An identity crisis (of sorts)

You'd think someone who'd spent four of the last nine months in a hospital would take better care tossing around a term like "crisis," but then again, if she knew the difference between a real crisis and something her head was only telling her was a crisis, she might not have landed in rehab in the first place.
     I haven't yet shared much about resigning from my job. Perhaps that's because writing about it would make it just too real, too soon. My contract runs through the end of the school year, so for now I have an office, an access key for the copy machine, a company email account. Of course I am terrified. I've known for a while that I couldn't do my job and be the mother I want to be, at least not now, and my daughter is refusing to age backward -- and for that matter, God isn't letting me grow younger either -- so it's now. It has to be now. When I am really honest with myself I acknowledge that this has been a since the day our newly formed family stepped off the plane from Moscow, possibly earlier. It just took a world-class crack-up for me to quit trying. For no matter what appearances suggest, I tried. I tried so hard.
    I cannot remember a time when I didn't have an identity, a uniform, as my mother likes to say. I was a dancer throughout my childhood and young adulthood, and active in a local acting troupe; shy to the point of illness in nearly all social situations, as long as I had on a costume and stage make-up I was fine. Outgoing even. Loud. Over time I hopped from uniform to costume to outfit. I knew how to be a cheerleader, a pianist, a singer, a writer, a student, a sorority girl, a debutante, even a paramedic; I knew how to be anything but Robin.
    I know that is, in part, why it's so terrifying to leave a profession that may never welcome me back. The money is important, huge an scary in its own right, and then there is this. I will be a mother, and a better one. I do know that it would be unhealthy to pin all of my hopes and dreams on this: if I do this job well, after all, my responsibilities will shrink over time as Mimi matures and shapes her own life.
     And this blog. It's new. Newer than my sobriety even. So I don't yet know if I will be good at this. So I'm trying on different uniforms, buttons on the sidebars, affiliations and colors and art. I know that I want to join the voices of other mothers, to listen and to contribute. I know that I want to share about recovery. Mostly, I know that one can't exist, for me, without the other.      So thank you for visiting. I would really love to hear your opinion of changes and plans. If you, like me, are a little shy at first, though, no need to feel compelled to come out from behind the curtain to speak. There will be plenty of time for that. I hope we'll stay in touch.