This mommy gig doesn’t come naturally to me. Correction. It comes naturally if Isobel’s nice and patient and giving – then I have the ability to be nice and patient and giving.
The twos were a challenge. I wanted to just lock myself in the bathroom and cry, at some points. But I didn’t. And besides the initial days of colic+alcoholic father+post-partum depression, I didn’t spend any time crying really. Until a couple of months ago.
Then, I can remember the night, I just got pushed too far and any thought of being strong, or doing it right in spite of how she treated me, or being a martyr just crumbled. I put her to bed that night, and she sat in her crib and talked to her stuffed animals while I took the baby monitor outside and I sat on the stairs behind my apartment building and lit a cigarette and heaved these full-bodied sobs. It was like someone had died, the amount of grief I got out during those six minutes of cigarette, until the tobacco was too damp to smoke.
And I felt a little cleansed, it’s true. So I thought it was okay. But that night kind of changed me, because I had given in. I’d quit not quitting, stopped playing the role of doing what works. I just started to ignore, from that point.
Now, she’s become this tiny terror in a most literal sense and it’s become completely impossible to tell when it’s from hunger, tiredness, teething, the threes, her wanting my attention, sickness, or all of these things. I blame myself, about 90%. The remaining ten are equally distributed between the lack of help I get from her other parent and her just being herself – an often strong-willed, defiant, ‘fuck you, mommy’ kind of kid. And so, I don’t cry anymore.
Now, I yell.
I never used to yell. I used to speak softly, with respect. At one point, what would now be yelling was a low-toned voice echoed through clenched teeth. It used to scare her and it didn’t need to come out very often because of how it scared her. Soon, that became me telling her no. Then NO. Then “I SAID NO!”
Now, I’m sure my neighbours only hear me when I’m yelling and she’s yelling back at me. Now, we’re yelling at each other three quarters of the time when we’re speaking to each other. Now, sometimes, the sound of her whining, crying, demanding makes me forget about intended lessons and just grind my teeth.
I’m so far from the mom that I want to be, that it seems like it will take just as much time to get her back as it did to de-evolve into this monster. I use sarcasm and immaturity as a means of cutting Isobel’s repetition down. I am so wrong in my methods, it makes me feel sick to my stomach. Yet even as I type that, Isobel’s whining in her crib, not wanting anything from me other than my witness to her miserableness, and all I can think is that I should want to do more (for her) than to go to sleep or have a drink. Or three.
But I don’t, really. Want to do more. Tonight.
I don’t know how to get that picture back – the person who engages their child, teaches, guides, instructs in a kind manner. I don’t know how to start, because it seems like every morning, even when I wake with the determination to be the mom I want to be, our inherent assholishness clashes immediately over whether she can have milk or juice.
So, a beginning, maybe, with January 1st. I won’t go into details, but something’s going to happen which will change dynamics. And also soon, I’ll have this book to read due to a recommendation from Red Lotus Mama.
Resolution #7: Be the damn parent, not the child. And if I fall into childish tactics, don’t be a brat.
Things can change again, for the better. I know that they can. I’ve just got to learn to breathe in and out on the surface sometimes. Instead of just blowing out hot air, gasping as I’m drowning in quicksand and sucking her down with me.
