing by myself. But I never would. Never could. I love my kids too much to be that selfish and do that to them. It would wreck their mental health forever.
The other thing I've dreamed of doing (only since having kids) is taking drugs. I have never been so overwhelmed, stressed, run down and exhausted with life as I am having three very young children. I can see now how some people are pushed to drugs because honestly it kinda sounds lovely.
A few months ago I had a canker sore gone bad and I was in throbbing pain, so I took a hydrocodone that I had left over from my tubal ligation surgery.
It made me high as a kite. I was very sleepy but also unusually happy. I just felt like smiling. In that moment I thought "this would be nice to have all the time". To just escape all of this and feel like smiling. Lovely.
BUT I can't just sleep all the time. My kids need me to be present, alert and interact and care for them. Not high on pills. This is of course a no brainer and I would never do this either, I'm just saying I could see the appeal.
I also had a bad cold a couple months ago and took sudafed and noticed how energized I felt while taking it. I wasn't so sleepy and dragging all the time. I was picking up the house like super mom and not even getting worn out. I had a thought of taking a sudafed every day. No harm in that right? But then I was reading side effects like heart attack and stroke and decided to come back down to reality and realize that's probably a bad idea as well. I'd be a freaking good mom though! I can see why some people start doing meth because they need to get things done.
Momma could use some chemical energy! Too bad it makes your life spiral out of control, and it's illegal and all those other small details.
I've never done any drugs and I've never and still don't drink. I've never understood drug addicts and always thought of myself as better than them. But then again I thought I was literally perfect before I had kids. Really. I had never made any bad mistakes, I did everything right and could not understand why other people could not be like me.
Then I had kids and they humbled me. For the first time in my life I couldn't handle it all . I couldn't keep it all together. The stress was and is too much for me. My house fell apart. It's a mess all the time. My perfect dinner schedule went out the window. I could no longer keep up with the budget and bills and handed that responsibility over to my husband. I gained weight from stress eating. I couldn't succeed at breast feeding. In fact, I hated it. My kids do not eat all organic perfectly balanced diets. I thought I would be a perfect mom to go along with my perfect self, but I'm not.
I'm tired. Sometimes too tired to care if they eat nothing but cookies. That's reality. I'm not perfect. I make mistakes. And maybe this reality of having kids has been good for me. It's good for me to realize I'm just human and I'm not better than anyone. Not even a drug addict.