So I feel like absolute garbage today. Why? No reason. I debated about writing anything about this at all, considering the challenges some of my fellow bloggers are enduring right now. But then I remembered this is my blog and this is how I’m feeling right now, so, what the heck?
I’m sure I’ll snap out of this. But I am just getting to that point that probably everyone is right now – I’m worn out, I’m broke, and I’m worried I’m not going to get all the things done that have to be done in the next week. I spent ALL DAY waiting on lines in stores yesterday, and hauling heavy crap around, and then was too exhausted to go out to this caroling party I had agreed to go to later. I texted a couple of people how tired I was and how I couldn’t make it, how I had tweaked my shoulder in yoga (true) and felt like crap, and all they wrote back was “boo” and “pfft”. Not I hope you feel better, not take it easy. Just the implication that I’m some kind of flake and am letting people down. Is this my hormones making me more sensitive than usual? Absolutely. Still bothers me, though.
Things are randomly breaking and malfunctioning around here – just a bunch of little things, but enough that it’s making every day life just that much more complicated and difficult. Things that now have to be repaired or replaced, all with money I don’t have. Yes, even with not buying any presents this year, I am beyond broke. And the expenses don’t end there – between all the birthday dinners and parties and things I have to plan and/or participate in, I am WAY off on my budget, despite my best efforts. And now I don’t have a lick of food in the house, I am positively out of everything, which means probably a $200 giant grocery trip, which I also can’t afford. So my money worries have been ramped up to high stress levels.
I don’t think all of these little petty things would bother me so much, if I didn’t have the constant thought of, “if I can’t even handle this stupid little thing, how the hell am I going to handle this with a child?” I think about the things that are annoying me today, and then I think how I’d feel if I had a sick baby in the other room, or a colicky one who hasn’t slept in months, or a toddler with special needs, or a baby with some worrisome health condition. My hope would be that the petty concerns would just melt away and I’d be focused on the child, and I would just deal with that. But I often chastise myself for being bothered by such unimportant shit when there’s about to be a kid around here, and I won’t have the luxury of being in a bad mood, or impatient, or depressed, or lazy. Will I rise to the occasion and cheer the f up for the sake of the child? Or will I be like my mother and mope around the house or lie in bed all day feeling sorry for myself? Can I be better than her? Sometimes I wonder.
Read a news item yesterday about how parents exaggerate the joys of parenthood to make their lives seem better, when in fact childless people test “happier” than their parent counterparts. I often suspected this years ago; but now I kind of doubt it. I mean, did the person writing this article or doing this research interview infertile women? Because I would bet they’d be a lot happier if they had a child. Just a guess, here. Also I don’t think they take into account the levels of denial and defensiveness that childless by choice people can have – “no, my life’s great, why would I want to mess everything up with a kid?” when in fact they’re just going to work and then sitting in front of the TV like everyone else, not doing all the meaningful volunteer work and exciting travel they claim. Also you can’t interview a parent when they have a screaming toddler about how much they love parenting. Try interviewing that same person on the day their kid graduates with honors from high school, and you’d get a dramatically different answer. Still, even knowing all this, reading that article kind of bugged me.
Also bug-worthy was a 20/20 about giving birth around the world, and Mexico’s attempt at encouraging people to have smaller families. Now, I agree with this, absolutely – kids are most likely going to have a better quality of life in a smaller family, especially when the family is already poor. But again it left me with the message of kids = unhappiness. That children are a burden, your children’s childhoods are something to be “survived”, that as a parent you just go through the motions to keep your kids alive until they’re old enough to take care of themselves so you can “get back to your life”. I find all of this incredibly depressing. Mainly because this is how my mother was, and I SO don’t want to be like that. I want to enjoy my son’s childhood, even the crappy parts. I don’t want to just space out and go through the motions. A woman I know recently who had a son later in life confided in me in a drunken state at a party that she “got an awful kid,” but assured me that somehow I wouldn’t, that mine would be different. But that hers was “just awful”. Good times!
I think about all these things, and then I remind myself that I’m not perfect, and no matter what I’m not going to be a perfect mother, no matter how I try. I’m going to lose my temper, I’m going to not know what to do sometimes, I’m going to do or say things that aren’t the right thing to do or say. Like it or not, there are going to be things I do to my son that are going to damage him, even though at the time it seemed like the right thing to do. This terrifies me, but I know it’s just life, and nobody’s perfect. I’m not going to bound out of bed every day of my son’s life full of energy wanting to cook a nutritious breakfast for him and make up games we can play and spend all day entertaining him without a thought to how I’m going to make a living to keep the roof over our heads. I have to be mother, father, breadwinner, and housekeeper, and there are going to be times when one or more of these things is going to fall by the wayside. Can I forgive myself for this? Right now, I don’t know.
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