I am Terrible
Hey guys! Happy Nov-- achoo-- oh, excuse me!
Ooh boy, this blog is dusty.
I am terrible. This is a theme of my life lately. The latest thing I failed to complete? The 7 day black and white photo challenge. That's right, folks, I am too flaky to post ONE photo per day on a site I visit once an hour.
I don't know why I'm like this.
Back in August I took a job substituting for an English teacher who was out on maternity leave. I don't know why I did this. It's no big secret that I was not a big fan of the teaching experience when I was a student teacher. And I had an 8-month-old (now almost 11-month-old) and no child care. So it was a weird choice. But I was depressed, and bored at home, and feeling guilty for not contributing financially. I (naively, it turns out) believed that getting a job, and working, would earn me some money.
So that job took up a lot of my time, and all of my mental energy, for a couple of months. Lesson planning and grading are no joke, even for a small school like the one where I was working. Then, through a series of misunderstandings that were partially my fault, but mostly the fault of faceless bureaucrats at the District level, and a little bit the fault of the Department of Justice (who labeled my fingerprints under my maiden name when they did my background check), I never got paid. I'm expecting to get paid in 3 weeks, when the next pay period ends, but I still have no idea how much per hour. So for all the time that I was working, my husband wasn't, because we needed someone to watch our daughter and other child care didn't work out. Consequently we're behind on all our bills, everything is scary, and I am directionlessly frustrated. It's not fair or right for me to wait for over three months to see a penny for my work, but it's not anyone's fault. There's nowhere to point the blame and nothing to do but wait, and try to stomp out the embers of frustration.
Kids are still emailing me from the school, wanting things graded or re-graded or checked. Some of them are making fair requests, some of them aren't, and I'm still behind on it. I have no reason or explanation for why I'm behind. I just keep not doing it.
On account of being terrible.
My neighbors have apparently been calling the county, complaining about the house. Some of them think it should be condemned. I'm not denying it's a mess out there. We've got a porch full of stuff waiting to be hauled away, a fair amount of trash stacked in the carport that needs to go to the dump, and huge weeds everywhere because our lawn mower broke and we can't afford to repair or replace it (because of the aforementioned never-being-paid). Now personally, I think it's ludicrous to think a house should be condemned because of some trash and overgrown weeds. I get that people are pissed that our house is old and not in the best shape and doesn't look nice and model-pretty but like... why? A lot of the houses on the street are old and untidy.
A big part of me is really angry. Why can't people just mind their own business? Why do they have to take it upon themselves to try to bring the county down on our heads?
But another part of me just feels like a failure. I want to haul away all the trash and fix the sagging porch and cut the grass and trim the hedges. In my head they're always on the list. But again, it just doesn't happen. I fail to follow through. I flake.
Every day goes by and every day feels full. I fall into bed most nights exhausted from the day and my head spinning with what I need to do the next day. Yet I keep failing in so many ways. And not small, normal ways, like regular people. In giant, huge, government-intervention ways. One day I put Poopy to bed at 8:30 and then I didn't wake up the next day until 1pm. 1pm, people. My daughter spent seventeen hours in her crib. She didn't cry or protest in any way, because if she had, I would have woken up. She didn't cry because she's like a Romanian orphan. I've clearly broken her and neglected her needs to the point where she no longer believes I'm ever coming for her, so there's no point in crying. If somebody who knows me reads this and calls CPS, they legitimately might want to investigate me. I can't get my bearings about this. Is this normal? Does every mother go through her days counting the dangerous and negligent things they accidentally do to their children? I just found a pistachio in Poopy's mouth. A whole pistachio, shell and all. I have no idea what else she ate in between mouth-checks. Last week I caught her right before she put a dead moth in there. Yesterday I was writing for way too long, trying to meet my NaNoWriMo word goal, putting off checking on Poopy, who I could hear crying in that uncommitted, half-hearted, attention-wanting way. When I went to check on her, you know where I found her? At the very top of the steep, dark, stairs that lead to the apartment above us. I couldn't stop imagining what could have happened if she had fallen down the stairs.
Maybe all of this is normal, or not a big deal. After all, I did stop her from eating the moth and the pistachio and falling down the stairs. On the other hand, she is awake after 10pm tonight, and full disclosure, the TV is on in the same room she's in, and it often is. And I did leave her in her crib, in the same diaper, for seventeen hours. And just now, while I was typing this, she choked on another pistachio shell and Prince Charming had to fish it out. I'm not sure if I want to justify myself and laugh at the trials of motherhood, or if I'm kind of hoping some kind of professional will intervene and remove this child from me before I actually neglect her to death.
Oh also Post-Partum depression. It's real, guys, and, pardon my French, it's a real bitch. It's like a black snake around my throat, hissing in my ear that I'm not good enough. That someone else ought to be raising my daughter, not me. That I don't love her properly, because I am a bad and broken person. I'm missing all the best parts of life, the joy and treasuring everyone talks about, because sometimes I can barely force my eyes open in the morning. And I hate it. I hate being bogged down, stuck, this useless hunk of sadness. I like effectiveness. I like energy. I like a get-er-done attitude and decent work ethic. I don't like when people dissolve into tears of self-loathing at every obstacle instead of overcoming them. But that's who I am right now. Letting myself and everyone around me down at every turn. Boring myself and everyone around me with pessimism and despair.
Ohhhkay. That's no fun.
It's getting better, though. It's getting so much better. I've started writing again, working on a new book idea for NaNoWriMo. I'm focusing on spending more quality time with Poopy, more time getting down on the floor with her and playing with her. I'm asking for more help. I'm crying less, and for better reasons.
This thing with my house (or, rather, very pointedly NOT my house, but the house in which I currently reside) is really crushing me, though, and I think it's because it's such a confirmation of my fears. I go through life being pretty hard on myself. I have high expectations. I try to tell myself that I'm my own worst critic, that nobody else is judging me as harshly as I judge myself. But this proves that actually, I go too easy on myself. As hard as I feel like I'm working just to function, it's not going to be enough in the eyes of some. There are people who don't believe I deserve a house, because I don't take good enough care of it. There will probably be people who would read this and genuinely feel like I don't deserve my daughter, that I'm an unfit parent. There will be people who hear that it took me months to forgive my daughter for the pain and trauma of her birth, and they will think I am a bad mother, and a bad person.
Maybe, though, someone will read this and identify. Maybe you, too, are occasionally a terrible parent. Maybe you, too, are haunted by nightmares depicting what might have happened if you intervened two minutes later. Maybe your kid has been hurt by your mistakes. In fact, if you're a parent for long enough, I have a feeling that's pretty much going to be the case. I think it's ok. I can't always forgive myself (seventeen hours), but when I imagine you-- reading this, beating yourself up, wondering if anyone else is also terrible-- I can forgive you. I can see what a good person you still are. I can see how hard you're trying and how much you care. Maybe that matters more. Maybe if CPS was monitoring all of us, all of the time, we'd all be under review. I hope you can forgive me, too. I know our kids forgive us. When Poopy looks at me with that dimply grin and bounces up and down shouting "MAMAMAMAMAMA!" I know I'm a rockstar in her eyes. I'm never going to stop trying to live up to that.
And I'm never going to bed without setting an alarm again.
Ooh boy, this blog is dusty.
I am terrible. This is a theme of my life lately. The latest thing I failed to complete? The 7 day black and white photo challenge. That's right, folks, I am too flaky to post ONE photo per day on a site I visit once an hour.
I don't know why I'm like this.
Back in August I took a job substituting for an English teacher who was out on maternity leave. I don't know why I did this. It's no big secret that I was not a big fan of the teaching experience when I was a student teacher. And I had an 8-month-old (now almost 11-month-old) and no child care. So it was a weird choice. But I was depressed, and bored at home, and feeling guilty for not contributing financially. I (naively, it turns out) believed that getting a job, and working, would earn me some money.
So that job took up a lot of my time, and all of my mental energy, for a couple of months. Lesson planning and grading are no joke, even for a small school like the one where I was working. Then, through a series of misunderstandings that were partially my fault, but mostly the fault of faceless bureaucrats at the District level, and a little bit the fault of the Department of Justice (who labeled my fingerprints under my maiden name when they did my background check), I never got paid. I'm expecting to get paid in 3 weeks, when the next pay period ends, but I still have no idea how much per hour. So for all the time that I was working, my husband wasn't, because we needed someone to watch our daughter and other child care didn't work out. Consequently we're behind on all our bills, everything is scary, and I am directionlessly frustrated. It's not fair or right for me to wait for over three months to see a penny for my work, but it's not anyone's fault. There's nowhere to point the blame and nothing to do but wait, and try to stomp out the embers of frustration.
Kids are still emailing me from the school, wanting things graded or re-graded or checked. Some of them are making fair requests, some of them aren't, and I'm still behind on it. I have no reason or explanation for why I'm behind. I just keep not doing it.
On account of being terrible.
My neighbors have apparently been calling the county, complaining about the house. Some of them think it should be condemned. I'm not denying it's a mess out there. We've got a porch full of stuff waiting to be hauled away, a fair amount of trash stacked in the carport that needs to go to the dump, and huge weeds everywhere because our lawn mower broke and we can't afford to repair or replace it (because of the aforementioned never-being-paid). Now personally, I think it's ludicrous to think a house should be condemned because of some trash and overgrown weeds. I get that people are pissed that our house is old and not in the best shape and doesn't look nice and model-pretty but like... why? A lot of the houses on the street are old and untidy.
A big part of me is really angry. Why can't people just mind their own business? Why do they have to take it upon themselves to try to bring the county down on our heads?
But another part of me just feels like a failure. I want to haul away all the trash and fix the sagging porch and cut the grass and trim the hedges. In my head they're always on the list. But again, it just doesn't happen. I fail to follow through. I flake.
Every day goes by and every day feels full. I fall into bed most nights exhausted from the day and my head spinning with what I need to do the next day. Yet I keep failing in so many ways. And not small, normal ways, like regular people. In giant, huge, government-intervention ways. One day I put Poopy to bed at 8:30 and then I didn't wake up the next day until 1pm. 1pm, people. My daughter spent seventeen hours in her crib. She didn't cry or protest in any way, because if she had, I would have woken up. She didn't cry because she's like a Romanian orphan. I've clearly broken her and neglected her needs to the point where she no longer believes I'm ever coming for her, so there's no point in crying. If somebody who knows me reads this and calls CPS, they legitimately might want to investigate me. I can't get my bearings about this. Is this normal? Does every mother go through her days counting the dangerous and negligent things they accidentally do to their children? I just found a pistachio in Poopy's mouth. A whole pistachio, shell and all. I have no idea what else she ate in between mouth-checks. Last week I caught her right before she put a dead moth in there. Yesterday I was writing for way too long, trying to meet my NaNoWriMo word goal, putting off checking on Poopy, who I could hear crying in that uncommitted, half-hearted, attention-wanting way. When I went to check on her, you know where I found her? At the very top of the steep, dark, stairs that lead to the apartment above us. I couldn't stop imagining what could have happened if she had fallen down the stairs.
Maybe all of this is normal, or not a big deal. After all, I did stop her from eating the moth and the pistachio and falling down the stairs. On the other hand, she is awake after 10pm tonight, and full disclosure, the TV is on in the same room she's in, and it often is. And I did leave her in her crib, in the same diaper, for seventeen hours. And just now, while I was typing this, she choked on another pistachio shell and Prince Charming had to fish it out. I'm not sure if I want to justify myself and laugh at the trials of motherhood, or if I'm kind of hoping some kind of professional will intervene and remove this child from me before I actually neglect her to death.
Oh also Post-Partum depression. It's real, guys, and, pardon my French, it's a real bitch. It's like a black snake around my throat, hissing in my ear that I'm not good enough. That someone else ought to be raising my daughter, not me. That I don't love her properly, because I am a bad and broken person. I'm missing all the best parts of life, the joy and treasuring everyone talks about, because sometimes I can barely force my eyes open in the morning. And I hate it. I hate being bogged down, stuck, this useless hunk of sadness. I like effectiveness. I like energy. I like a get-er-done attitude and decent work ethic. I don't like when people dissolve into tears of self-loathing at every obstacle instead of overcoming them. But that's who I am right now. Letting myself and everyone around me down at every turn. Boring myself and everyone around me with pessimism and despair.
Ohhhkay. That's no fun.
It's getting better, though. It's getting so much better. I've started writing again, working on a new book idea for NaNoWriMo. I'm focusing on spending more quality time with Poopy, more time getting down on the floor with her and playing with her. I'm asking for more help. I'm crying less, and for better reasons.
This thing with my house (or, rather, very pointedly NOT my house, but the house in which I currently reside) is really crushing me, though, and I think it's because it's such a confirmation of my fears. I go through life being pretty hard on myself. I have high expectations. I try to tell myself that I'm my own worst critic, that nobody else is judging me as harshly as I judge myself. But this proves that actually, I go too easy on myself. As hard as I feel like I'm working just to function, it's not going to be enough in the eyes of some. There are people who don't believe I deserve a house, because I don't take good enough care of it. There will probably be people who would read this and genuinely feel like I don't deserve my daughter, that I'm an unfit parent. There will be people who hear that it took me months to forgive my daughter for the pain and trauma of her birth, and they will think I am a bad mother, and a bad person.
Maybe, though, someone will read this and identify. Maybe you, too, are occasionally a terrible parent. Maybe you, too, are haunted by nightmares depicting what might have happened if you intervened two minutes later. Maybe your kid has been hurt by your mistakes. In fact, if you're a parent for long enough, I have a feeling that's pretty much going to be the case. I think it's ok. I can't always forgive myself (seventeen hours), but when I imagine you-- reading this, beating yourself up, wondering if anyone else is also terrible-- I can forgive you. I can see what a good person you still are. I can see how hard you're trying and how much you care. Maybe that matters more. Maybe if CPS was monitoring all of us, all of the time, we'd all be under review. I hope you can forgive me, too. I know our kids forgive us. When Poopy looks at me with that dimply grin and bounces up and down shouting "MAMAMAMAMAMA!" I know I'm a rockstar in her eyes. I'm never going to stop trying to live up to that.
And I'm never going to bed without setting an alarm again.
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