Posts Tagged "honesty"
Right Now
You have all been so lovely the last few days. The comments on my post about the Health Visitor’s worries about Kai have been endlessly comforting and supporting and I am so grateful for you taking the time to respond so thoughtfully. Thank you.
I had a bit of bad day with it all yesterday. Actually, I had A LOT of a bad day. There were moments there were I could genuinely have opened the front door and run as fast as my legs could carry me.
I didn’t, obviously. Instead I wrestled the ferocious ball of frustration and bad-temper that is my son till bedtime, put him to bed without a bath and went downstairs and cried. And cried. And cried some more.
I doubted everything yesterday. EVERYTHING about myself, about Kai, about my abilities and suitability as a mother, about my perception of my life and how perhaps that differs from reality.
And do you know what scared me most? That maybe there is absolutely nothing wrong with him at all. That he is just spirited, and wilful and frustrated with the world – no different from most other toddlers.
And weirdly, this made me feel like shit.
I convinced myself that every toddler is like Kai, that all mums have to manage behaviour like his, and as such, the fact that I’m struggling to cope with it so much means I am just weak, neurotic and failing miserably. You probably have three children like Kai. Ten. And you still manage to do normal things like brush your hair, and eat, and go out.
Everyone tells me he is delightful, and fun, and charming and he IS! Maybe what I endure behind closed doors I have blown vastly out of proportion.
Maybe I am just not cut out for all this at all.
No, don’t get me wrong. I don’t want there to be anything ‘wrong’ with Kai. It’s just that the thought that it is supposed to be like this, supposed to be so impossibly hard and feel so unmanageable ALL THE TIME just made me go cold.
Luckily, I have good friends. Good, kind, honest, supportive friends who listen (and I could list hundreds of you, thank you so much).
I have a husband who has been through it all with me and keeps me grounded.
And after being told an awful lot of sense, I realised this.
Do you know what? Kai is hard work. He is really, really hard work.
I’m not saying its some kind of competition about ‘who has it the hardest’, or that other parents don’t find it hard either,but the reality of life with Kai is incredibly challenging and I don’t think anyone could question that.
He’s always been hard work – early months of constant crying and refusal to be any where but attached to me, followed by endless battles getting him to cope with transitions and change and him resisting everything. The speech delay and the near-constant tantrums and the freak outs at the slightest thing are just a continuation of something that’s been going on from the beginning.
He can be lovely of course. He is obviously bright, and can be so much fun and entertaining. He charms everyone around him and can be fabulous company. He plays beautifully, when in the mood to, and if you get it right with him you get it SO right and it is wonderful.
But this is offset by the most rigid personality I have ever come across. It is offset by moods completely dependent on things being just how he wants them to be and endless frustration and tears and anger when they are not. And I can honestly say? The hard times far outweigh the good times right now.
I am not enjoying motherhood right now. It’s not much fun to be honest.
A vast proportion of my day is spent ‘coping’ with Kai, managing his moods and single-minded determination and enduring the frequent screaming, crying, hitting, pulling, outpouring of his emotions. Every single day involves a good deal of time listening to long bouts of crying. It’s incredibly draining, exhausting. And I defy anyone to not find it hard.
And the speech thing IS worrying. The constant, weird, babbled gobbledegook? The fact that has somehow ‘forgotten’ how to say the odd word he could say a few months back? That he makes NO attempt to imitate words yet will copy the sounds he hears himself making on recordings? Of course it’s worrying. I’m not saying it won’t right itself, I’m sure it will, but obviously it’s going to be a concern to me. What kind of mother would I be if it wasn’t?
Whether he fits some kind of ‘label’ or not, whether he is like other kids or not, whether I find it harder than you or anyone else? It doesn’t really matter. Deep down I know it will be fine. I know that he will be fine, that he will grow out of most stuff, and we will survive. I know that really I am very lucky, he is healthy, so am I. I know it could all be so much worse.
But it doesn’t change how hard it is right now. It doesn’t change how much I am struggling.
What matters is I love him. I love him so much it actually hurts me to think about it. I see so much positive in him, despite all the bad stuff, and I am so enormously proud of him, of his fierce strength and passion.
I know I am doing the best I can, I know I am doing a good job, even, because I care about all this stuff and I think about it and I want to make Kai happy.
I just want to be a better mother for him.
I want to figure out what is he needs that I seem to be missing.
Mostly, I just want to see him happy.
And I want to see me happy too.
Read MoreMake friends, make friends, never ever break friends
I am curled in a ball on the sofa, wrapped in a blanket, my face turned away from you, my eyes tight shut against the glare of the artificial light of our early morning.
Vague sounds of the television and your quiet play and chatter filter through but don’t penetrate past the armour I have so carefully applied this morning. You are just noise to me. I wish you weren’t here.
I wish I wasn’t here.
I feel bruised. My body pinched, pulled, rearranged. A night of being your bed, comforter, punching bag, drinks dispenser, toy, as you worked through your rage and despair and frustration and all of the other things that seem to plague your nights. I wonder at what point last night did I finally shut down? At what point did I stop hearing the crying and just switch off to the writhing, grasping, angry little body in my arms. At what point did you stop being my baby and become something I had to endure? It was before exhaustion took you, finally, that much I know. Long before. Your stamina long eclipsing mine. My head hitting the pillow numb and empty.
I feel nothing now. My body moving on auto-pilot as I was woken from a sleep only just begun. I am cold, my skin prickling, as if the emotional drainage of the night has taken all my body heat with it. I shake, I shiver, wrapped in my cocoon and in darkness.
And yet even now, in my dark place, the mother synapses fire again. Ears on alert for sounds of distress and need. I hate that the instinct is so strong, that even when I want to disengage it holds me. Even now blissful nothingness is beyond my grasp, however much I wish for it, as anger burns hot in my chest. Dull but there, keeping me from icing up completely. I suppose I should be grateful for it. Grateful for feeling something. Because what kind of mother feels nothing?
Wrapped in shadow I am concious of time passing. All too soon the sounds of contented occupation begin to morph to sighs and little murmurs of annoyance. It is inevitable.
And then.
Movement. A shuffle. Warm fingers feeling there way beneath my covers to find my face, probing but gentle, searching for a connection and a response.
“Mama”
I am defrosting. The guilt is creeping back now. A familiar friend. Guilt that I seem unable to perform such a basic a function as enduring your need for me. Guilt at my weakness, at my selfishness, at my inadequate limits. Guilt that I am not enough, never enough for you. Guilt that I could ever wish you far away.
Turning, I pull you up and under, your body settling into my shape. I cannot yet look at you but your eager grin hovers an inch from my face in the half-light, your breath heavy and sweet. You wriggle your way through my defences, seeking out my bruises and my hurts with gentle hands, your fingers pushing their way through my hair to stroke and sooth and pat: movements learnt from being their recipient so many times.
You lie still for only a moment, but it is long enough for me to feel a rush of love so strong and deep it takes my breath, releasing in one low, shaking sob, that makes my body move and throw off the cover to let in the bright light of the dawn, here at last.
And I hold you close to me, breathing in your smell and your warmth and your life as the long night drips off me, and you begin to chatter with your nonsense words, telling me of your plans, about the red car that just drove past and that the dog from next door is awake and barking hello, and how you’d really like some breakfast please.
I take your hands in mine and plant a kiss on each small palm and look up at you to smile. Breakfast. Yes.
Read MoreCircles of Trust
Something has been playing on my mind a little lately.
You see, for me, the internet has always been about making connections. I’ve gravitated towards social networking sites, like Facebook and Twitter; towards forums and chatrooms. It’s been about finding information, yes, but mostly about making friends. I’m not a overly sociable person by nature, something I’ve talked about on here before, tending to feel shy and clumsy in front of people, and the ability to type rather than talk, to have to time to think about what to say, has always made me feel more confident, witty, and articulate than I feel in real life. I suspect many of you with a similar love for the online world feel the same.
Often I feel too tired for the effort of social interaction in my real life. I don’t get most people, or feel that they get me. I’m not very good at opening up to people, feeling like I have to pretend to be someone ‘acceptable’ the whole time, nor am particularly good at social niceties. I get irritated and bored easily, feel easily overwhelmed, and am very self concious. There are very few people I feel comfortable being truly myself with – my family, Ant and my best friend are the only people I’m not embarrassed to be ‘me’ with.
Online though it is different. I can choose to walk away from a social situation at any time. I can choose what information I reveal and what I choose to keep hidden, what points of view I’d like to share and those discussions I’d rather avoid. I can choose to spend time with the people I connect with, and politely ignore those that I don’t. I get to make the rules, and I love that.
I wonder sometimes what most of you would think of me if you met me in real life. Would you be disappointed? Surprised?
Generally I think I’ve been very honest on here, in fact I find it almost impossible not to be. I’ve revealed things I never would if I met you in real life, the safety of hiding behind my computer screen making me brave and allowing me to open up in a way I usually struggle with. I feel like I always give you an accurate picture of the ‘real’ me, although maybe it is not the me that would be obviously apparent if you were to meet me. In short though, I have been truthful. Always.
I tend to make the automatic assumption that the people I come across on the internet are the same. I assume that when they talk about themselves, they too are being honest and truthful, giving a fair representation of their lives and of themselves. I mean, why would I doubt them? I do believe that the vast majority of the people that use the internet for social networking are genuine, honest people looking, like me, for a little connection. Perhaps, like me, their online persona is more comfortable for them then their real life one but at the end of the day, the people I ‘meet’ are the people that they are.
Generally my experiences have backed this up. I have, in the past, made friendships so strong online that they have carried over into real life too. I have met a number of people that I have previously only known by nicknames, or through an online presence, and meeting them has been an amazing and positive experience – I may have never met these people but I did know them, some of them better than the vast majority of my real life friends. I feel my life is vastly enriched by these online friendships, both those in my past that are now real life friends too, and new friends that I’ve made recently through Twitter and the blog, some of whom I already feel very close to.
However.
Sometimes I do wonder if that is a little naive. There was once an incident in which I person I had befriended wasn’t who she said she was, or at least, the evidence seemed to point that way. I was deeply shocked and hurt, and for a time did become more wary about who I chose to trust. But I don’t like being suspicious of people, more predisposed to trust than I am to mistrust, and once again find myself placing a great amount of confidence in my online world, that it is exactly as it appears to be.
I’m really interested to know what you think about this.
SHOULD we trust the people we meet online? Should we exercise some caution? And how can you do that with out being cagey, paranoid and cynical? How do we protect ourselves yet still allow ourselves to be open enough to really connect with people? Have you generally found people to be truthful? Or have you been let down by people who weren’t who they said they were?
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