Failure Versus Fairy Tale

Sometimes I feel like people only like to read mommy blogs, mine included, when things are going downhill fast. We're talking to hell in a goddamn hand basket faster than Britney Spears shaving her head during that infamous meltdown. 

I get it. I get why that's so appealing. Everyone loves a good disaster story and as moms, we can especially relate to the meltdowns, the need to lock yourself in the bathroom for five minutes, fingers plugged in your ears to drown out the incessant whining of your toddler. We've all been there.

Hearing those things or reading those things rather, helps us feel less alone and lord knows whether you spend all day in an office or at home with your kids, its nice to hear you're not alone and ultimately screwing up your children for the rest of their lives by letting them watch TV and eat sprinkles for breakfast. Not like I know anything about either of those things.

And I will  be the first to admit, those days are funny. Maybe not while they're happening but in retrospect  at the end of the day, when you're sitting on the couch with a glass of wine in your hand, it's funny when you think about your toddler publicly humiliating you with a knockdown drag out tantrum in the grocery store over why he can't carry the glass jar of pickles which to everyone around you sounds like the "ass jah pimples." 

That's why I write about those days. To find the humor in them. To remind myself not to take life so seriously and to think twice about having another baby. I'm kidding. But mostly, I write about those days because it's what I'm living and it's what I know. Why would I write anything else?

When I first started this blog, I was writing about what my life was like when I had a year of marriage under my belt and a husband who was on the road more than he was home. I wrote about the trials and tribulations of training a puppy, most of which involved vomit or poop and of the time Fire Rescue nailed my three-day-old car on the street right in front of my house when we thought they were on our street because something happened to our 110 year old neighbor. I once wrote about the time I accidentally packed a beer for my lunch box at work rather than a can of seltzer.  Naturally, I wrote about what life was like before babies and while we're on the subject, a life that was pretty damn funny. 

And then I got pregnant and as things naturally progress, I had a baby and I suddenly became a mommy blogger and I began writing about my life as I navigated the rather choppy, kind of exhausting, wonderfully funny waters of motherhood. 

My question is, what is it about failure (in this case, as a mom) that brings people together over the fairy tale? We're so quick to hashtag "momfail" on Instagram and Twitter, so quick to divulge those oft shameful snippets of our days, it's almost as if we're more comfortable relishing in and documenting the failures over anything else. 

For every day that my toddler melts down and the dog vomits 7 baby wipes and the baby wakes up 4 times over night and my husband and I argue over who does more chores than the other (true story), there are three times as many days that the toddler is an angel, the dog a saint, the baby a better sleeper and my husband and I, equal partners on the same page of life. 

But that stuff? Isn't funny. It doesn't garner nearly as many laughs or "likes" than the other stuff. Nobody wants to read about that stuff and when they do? They become critical and chastising. As if anyone's life could actually be that good.

Let's not only find camaraderie in the failures but in fairy tales as well, no?