Does anyone else feel like they're failing? Am I the only one who spend the majority of the day just putting out fires? Does anyone else feel like all they do is make food, clean up food, shovel food into peoples mouths, then clean up dirty diapers? Does anyone else feel like they're in survival mode? Because I do. And it sucks!
I have a bad case of the mommy guilt. Before I had kids I promised myself that I would not succumb to the dreaded phenomenon of said guilt and now that I have kids I feel guilty about everything! I feel guilty that I don't spend enough time with each child. I feel guilty that I have to ask my kids to wait their turn. I yell too much, I swear too much, I talk too much. I've lost my patience more times then I would like to admit by the time it's 10 am.
I feel guilty about putting them in kid care at the gym. I feel guilty when I leave them with my mother. I feel guilty when I leave them with my husband. I feel guilty when I have to be gone from them for any reason and mostly because I enjoy being away so much! I feel guilty because all I really want to do is get the hell away from my children for a day, for an hour, sweet baby Jesus, for 10 minutes!!
I am so overwhelmed. And my kids are good... Well, my girls are good. My son is slowly killing me with a very long and painful death. but for the most part, I have a charmed life! My kids eat well, they play well, they're healthy, they love to go out, they love to play with other kids. But they are driving me up the wall!
I can not physically give them the attention they need or deserve... That makes me feel guilty. I can not possibly jump every time my kid asks me for milk, or cookies, or crackers, or movies, or water, or I have to go to the bathroom, or he hit me, or why does she get more juice then me. For the love of everything holy, it takes everything in my not to say "BECAUSE I LIKE HER MORE!!"
But that would be untrue and then I would feel guilty. I feel guilty because I lose my schmit on a daily, no! an hourly basis. I am constantly jumping from one melt down to the other and a lot of the times it includes my own. I feel guilty for crying in front of my kids, I feel guilty for screaming in front of my kids. Not at them. Just screaming. Just to get it out. (Please tell me I'm not the only one who does that.)
I feel like I'm cracking or more like I'm broken and I don't know how to get back to good. I know that it will get easier and I'll be able to move from survival mode to parenting. But in the mean time I don't want my kids to remember this time in their lives as "oh, yes, that was the time mommy lost her mind."
I wake in the morning and all I can think of is all the diapers, and laundry, and crying, and throw up, and whining and it's enough to make me pull the covers over my head and weep. It doesn't help that my son has made it his job to wake me at 6 in the morning just to talk to me when all I want to do is crawl into the fetal position and pretend I'm not here...
and then I feel guilty.
Because, there will come a day when the last thing on earth that he will want is to talk to me. There will be a day when I will no longer be the sun that brightens his life. There will be a day when all he wants is for me to drop him off so I don't have to go in with him because he doesn't want to be embarrassed by his mom. And honestly...
I. Can't. Freaking. Wait.
But when that day comes as it inevitably will, I just hope it's part of his growing up and not because of anything I did. I hope and pray that my kids will look back and always remember that through everything I loved them more then life itself. That I would do anything for them. That I am so proud to be their mom and I couldn't have asked for greater kids or a greater family. I love them so much it hurts!
I feel guilty because I'm afraid they are going through their little lives not knowing that. That I'm so caught up in the act of mothering that I forget to be a mom. And just when I think I've totally hit rock bottom, when I've missed the mark entirely, my daughter comes to me out of no where and says :
"Mommy, I love you."
and for that moment I can pull myself out of the here and now and lift my face to feel the sun.
Antenella
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