PEI is the new Vegas.

Who in their right mind would pass up a low-cost, child-free girls weekend trip to beautiful PEI? When H invited me to a weekend away in PEI, I was like YES, but no. Maybe? No. No. TOTALLY!!! but…maybe not.

In my life, I place so much of my own value on my kids, it seemed unimaginable to separate myself from my “mom” identity. My kids have allowed me to find firm beliefs and passion in my world. My insecurities never allowed me to really push a point or believe hard in something, just for little old me. But having kids allows me to ask the right questions and really get into the issues, after all, it’s for my kids. I’m not an asshole, I’m a MO-THER.

So going away without kids seemed that it might strip me of the relatively new strong woman aspect of personality and send me straight back into awkward, left-out-edness. And yo, when I’m awkward, everyone’s feeling awkward. I really didn’t want to bring the awkward. Plus, I wasn’t too sure that I need a “break” from my family. I spend the majority of my life in a grey box away from my family. Sacrificing three entire days with them felt like straight-up BAD MOTHER territory.

But, while I initially struggled, worried that I would somehow be struck down by social anxiety, in reality, I felt more myself than I had in a while. How we spent the time was dictated by what we actually wanted to do, when we wanted to. It was not based on a timetable of scheduled meltdowns, diaper changes, or naps.

I swore like a trucker, didn’t remind anyone to say “excuse me” when they burped, sat in the same spot for over ten minutes. When the siblings began to fight, it really wasn’t my responsibility if they killed each other or not. I went into stores that had easily breakable items. I went into stores with brightly coloured items. And my blood pressure stayed stable.

I laughed ridiculously hard at ridiculous (and at times, completely inappropriate) things, smoked a cigarette (or two) during daylight hours, assigned a soundtrack to nearly all events, learned things I never wanted to know about my friends, and watched a full 2 hours of The Bachelorette – no fast-forwarding (now that’s what I call awkward).

On our last day, I woke up to overhear discussions of possibly not making our flight (standby’s a fickle mistress). Ah, there it is. Anxiety. Hello, old friend! I started wildly mentally calculating if I had enough credit on any of my cards to straight-up buy a ticket home. But by the time we’d committed ourselves to the Charlottetown-Toronto leg, I was accepting, and perhaps almost hoping for, the possibility of being stranded in Toronto overnight.

A weekend “off” will now be an annual requirement in my mom contract…but so long as I’m supplemented with regular nights out/in/off, I can wait another year to do it again.  And only if I can do it with the Walker girls.