December 20, 2002

• (sorry, I've been on modified bedrest for the past week and a bit. I say 'modified' because who can lie in bed all day with a toddler and a hub to look after?. Which brings me to today's topic...)

  
  

  Rage.

  
  

  I'd like to just say this before I begin. I love my child more than I love myself. I would gladly breathe for her, and die for her. I cannot imagine how grey my world would be if she wasn't in it. So you know this, okay?

  
  

  This pregancy has been really hard on me. I've been incredibly tired, I've been aching and in pain almost every day and my patience - never my strong suit - has been sorely tested this past week. I find myself almost incoherent with rage.

  
  

  So this morning, when I yanked my child's nightgown over her head and told her I was going to throw Elmo in the garbage, I think I really meant it. Last night, I lay awake wondering if I really did threaten to give all her toys to poor children and tell Santa not to come. I think I really just wanted her to stop arguing with me about picking the damn things up.  But I know I meant it at the time.

  
  

  I have slammed the door to her room so hard that her nameplate fell off the door and shouted with such rage and anger when she talked back that you would have thought that she had threatened to kill me.

  
  

  Where is this coming from?

  
  

  She is a good kid. Even compared to the toddler horror stories, her little lapses are minor compared to other children's. She is kind, she is gentle and she is so cuddly. She loves me. Any manifestation lately of her own independence has me inchoate with rage. It's like she is fucking with me deliberately.

  
  

  All I want is a simple ordered life right now. When my pelvis feels as if it's going to split in two, I do not want to have to get down on my hands and knees and debate the ethics of sitting on the potty until something happens. Just do it, okay?

  
  

  There have been times lately, where I honestly thought I was capable of smacking her silly. Not that I've done it, but I could visualise it. It would have felt good. (Note: I have managed to step firmly back from the impulse, but if you can't - please go and see someone.  Get some help, or email me, cos I do understand how you must have felt the second before you did it.)

  
  

  So. How does this happen? How does someone who would murder anyone who even called their kids names - get to the point where she could cheerfully get a whacking stick?

  
  

  this is what I think.

  
  

  I think that mothers get angry with their kids because they can. Because most mothers get bored and restless watching their kids and doing housework all day, and no matter how wonderful motherhood is, the 50th conversation about the big blue truck can have you wanting to throw yourself down the stairs. But you can't. Because it's not about YOU, it's about THEM.

  
  

  Imagine hissing angrily to one of your adult friends "Get in here right now. I mean it! This second, I'll give you till three or it will be so ugly." Or talking to a salesperson in a shop who turns away mid-sentence to ignore you, and you grabbing their arm and saying 'Don't you DARE turn away from me when I am speaking to you."

  
  

  You can't. If your adult interactions were based on your secret angry self, they'd make the anti-dracula sign when they saw you coming. They would see you for what you are - human, flawed, with ugliness, with strife and they wouldn't want anything to do with you. But these people only hang around for bits of your life - they don't see the whole you.

  
  

  But kids. Kids are 24 hours, 7 days a week. Their list of needs is so overwhelming and immediate that when you blow up at them, it might be as simple as just letting off some steam that you can't let off anywhere else. And they give you plenty to let off steam about. The torture of waking every night at 4am to soothe a nightmarish kid who then proceeds to kick you awake for 2 hours until it's time to get up and face the day - makes you chronically tired, resentful and... angry. Having to listen to a precis of Franklin the Turtle that takes 25 minutes is like being bashed in the head with a rubber hammer. 'So then... then... the turtle, I mean the BEAR got LOST... listen to me Mummy, you aren't listening... and the kite went up in the sky - I am not finished yet... and the the the Franklin went on his bike and You aren't listening to me... his mummy was making a cake and then the bear said it was his cake... and he asked but then it wasn't... Mummy LISTEN TO ME..." Ack ack ack.

  
  

  Listen, I don't discriminate against kids. If Plato himself wanted to describe The Republic to me like this I would get seriously shitty with him too.

  
  

  And that builds up. Kids give you lots to yell about too. Say for instance, that your almost 3 big girl is going thru a stage where she only wants to wear her ballerina tutu. With a grownup friend, you could calmly explain that the tutu is in the wash since it was dirty, and since you were up cleaning the house for an inspection that it didn't get done and you really aren't feeling that well, but you promise to do it as soon as you can. And besides, they've worn it 3 days in a row. That would get accepted, right?

  
  

  Not with a child. They don't understand and most importantly, they don't wish to. They have a red button in their heads that they push and they go nuclear. They may throw a tantrum, weep copiously, slam doors or not talk to you - but in all cases, they are so completely and utterly unreasonable and capable of such mean spirited behaviour towards you that you are stricken with hurt and grief that it's all come to this. Cos you didn't wash the tutu.

  
  

  And this is so much harder than you imagined. The gap between where you are, and where they are is a large echoing chasm that is filled with the complete lack of anything you can give them to make it right.

  
  

  They don't give you credit for standing in line, hugely pregnant to get The Wiggles tickets, or for washing the damn tutu at 3am, or for generously sharing your bed 6 nights out of 7, or for organising playdates with kids whose mothers truly do suck... You have let them down. You miserable person. And you get resentful. You want to shake them and say... "Do I get any credit for any of this at all?" And so it goes. You go KABOOOOOOOOM.

  
  

  What has helped me is realising that when I think I am starting at 1 on a scale of anger and hitting 100 in record speed over an unwashed tutu - is that I am actually staring at about 70. All the times I got no feedback or thanks or any kind of pat on the back builds up.  And if all day I've been nurturing some anger at my best friend, or my husband or the guy who bags the groceries - I stuff it down, because I can't go KABOOM in public, can I?  So when it's 8pm and you've already read 6 MaisyBanalMouse stories and tucked in and gotten sippy cups and found Elmo and finally you are flaked in front of the tv ready to END your day... it starts. "Mummy, it's too windy...Mummmy, the fan.. it's too blowy....MUUUUMMMY" So you reach down and find a reserve of patience and go in and turn the fan down and then listen to another mini-synopsis of Franklin the turtle and go back out. And no sooner do you sit down then up it starts again. "Mummy, need a cuddle, Mummy come talk to me..." And you can feel the rage at not even getting 10 fucking minutes peace to yourself boiling under the surface. But you stamp it down and wander in, and smooth hair back from foreheads and kiss and give 'just one more' cuddle and go back out. But she's little and wrapped up in her own self absorption and cannot fathom that you've done enough and you don't have much more in you... and so it starts again. "Mummmmy...." and you screech from the living room... "SHUT THE FUCK UP! GO TO FUCKING SLEEP BEFORE I COME IN THERE AND GIVE YOU WHAT FOR" Um, yeah. She feels much more secure and safe now, doesn't she?

  
  

  And you feel like shit. I think admitting we do this, helps. I think talking about it helps, and most importantly I think being heard, helps.  Not being judged or judging, but just knowing that we are like all the other parents in the world trying to do our best and find our way and fucking up.

  
  

  So last night that scenario played out. There was a deafening silence after my outburst. I sat still, waiting for the tears. It was quiet. So I got up to look, and found her in my bed, face pressed against my nightie, cuddling my pillow. Smelling me, wrapped around something that was me. Somehow, I think she needed to find me, even if I didn't want to be found. It was humbling.

  • 2:17 am
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