Hormones & Hysteria
November 14, 2008
3mamasboys
I had the worst day yesterday. The WORST. I think my morning just got off to a horrible start. All three kids were having all three of their own problems and here I am, 9 months pregnant and exhausted and trying to solve them all while keeping all the plates spinning and all the balls juggling. My kids are wearing me down. Aidan hates everything about his new school and complains about it constantly and will go to any lengths to find a way back into public school. He is argumentative and disrespectful and talks back incessantly and is generally a miserable person to be around 24/7. Tristan’s ADD is never ending and I am literally spoon feeding him every action he must take in life. “Sit up. Stand up. Go pee. Get dressed. Eat. Brush teeth. Put coat on. Pick up backpack. Walk to bus stop.” (These simple commands taking up an entire hour of every morning, where between each command he becomes distracted and I find him daydreaming in a random section of the house.) The school calls me. He is constantly messing around. His entire life is spent with someone reminding him what he should be doing, because the necessary actions of life (sleep, eat, hygiene) take him so long to accomplish that he has no room for the luxuries. It has gotten so bad, so taxing and exhausting and so beyond my control that very soon, I will succumb to medication that I swore I never would. And Rylan, after nearly 3 years of complete bliss and sweetness and compliance, has become defiant and dangerous and angry. I do not even know this child anymore. He is aggressive and mean and runs from me at every opportunity. He throws temper tantrums and lashes out and he uses the words he hears his older brothers say. I feel like it does not matter how well I parent the babies. The older boys have been so completely screwed up that they are passing it down, like a disease. To top it all off, Brent is so very unhappy in his job (and rightfully so.) It’s been over three years now in construction, with little to no time off. No sick pay. No vacation pay. Constant physical work that has made him prematurely age and feel tired all of the time. It’s not a job he enjoys. It’s a job he endures each day so that we can have food on the table. On a good day, he will get home in just enough time to spend maybe two hours with his children. Often, he doesn’t see them at all. Even his precious weekends are spent completing tasks around the house that I am not able to do. It’s no wonder he struggles with cigarettes and alcohol. I would too. In fact, I feel like struggling with it now. How easy it would be to slip right in and kick back a few cocktails each day to take the screaming edge off of everything.
It all just came crashing down on me yesterday and I spent nearly four hours in hysterical, racking sobs. There has to be more to life than this. THERE HAS TO BE. I cannot imagine living this way until the end. This is not a life. This is normal, yes. This is the American lifestyle, sure. But it is not life. It is not what I want for myself, for my family, for my children. I called Brent at work and he was so worried that I had suddenly become a danger to myself that he immediately came home from work. (Something he has NEVER done before and will surely be punished for by his superiors.) Dramatic change has to happen in our life, we both agree. I am not emotionally able to keep this up, and certainly not with a newborn added to the mix. Brent is not willing to be so absent from his children’s lives, especially when the only purpose has been to provide us with enough square footage, a new vehicle, electronics and a pile of debt.
…..
On the pregnancy front, the full moon has officially begun and I am feeling its pull. Nine more days until my due date. We are approaching the Point of No Return.
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My Natural Pregnancy 
1.
James |
November 14, 2008 at 6:30 pm
I can understand the kid thing. My pesonal advice is to find something you can all do together, as a family, that they all can enjoy. It doesn’t have to take up massive amounts of time, and I realize that it probably couldn’t happen until after you have your baby. But kids are funny in that they need something solid in their life. Even if it’s just for an hour a week where you find the time to make a routine for them to do something as a family. And it’s likely they will probably fight you on it at first or the first couple of “meetings” will be complete uproar, but I think that that is more of a test from them. They want to know that you are willing to make huge sacrifices to give them something solid, and even if they don’t appreciate it now, they will someday. The best example is something my 40 year old cousin told me a few weeks ago at the bar. He told me that my mom took him to the fish hatchery one day when he was little and it was such a fun (and simple I might add) day that he never forgot it and is STILL talking about it years later.
I also understand Brent’s dillema. While my own situation isn’t PHYSICAL labor, I do very much know the mental stress of being trapped in a job to “put bread on the table.” Turns out I am going to have to scrimp and scrape to find extra money to go back to school to do what I want, just to pay child support because I CAN’T volunarily quit my job.
There IS more to life than that. There’s more to life than being trapped in a job you hate or more to life than having your kids go haywire (god, I’m not looking forward to that). But for now, it IS life, and it’s hard, but these things only happen because you can handle them. Call that cooky, but you (and everybody actually) are strong enough to surive through them and to make something better out of the chaos. So hang in there.
2.
antropologa |
November 14, 2008 at 7:07 pm
Oh that sucks. and you’re right; it’s how most Americans live. But it’s all fucked up.
3.
James |
November 15, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Speaking of there being more to life than this, I saw this videa recently and got a kick out of it: