Guilt Incarnate

your're eating a hard boiled egg? don't you mean chicken embryo ?(overheard on cellphone)

problem with the accessibility of face book.


k- Hey T, wassup? Haven't seen you in a thousand years. Where ya been bitch?

t- I have been staying close to home, I have multiple sclerosis.

k - Super lame dude, good luck with all that. laters.



Now if I could just get Jesus Christ Superstar out of my head...

ROAR!

Forgive me if you've heard this one...

So last time my MIL was here, was for E's birthday.
We were painting a few weeks after she left and we made some cool hand prints and foot prints. I proudly displayed them all over the fridge. Jon came home and remarked on how cute they were and I should send one to his mom. Great idea right? I mean she was here and 'helped' us out and everything, sure. So I wrote on the back something like 'hi gramma, thanks for coming out to play with me.' and sent it off.
A few days later, I get a voicemail, because I CANNOT pick up the phone for this woman. 'Thanks for the masterpiece I love it...but...do you think next time you could put C's name on it? He was very hurt to not be included...'

I may have overreacted. I cannot help but feel the sting from that voicemail, even now, months later. I didn't talk to her for 2 months. I need to add that she didn't know that I was not talking to her because a) she is too self-involved to notice b) i am a chicken-shit that will go to great lengths to avoid confrontation.

Anyway, after a long time, I let it go.

Yesterday I get a voicemail from MIL. 'hi it's C's (her husbands) birthday next weds, do you think you could make something for him and sent it from the baby? A hand print or a footprint or a drawing or something'
I almost spiked my cellphone and yelled FUCK YOU into it. (i know, impressive)

I am almost shaking with rage from it. I want to call her up and tell her that I am taking care of my baby and you need to take care of your own baby.

E doesn't know her husband. He hasn't seen him since xmas 2006. I LOVE her husband. Please do not get me wrong, he is the best thing that ever happened to me. He takes up all the MIL attention because he is a needy, fancy doctor. I couldn't be happier. We wouldn't be in this house if it wasn't for him (and MIL and my parents).

Jon thinks I am 'acting ridiculous.' Any type of problem or concern comes up in my life and he wants to know 'if I have thought about going back on my meds.' I told him to do it then. He told me to just rip off the paper from his easel and send it. Am I being over sensitive? I cannot even put my finger on why I am so enraged.

Yeah life is 'harder' w/o the antidepressants. But what a relief to actually give a shit about stuff again. Life comfortably numb is not for me. Unless you are talking about self-medicating, then keep the vodka tonics flowing.

I am also watching my city get ripped apart by this Olympic torch. I have many feelings about the whole thing but I busy getting ready for my favorite night of tv - Idol results show and ANTM (wanna be on top?)

What It Does to Your Mind...

"Although we may pay lip service to the wonders of a new life much of the way our adult lives are organized seems to actively exclude children, and therefore also exclude any adult who has to be with those children. Hence working and social situations outside of our homes are not 'user-friendly' towards children. "(Price p20)

I just started reading the book the above quote came from, Motherhood What It Does to You Mind. (Pandora, 1988)
So far it seems to blame the alienation of mothers on society. Dr. Jane Price is British, so she is blaming British culture.
She is a 'psychologist and psychotherapist who specialises in the psychology of women.' So says the back cover.
So far I really like that she uses words like anger, resentment, guilt, anxiety, and jealousy as part of the complicated emotional relationship between mother and child. I am not sure that I agree with her theories. What a relief it is to read a book that doesn't act like losing your pre-baby identity is just another thing you are supposed to just grin and bear it. It is traumatic, it is painful. It is the most powerful thing I have experienced in my lifetime. The expectations of the kind of parent I thought I would be vs reality is also a major death to mourn.

I just wanted to jot down a few ideas, I'll write a full review after I finish the whole book. There are lots of provoking ideas in the book.

Cliche Alert

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. -Lao-tzu (604 BC - 531 BC)

I mean WTF? I have a toddler, I am not permanently brain damaged. The world is still my oyster. I think M did me a huge favor by giving me some "tough love." I have been wrestling with some major -ME- issues for the last couple of days.

I wonder if it has something to do with the maternal instinct. Whatever is happening right now is always going to be. This part will never end. Then when it does, it is a happy surprise every time.

Right now, in this moment, I am doing exactly what I want to do. I love my kid (duh). I want to be with him. I have accepted this time before pre-school is ours. It is finite.

UGH

Today started shitty.
Usually jon gets up with E if he gets up before 7:30. Because, well, I am a fucking bitch. J will get him started with breakfast and then I come out and j gets in the shower.
Today, E got animal crackers for breakfast. So of course when I tried to give him yogurt or bagel or non-ice cream food he rejected it. I was really mad at j for giving him cookies and e for waking up so early and me for always being too angry.

Anyway, we go the Exploratorium. It is Spring break and therefore a nightmare. E is crabby as hell. He keeps running away and not listening. I start losing my patience more and more and my reactions to E's running away becomes less and less respectable, more reactionary and hysterical and grabby every time he runs away from me.
We were there with our dear friends M and her son L.

My response to E crying and acting up is I just stand there and look at him. He is literally on the floor crying in the middle of this place and I am standing over him waiting for his tantrum to end. I know M finds this abhorrent and is always trying to comfort E as I grow increasingly stony. After the museum I am anxious to get home, however I don't say anything because I don't want to be an inconvenience. She is driving. I want to put E to bed and she wants to walk around ( her son doesn't nap anymore ) Admittedly, I was acting like a sullen child watching my own sullen child cry by the duck pond.

M starts to talk to me and telling me I need to get some distance and some perspective. I need to put him in childcare and I need to try to find joy or purpose in my life. My giving in and reacting with anger to his typical 2 year old behavior is bad for everyone involved. She offered to talk to her childcare person for me, I told her I couldn't do that. M has her dream job, I said if I had work or something that I cared about maybe I wouldn't mind putting E in child-care. But to put him in childcare just to get away from it all and work at a coffee shop isn't something I can or want to do.

Putting E in childcare will help him to share with other kids better and not to hit (he loves to hit L, 'cause guess where he learned it, (not that I blame L because it would have been another kid I didn't love that taught him otherwise)) I was getting really angry at E for repeatedly hitting L at the museum.

So she said, well what is your dream job? What are your dreams? What do you want to be when you grow up?
I started crying, like a lot, and very suddenly.

Cause the reality of pre-school is coming. I am supposed to hand my kid over to someone, pay them $89 per day, and go and find out what I am. (and pay for pre-school)

This is the reason I had a kid. I didn't know what I wanted to do.
I don't know what I love, I don't know what turns me on, what gets my blood boiling. I am so out of touch with my own needs and wants.
I don't know what my dreams are. I don't even know how to play a game like "what would your dream job be" as my mom is always trying to make me play.

I am scared. Everything feels like a cop-out. I am scared to admit or acknowledge my future is coming, am I going to miss it?

I can't talk to j about any of this, his response is "go back on the anti-depressants." Dr Liza wanted me to treat my depression as a disease (if you had high blood pressure you would take your meds wouldn't you?)

But I think I am just scared and lazy and have bad social anxiety. I can't blame it hormonal fluctuation anymore. This is the real deal. I am fucked up. I am not PMS-ing. I am supposed to be feeling good.

The real deal is not pretty. That my son would probably be better off with someone else taking care of him. I don't feel like I can give my job away, i feel like it is the only thing defining me. God it is an ugly cycle. I have no "skills" per se. I have to get a sitter to get a job and I have to have a job to get a sitter. I know I am using that as my ultimate excuse

I wished for the Goblin King to come and take him away yesterday and I swear he disappeared for 5 seconds.

God I can hardly stand my fucking self-involved, bourgeois, problems.

Do they have a name for this?

In the present I am very narrow. I rarely think past today. Sometimes when someone asks me what's for dinner before noon I panic.
I am in the now. I think it is probably the place for all SAHM with a toddler. I think of our next meal and our next activity. The present is long. The present right now means, x hours till bedtime (seven but who's counting). The present seems like forever. E will always be a pain in my butt that doesn't listen to me.

I made this big confession today to my friend M.
"I don't like being a mom. There is so much ingratitude. I am starving for the 'good' parts of it."
"The thing is, I am pretty sure you are going to look back at these days as the best of your life, it only goes downhill from here."

Even as the words were coming our of her mouth I knew it was true. I am mired in minutia of the present. Future kristen is going to laugh at past kristen like she always does, Hegelian twilight and all...

So I live in the present terrified of the future. Of all the mistakes, the things we did and din't do - The regrets.

However, quoting M again, Don't give your fear power. Once it has strength, it grows legs, and it is aweful hard to reel back in.