It’s good for the soul

I haven’t written in a long time. A really long time. Since early May, in fact. I feel bad about that. Or, I would feel badly about it if I actually didn’t. My intentions were so fucking good, so I don’t feel too bad that I didn’t bog all three of my followers with whiny shit. I just figured we’d move to Dallas and everything would be okay and I’d start blogging about all the wacky and crazy adventures we were having out there.

I didn’t want to talk about how much I miss my brother and how I don’t know how to deal with the loss of the only other person in the world who lived, and could vouch for, my childhood.

I didn’t want to talk about how sad it is for BB to miss his cat and how it breaks my heart to comfort him as he cries.

I didn’t want to talk about how Hubby was let go from his job and we were left scrambling for a way to pay our rent.

I didn’t want to talk about how he found another job that took him to Dallas or about how he left us behind, me with my grief and BB with his, to pack up and say goodbye to the only life BB’s ever known.

I didn’t want to talk about how hard it’s been to be a single mom for nearly two months or about how exhausting it is to pack up an entire life all by myself.

I didn’t want to talk about all the tears my son has cried over leaving his house and friends. I didn’t want to talk about all the tears I’ve cried over the same. I didn’t want to talk about how moving makes me feel like a six-year old, how I don’t want to be an atheist homeschooler in the bible belt, and how freaking scary it is for me to open up and make friends.

I just thought I’d move and then I’d give a happy update about how well we’re all adjusting, how awesome Hubby’s job is, how awesome all our new friends are, and how I was worried about homeschooling in the bible belt for nothing because there are TONS of great secular homeschoolers out there.

That was truly my intent. Please believe me.

But no. That’s not at all what’s happened.

Hubby was laid off last week and he’s back home now. He’s home and all the the money we lost trying to move us to Dallas is just plain gone. He was let go on Friday morning and he got home late Friday night. Just in time for Father’s day on Sunday.

And that was good. Oh. That was so good. Having my husband home again. Getting to spend Father’s Day with him. That part was good.

But that other part, the part where he’s unemployed and has no real prospects on the burner…that part sucked.

Wait.

It still sucks.

So the two of us spent the whole of today looking for work. It doesn’t matter what; we’ll do whatever it freaking takes to be okay.

And I was sad and scared, but I thought “At least we have a house to live in.”

Oh. Dumb, sweet, naive Mom’sEye.

Our landlord has decided he wants to sell the house and he still expects us to move out at the end of June.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. FUCK!!!

What the hell? What’s going on? What the fuck is happening????

Where is the Zombie Apocalypse already? Why why why???? Why can’t everything be okay for once????

I was an abused child. My brother was an abused child. His abuse eventually killed him. My abuse made mothering the most difficult and triggering thing in the world. But I thought I was doing a good job. I don’t do drugs. I don’t drink excessively. I don’t beat the shit out of my son, cheat on my husband and spend my days chasing random men for my next high. I’ve never made my son homeless, I’ve never blamed him for my own shortcomings. I’ve been a really good person. I’ve been the best person I could possibly be.

Maybe I’ve not made all the best choices, but when your mother is an abusive drug addict, how do you learn to be responsible? I did the best I fucking could! I don’t spank. I don’t hit. I don’t scream. Sure I yell sometimes, but I’m not abusive. I’m not.

I’ve tried to break the cycle and shit is supposed to be better because of it.

But it’s not.

We’re two fucking weeks from being homeless. We  have no jobs. We have no money. We have no family to rely on or to help us.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to wrap my head around the shit that is my life. I don’t know how to wrap my head around the knowledge that I brought my son into this life and I’m just setting him up for future failure. He doesn’t deserve this. Me? I do. I can accept that I deserve all the fucking shit that the Universe wants to throw at me. But my son? No. He deserves more and better than I can do for him.

How does a mother deal with that?

I’m so tired. I’m scared and I’m sad and I’m grieving and and I’m tired. More tired than I’ve ever been in my life. More tired than anyone should ever have to be.

Why don’t you blog? asked Hubby.
Because I don’t want to whine and be depressing.
Eh. Just do it. It’ll be good for your soul.

And so I did. I’ll let you know if it was good for me when life gets a little better.

Self-Indulgent Whining

Hubby left for Dallas last night. He’ll be gone for nearly a month. I know that’s a blink of an eye, hardly a moment, a nano second compared to how long other husbands are gone from their families.  Did  you know there are some military families who are separated for months or YEARS at a time??? That would be way worse.

But this…This is hard for me. I didn’t make the choice to marry a military man. I never expected to have to be away from him for so long at one stretch.  Holy hell, I am so sad. I feel self-indulgent and petty, but I’m just sad. Really, really, really fucking sad.

He’s out there for work. And when he comes home in a month, it’ll be to load up our house and move us. Move us away from everyone and everything I love. Everyone and everything I’ve worked so hard to get over my personal shit to let in.

When I was in high school, I had a couple of boyfriends. Nice boys who were afraid and confused like me. Nice boys who were able to see past my shit and try to insert themselves into my life despite the Roger Waters-esque WALL I built around myself to keep them out. They kissed me, they gave me tokens of their affection, a few brave ones even told me they loved me…Poor boys. I wanted nothing to do with that. I wanted nothing to do with “needing” and “loving” and “forever”. Oh hell no. Life was too unpredictable and scary to let someone take me from me. No flipping way would I let some boy in and let him have access to me. No way.

When I was in college, I had a few boyfriends (and not boyfriends) proclaim their love for me. I had a few suitors express how I was the awesomest awesome chick who ever was awesome. I even loved a few of them. And when those relationships ended, it hurt.

But this…This is worse than anything I’ve ever felt before. It hurts like my soul is being pulled out of my bowels. It hurts like my heart is being yanked through my eyeballs. It hurts like my stomach is being  pulled through my toes and then up through my nostrils before finally being ripped from my body.

I love my husband. He’s the other half of me. I know that’s not exactly cool to say, but it’s true. He makes all the other love I ever felt before feel like swimming in a tepid, plastic, wading  pool. He makes all the feelings I’ve ever felt feel like a sneeze. Sure, they were satisfying, but in the end, they were fleeting.

Hubby is bigger than that. He is more than that. He possesses more of me than that.

My husband is gone for a month and I feel like part of my brain is gone. I feel like part of my soul is gone. I feel like part of who I am is just gone.

I love you, Hubby.  I love you, I miss you, and I don’t even care how uncool I sound when I whine about you being gone.

Coping

I am sad.

The simple, everyday tasks of living overwhelm me;
Yesterday, I went to the store for vegetables and forgot why I was there.
I stood in front of the vitamins and the herbal teas
Does my son have a sore throat? Does he need tea?

Driving to a friend’s house, I missed my turn–
I knew where I was going, I just forgot how to get there.
When I turned around I missed the turn again.
And coming home was the same story.
I just kept driving, right past my street.

The sadness is making me distracted– forgetful.

It is hard to find the energy to cook meals for my family.
My legs don’t want to hold me up–
They are weak and wobbly, like I’ve run a marathon.
I want to sit on the couch–
Read.
Drink.
Write.

I want to cover my head with a blanket–
Sleep.

But my boy needs his mom.
He needs breakfast and snacks and dinner.
He needs to show me his Lego creations
He needs me to be present.

My brother is dead and I am sad.
But the living need tending–
Loving
Feeding

And as I stand at the stove, turning crepes and bacon–
Even as I forget what I’m doing–
I find comfort in the mundane tasks of life.

Picking up the Pieces

I laid my little brother to rest on Saturday; what a horrible fucking day that was. Hell, this whole week has been among the worst of my life.

It feels like it happened a lifetime ago, but at the same time, it feels like it was only moments ago. Things happened at warp speed and in slow motion at the same time. I don’t know that I’ve ever experienced that sensation before.

The trip itself was exhausting. A friend took BB and another friend took the dogs so Hubby and I could go to Arkansas alone. It was a long and boring drive, and I think I cried more tears during that drive than I’d ever cried  in my life. And I’ve cried a helluva lot of tears in my time.  I passed the time, between crying jags, making plans with the funeral home, getting cost details, and passing information on to other family members. It was somehow surreal and appropriate to make funerary arrangements in the same desert landscape that my brother and I drove through as kids. Talking to a funeral director on a cell phone with no reception in the middle of the desert is probably a situation that rarely happens, so at least I experienced something that few people have.

While we were there, I got to meet and hang out with some of my brother’s friends. It felt good to listen to stories about him and it was nice to know that he wasn’t alone; he had a network of people who loved and supported him. I’m so thankful to his friends for all they did for him while he was alive and for helping me in his death.

Now we are home and it’s time to pick up the pieces of my life and move on. In about a month we are moving out of state, so on top of the grief for my brother, I have to get us packed and ready to go. I have to help BB say goodbye to all of his friends. I have to say goodbye to mine, too. I have to go through our stuff and have a yard sale, I have to help Hubby figure out where we’re going to live, and I have to figure out how the hell I’m supposed to make friends as an atheist homeschooler in the bible belt.

There is so much to do. Too much to do to leave room for grief. Somehow I need to find a way to set it aside for now so I can focus on the tasks at hand. That’s what got me through the funeral. One task at a time, one hug after another, one foot in front of the other. Forward momentum keep me going and allowed me to keep the tears at bay. It was only in the hotel, when there wasn’t someone to comfort or a paper to sign that my grief seeped out. When it was just me and Hubby, I cried. And cried. And cried. At night, when the lights were out and I was floating in the unfamiliar darkness of the hotel room, I had vivid flashbacks of my childhood. The memories played in my head so vividly that it was like watching a movie. I laid there in the dark, crying and watching memories until I passed out from exhaustion. Then I dreamed that my brother was dead and I was planning his funeral.

My brother was almost like a son in a lot of ways. Even though we were less than two years apart, it fell to me to be his parent. When he had asthma attacks, I fixed his nebulizer treatments; when he had bad dreams, I was the one who nurtured him back to sleep. When he needed food, I figured out how to cook for him. I beat people up when they called him a sissy or hurt him. I raised him.

And now he is dead.

The sorrow, the regret, the depth of the anguish I’m feeling is unimaginable. It’s like I’m stuck in a black hole. I can’t think. I can’t breathe. I can’t move.  How do I keep going when I can’t breathe? How do I move forward when I can’t think clearly? My words don’t even come out right when I’m talking.  The book I’m reading doesn’t make sense. I can’t find meaning in the symbols on the page. And when I do find the meaning, I can’t hold it in my head long enough to understand the context. I go back and re-read a paragraph and I think: I didn’t read this…I don’t remember reading this…

How do you pick up the pieces when they are shattered into dust? How do you keep putting one foot in front of the other when you can’t even pick up  your leg? How do you do this?

The sky is falling!

Okay, not really, but it feels like it right now.  Things keep breaking around me and I have no idea why that is.  I’m not a clumsy person, I don’t knock over lamps or break china.  I’ve never inadvertently trampled someone’s prized tulip bed or thrown a ball through a window, so I’ve gone on for 35 years thinking that the objects in my life are pretty safe around me.  But then, for some reason I can’t even begin to grasp, that all changed last night.

I was doing the dishes and I turned on the garbage disposal.  It made a sad, whining sound so I turned it off to make sure a dish rag hadn’t been sucked down there.  Every thing was fine, so I turned it back on and…It didn’t make a sound.  It just decided it was old and tired and ready to move on to the next phase.

Then I had BB take a bath.  He was singing and being really cute, so I grabbed the video camera to record him.  When I went to review the tape, the LCD screen wouldn’t work.  I couldn’t rewind, play, fast forward or access the menu.  Lovely.  Glad we dropped the cash on that baby.

During BB’s bath, he splashed around a lot, so I had him get a towel from the linen closet…and the bleeping door fell off!

Freaking great.

I got BB to bed, grabbed myself a beer and decided to watch a movie.  I turned off the swamp cooler and turned on the living room fan.  Or at least that was my intention.  But guess what?  The ceiling fan wouldn’t turn on.  So I take another long pull from my beer, turn the swamp cooler to low and watch a movie.  Thankfully I managed to get through it without the TV blowing up.  When it was over, I decided to go to bed before I ruined anything else.  After all, tomorrow is always a new day, right?

So I wake up this morning, just positive that it was nothing more than a fluke that caused so many things to break down around me last night.  I looked out the living room window and noticed the hummingbird feeder was empty so I brought it inside and made some more food for them.  As I put it up, I noticed it was dripping from the bottom.  I thought maybe I hadn’t put it back together right, so I took it down and examined it.  And sure enough…it was cracked.  It was fine when I brought it in, it was fine when I washed it, and it was fine when I filled it up.  Some how, between filling it and hanging it, I broke the damned hummingbird feeder.

It seems this streak of mine is gonna last a little longer.  I’m just glad Hubby is out of town with the car.

The very rotten day

It’s only 7pm and I’m ready for bed.  It’s been a very bad, no good, rotten day.  I feel like I’ve been run over by a steam roller and then beaten with a pinata stick.

I guess some days are like that.  Sometimes entire weeks can be like that, and I can usually bounce back and not feel too overwhelmed or dark.  But today is not one of those days.  Today I was a parent that I’m not proud of, and I don’t know how to go about forgiving myself. 

There was a lot of yelling today.  And a lot of  screaming.   BB did a lot of door slamming and wall kicking.  At one point I told him to shut up, which sent him into a torrent of tears because I’m not a “shut up” kind of person.  I allow him to express his feelings.  I don’t believe children should shut up.  I don’t.  But still I said it.  An apology can’t unsay it.  An apology can’t unhurt his feelings or unshock his brain.  An apology is pointless, but I apologized anyway.

Then he tried to throw framed pictures in the trash, he jumpped on my toe and he hit me with a cat toy.  And I lost it.  I broke my #1 priority of parenting.  I hit my son.  Yes, I could sugar coat it and say that I spanked him, one time, with an open palm.  All that is true, true, true.  But it is of no consequence.  I. Hit. Him.  I’ve never done that before, and I feel sick over having done it today.   I can no longer say “I’ve never, no matter how angry I was, spanked my kid”.  I’ve broken a trust between me and my son that can not be rebuilt.  Now he is going to be afraid of being hit the next time I get angry, and I can’t stand that thought.  If he’s ever known anything, he’s known that he is always safe with me.  But now he must be questioning that.  I told him “shut up” and then I hit.  I cannot rewind time and do it better.  I cannot take it back.  I cannot make it okay.

Yes, I know.  Some of you may be thinking it’s no big deal.  Spanking happens all the time in many, many families.  But it’s not okay.  Not to me.  Not to my sweet BB and not to Hubby.  Maybe I should feel better that he’s gone nearly eight years without being spanked, but that doesn’t help.  The goal was to go his whole life. 

I was overwhelmed and emotional for a variety of reasons.  I wasn’t the responsive parent I could have been.  I wasn’t  in my best form, but there is no excuse.  I was also the only adult in the house.  It was my job to keep my cool and keep perspective.  It was my job, and I failed.  The outside reasons don’t matter.  The internal struggling doesn’t matter either.  Whether I was feeling emotional about my mother, whether I had a screaming headache, or the dog and the cat wouldn’t stop fighting shouldn’t impact the emotional safety my child feels with me.  I feel like a giant failure.

There were (are) a lot of tears today.  Mine and his.  And a lot of apologies and hugs.  I promised him I’d never hit him or tell him to shut up again.  He said he forgives me.  He said he loves me, but maybe he’s just saying that so I don’t yell at him again.

What do you do when there’s nothing you can do?

The art of motherhood and guilt

I find that mothering inherently holds a lot of huge emotions: love, joy, fear, euphoria, exhaustion, and guilt.  Guilt is the one I struggle with a lot these days.  I’m working on not letting the feelings of guilt get me down, but it seems that of all the big emotions, the “G” word is the most tenacious in its bite.  As a mother who is also homeschooling her only child, I think that guilt is multiplied by about a million and trying to crawl out from under it is unbearably hard sometimes.  Some days I want nothing more than to crawl under the covers and hide until the big, ugly, three headed beast that is guilt decides I’m not around and gives up.

So what is there to feel guilty about as a homeschooling mother?  After all, I don’t have the guilt of forcing my kid to go to a school he doesn’t like to sit at a desk for hours on end and to deal with kids and teachers who just don’t get him.  I don’t have the guilt of seeing him do his homework with his eyes red and bleary from exhaustion, and I don’t have the guilt of worrying that I’m not packing him a decent lunch.  No, I don’t carry that set of guilt, and I’m so grateful for that, but my life is far from lilacs and ice cream. 

For starters, I can’t shake the feeling that we are cash-strapped because I’m staying home and not working full time.  I can’t help but feel that if I had gone back to work and put BB in preschool when he was still a babe, then he’d have gone on to kindergarten and then to first grade and I’d be working, pulling in enough money to be able to afford piano lessons or a trip to the Grand Canyon.  I feel like if I were working, we’d have enough money to actually have health insurance and to be able to go to the dentist a couple of times a year.  It is so easy to believe that if I had made a different decision, our life would be infinitely easier and we’d have more freedom to do and buy things.

And then there’s the guilt of loneliness.  BB doesn’t have any siblings, so I can never say to him, “Hey, mom needs a break, so go play with your brother”.  I set up regular play dates and outings for him, and he gets a lot of interaction from other kids, but I can’t help feeling that if I say no to playing with him, that he’s disappointed in me.  Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t want another kiddo, and I am very happy to have a family of three.  BB says he doesn’t want a brother or sister anyway “because all they do is break your Lego structures or yell at you”, but I worry that when he grows up he’ll feel resentful over the life we didn’t give him.

I do know that if I had made the decision to work and not homeschool, I’d be dealing with an entirely different set of guilty feelings.  I know that there is no magic spell or cure to end guilt as associated with motherhood.  It’s just that sometimes what I feel seems more real than what another person may be feeling. Especially if that other person is a made up mother who has it all together and can juggle high powered career, cooking, husband and kids, all the while being playful and able to provide jumpy castles for birthdays.   I’m really good at imagining her glamorous life, but not at imagining the consequences of her decisions.

This is turning into quite the whiny post, and that’s not at all what I wanted to do here today.  I guess I’m not really sure what it is that I did intend.  Maybe I just wanted to get some of this stuff out of my head so that I can go shower, play with BB, and maybe do some science experiments later.

All guilt aside, I do like my life.  I love that I am homeschooling and that I can hang in my pjs till 10:00 or even 2:00 if I want.  I love that we don’t rely on McD’s to get us through dinner, and that we can go to the museums and zoo in the middle of the day, when there aren’t any crowds.  I love that my child can tell me anything and that he says I’m his favorite person in the world.  Sometimes I feel overwhelmed, over extended and exhausted, but in the end, I would not go back to work and give up this life for a hundred trips to Disney World or the Grand Canyon.

 

An open letter to my husband

Dear Hubby,

Please, for the love of Ben and Jerry, DO NOT keep putting things I use nearly every day on the very top cupboard shelf!  I appreciate that you unload the dishwasher, and I appreciate that you’re 6,000 feet tall.  I also appreciate that maybe you don’t like the way it looks to have a giant bowl on top of the little dessert plates.  I get all of that.  But when you take that bowl and put it out of my reach, it really annoys me!  I’m not 6,000 feet tall, I’m 5″2′ in heels.  I don’t want to have to climb on the counter to reach the bowl.  I don’t want to go traipsing through the house looking for a step stool so I can safely reach it.  I want it left where I put it.  It’s not out of laziness that I put the bowl there.  It’s because I can’t reach it when I need it if it’s where you put it.  Since I do 99% of the cooking and 95% of the dishes, please just let me keep the giant polka dot bowl on top of those rarely used plates. 

Love,
Your Wife

Ever have one of those days?

You know, days where you wonder what the hell you were thinking when you decided being a parent was a good idea. One of those days where the cat pees on the floor and walks in circles crying for hours on end. One of those days where, even though it’s not a super full load, the washer bangs and clangs and threatens to overflow. I’m having one of those days today, and right now I want nothing more than to just go back to bed, rewind time and start again.

BB and I got into a thing today. He was throwing a tantrum and then threw a box of tissue at my face. The corner hit my cheek bone and hurt like crazy. While I may not have been the very model of cool and collected parenting before then, after getting hit by a tissue box I pretty much lost my top. I took his toys out of his room and told him that unless he wanted to be screamed at, he had better stay in his room with the door closed. He cried that he’s not a bad kid and I told him I know that, but he was certainly not acting nicely so he better stay in his room. I admit that I yelled. I’ll even admit that when he threw the box at me, I tossed the action figure I was holding at him. It did not hit him. I did not hit him. But I lost control. Or that’s how it feels. I didn’t tell him I hate him, I didn’t tell him he’s a rotten child, I didn’t verbally or physically abuse him, but I didn’t hold up to my own standards and that really hurts me.

It really pisses me off that I had no parents. It pisses me off that nobody was there to raise me-I had to raise them instead-so I have no road map for good parenting. Oh, I have a road map for rotten parenting, a road map that is crystal clear and punctuated with all sorts of nasty details. I wish, more than anything in the world, that I could take that horrible map and throw it to the bottom of a lake because, dammit, no matter how hard I try to make my own bleeping map, that awful one keeps coming back. I’m so scared that no matter how hard I try to be better than my parents, to do things differently and with more thoughtfulness, I’m destined to become what they were. I can feel it in me. It’s fuzzy, spinning and out of control-fighting to get out. When my mother was like that she was literally like a tornado and it scared the shit out of me. I don’t want my own kid to ever feel afraid of me. I don’t want him to think that my anger is a force of nature. I want him to feel safe with me. Safe in loving me and safe in the knowledge that he is loved.

In the end, I think this whole “thing” was worse for me than for him. He doesn’t have my baggage and he certainly doesn’t have my childhood. He knows he is loved regardless of his behavior and I’m 99% certain that he doesn’t see me as either scary or a force of nature. I know that it’s appropriate for me to get angry at him. I get that-with my brain, anyway. Deep inside, though, is another story. I fight so hard to keep down what I’m afraid to become, that I fear if I let any anger show it’ll take over and I’ll never be able to control it again.

Right now he is watching Peter Pan. I have apologized to him and he apologized to me. I think I’m going to fix lunch and then maybe we’ll go to a museum or a park. I know rewinding the day and starting over is impossible, but I do have the power to make the rest of this day better.

Holiday Blues

‘Tis the season for baking cookies and singing Christmas carols and decorating the house with pretty twinkling lights.  It’s time for gathering together with friends and family to share in the joy of each others company, for eating and cooking food that is as fattening as it is delicious.  This is the time of year where children pray for snow and everyone has that special spring in their steps.  But for many, this is also a time of extreme emotion, mood swings, fatigue and sadness. I’m one of those people this year.  I feel overwhelmed, exhausted and frequently on the edge of tears.  The holidays have always been hard, but it’s been worse since my dad’s death almost five years ago.  This year is the hardest since the first year without him.  Maybe it’s because I’m not speaking with my mother right now, so I feel orphaned.  Or maybe it’s because we’re coming up on the 5 year anniversary.   Half a decade.  That’s a long time.  Or maybe it’s because I’m stressed out over so many things.  I don’t know.  What I do know is that while I love to see the joy of the season in my child’s eyes, I wish I could do more than go through the motions and actually feel that joy for myself again.  I’m not sure how, though.   I hope that BB can’t tell how not into this whole season I am.  I don’t want him growing up and remembering that his mother was a depressed scrooge at Christmastime.  So I play Christmas music on the stereo, I tell him stories about when I used to wait up for Santa and I talk about making cookies for the neighbors (maybe next week I’ll actually make them) and I hope that BB is clueless about how I really feel.

But, I’m so angry with myself.  I have a wonderful family who loves me, a lot of really great friends, and I know that no matter how tight things may get, we’ll always have enough food to eat and a roof over our heads.  So what am I whining about?   I don’t want to feel like scrooge.  I want to feel like Tiny Tim.