There is silence in the house and I am still bleary eyed, but I have made the effort to get out of bed 40 minutes early so that I can start writing here. It’s got nothing to do with the fact that I am so busy today that I won’t have time later. Hello November. You’ve sort of snuck up there, haven’t you?
***
There is a psych appointment scheduled today. It’s been cathartic to go along each fortnight and just talk. Like every other mother however, last week I found myself dicussing my children. My fears and my stresses and the frustration I feel when I walk into the bedroom to find my daughter perched on top of my closet, eating my chocolate. She’s the perfect candidate for “owling” except for the screaming when she realises that she can’t get down.
Real owls have wings daughter, if you’re going to climb up, you have to learn how to get down. Just don’t break anything.
I spent an hour talking about my children last time, before the therapist gently mentioned that maybe we ought to talk more about me?
Silly girl. She’s not worked with many (any?) mothers, I would put money on it. The children are me and I am them. The fears for their future are not things I can separate from my personal anxiety and the frustration I feel at untriggered meltdowns is just as real as frustration with other adults. Tempered with a lot more love, of course.
I shouldn’t call her silly, in fact she is lovely – even if it is a bit disconcerting to be discussing the tangled web inside my brain with someone my own age.
But that is okay.
The main question is: Do you think she will help me work out how to get a cat into the roof, to eat the baby starlings that have hatched right above my desk? Because it’s hard enough to write a blog post half asleep, without adding shouting babies to the mix.
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by Veronica Foale on May 12, 2011
in Family
Writing requires that I lose myself inside my own head. I need to sink into the spaces between the thoughts and drift there for a while.
Mothering requires that I remain in the moment, that I watch and listen and respond, immediately. A litany of cascading thoughts; we need butter, do we have any bread, baby needs a bottle, laundry needs hanging, what’s for dinner? My brain shoots ahead of me and I’m wiping benches, bums and noses in equal measure and not writing a thing.
This too shall pass. They’re only little, they’ll only be little for a short amount of time. One day I’ll be begging for them to snuggle me and tell me about the flowers.
I remind myself these things, as I keep myself busy and don’t think about the words sitting inside my soul, bubbling away from behind the dam in there.
One day, one day I will write and it will flow and I won’t feel like I’m being torn in half every time I drag myself back to reality.
One day, I won’t feel guilty for spending long moments inside my own mind, tasting the words and playing with them.
It’s a balancing act, knowing what to write about on the internet. An intricate dance of stories and perspectives, making sure you don’t put words in someone’s mouth and side-stepping the issue of privacy invasion. Knowing when to speak and when to hold your tongue, when to write and when to walk away.
It’s about more than not wanting to damage your own brand with drama.
It’s about knowing that truth can be fluid sometimes and not wanting it to be; wanting truth to be truth and lies to remain unspoken.
It’s a fine line.
***
My son is sad and his warm mass draped on my lap and snuggled to my chest brings to the fore all my maternal feelings. It doesn’t matter than he is dribbling in my cleavage or that I am not able to move, he is warm and sad and I am his mother and I can fix this, this time. When he is older and I cannot surround him with my arms, then he will be sad and my heart will break at how useless magic kisses have become.
I put him to bed with a warm bottle, knowing that he is tired and listen to him cry anyway. This is hard. This breaks my heart. This is probably best for all of us, that he sleeps now.
***
I send my daughter outside, to play fortheloveofgod go and play. She lies on the trampoline for an hour, not moving and I watch her as I wander around the house. She is tired and miserable and sad and bendy. She comes back inside and we lay together on the couch and I feel the heat of her. A temperature rising, her joints aching. I thank everything that I have panadol handy and I dose her up and lay her in bed. She is limp and miserable and I lay with her for a time.
Motherhood is hard.
Motherhood is beautiful.
***
The truth is hard.
The truth is beautiful.
With all this talk of authenticity, I can only be myself and this is how I am in real life too. I might not talk about all of it, but I’m honest at the core.
There are things happening and things brewing and at this point, I’m not sure I’m content to sit back and say nothing, but the drama and the angst, I don’t want it.
So I’m saying: Watch and listen and see what happens. Sit here alongside me and we’ll eat popcorn and wait for the fallout. Because it’s coming and it’s not going to be pretty.
Writing is cathartic for me and sometimes, I need to write things out before my head explodes from the words and the hurt going around and around and around.
Sometimes though, once I’ve written them and gotten some feedback, it’s better. The words stop and the insanity stops and I can shake off the hurt and move forward again.
This time, I don’t need to leave the post up. I’ve got no real need to sit and wait for the vitriolic emails to appear in my inbox. And don’t doubt me here, I know they’d appear. This is the Internet and I’ve always known my writing could be found by everybody.
My family is difficult and nuanced and complicated. They are annoying and forgetful and biased. Even when I don’t like them very much, I still love them. I suspect they’re very much like every other family out there.
The people who need to know how I feel already do and the people who made me feel that way in the first place, well, I’m doubting that a shitfest will make me feel better.
I suspect my twitter stream has more spies than Russia and I am fine with that. My twitter stream is not private, in any way shape or form. If my highschool principal was so inclined, he could read what I was up to. In real life, I am intensely introverted. My blog and writing help to combat that and keep me balanced.
So really, this is just me saying that while I don’t feel better as such, I’m not letting it hurt anymore and I’m walking away.
‘That must be so hard’ they say, when I talk about daily life for us. The meltdowns, the screaming, the sensory overloads.
It must be hard.
And I think about it and well, maybe it is a little. But hard is relative and what’s hard for you, isn’t hard for me. This is daily life and I’m drawing on a wealth of experience and it’s not so bad.
Hard for me, is death and grief.
Not life.
My body falls apart and we add yet another diagnosis to my long string of them. A diagnosis that is ‘broken’ when all is said and done.
Maybe this is a little bit hard.
Maybe not. Maybe I’m just overwhelmed right now.
I created life. I gestated it and felt my body swell under my hands. When the time came, I panted and strained and gave birth to life, to a small human being who may just grow up to rule the world. We don’t know yet, life is full of infinite possibility.
I am God for these lives I created and expelled out into the world, the lives that makes mine so infinitely complicated. If I gave birth to them, I know that I am strong enough to mother them and bring them to adulthood.
This is not hard. This is a privilege.
