Last night, my husband and I were having one of our typical exchanges. I get mad at him so easily, and this time is was because he had asked to do a ‘diary check’ as he calls it, which is usually just a data dump of what work and personal plans he has scheduled for the coming weeks and months. It’s hard for me to not be bitter during these sessions, as it is never me who makes plans without asking first. It is a bad habit, getting mad like I do, as he travels for work. Because this is the norm, we’ve carved a deep groove from the pattern of his trips being justified by work, but they nonetheless demand my time, as I am home, with the kids, while he is away. This requires additional mental and physical work on my part, that for which I do not see compensation. Just because I don’t see it, doesn’t mean it’s not there, as I am compensated, by a house over our heads and food to eat. Activities, cars, groceries, clothes – these are all paid for by the job that requires him to travel, and for that I must be grateful. But my work, my load, my vocation – of mother, wife, cleaner, shopper, cook, and so on – these contributions are not so easily measured. He sees me as living a free life, I can do whatever I want, he says. This is not how I see it, at all. This is at the core of many a disagreement. It enrages me, honestly. I have tried to go back to work, first as an English tutor, part-time, only during lunchtimes two days a week, as the only other time available was after school hours, and that wasn’t possible as I was then, and still am, the default parent. He works, he travels, I pick up the kids, do homework – in French – then dinner, bath, bedtime. I juggle the needs of three kids close in age, two of which are twins.

Now I am trying to work as an independent consultant, to get clients to pay me to tell them what to do. Essentially I try to tell everyone what to do anyway, so I thought I might as well get paid for it, and paid well enough that people will listen, as it is quite an investment for them. I have chosen this new path not only because it makes sense for me but because I love it, to think of holistic solutions to complex problems. Also, I have chosen it because I have accepted my lot as the default parent, the mother, the stay at home while he travels. My role has already been well carved out by years of pregnancy, loss, more pregnancy, birthing, breastfeeding, sleepless nights and co-sleeping.

Here I am, lucky, grateful, and fortunate enough to not have to work, as we have chosen to live in a country that supports and protect us, as parents, as people, as children, as families. Our health, our basic standard of living is protected and if and when needed is provided by the government. Daycare is affordable for everyone and obligatory preschool starts at age three, arguably too young, but this backdrop provides a safety net for all families and children, as they will be taken care of, provided for, and if you have three or more kids, or multiples, things get even better. So I have not had to work, even though the system is designed to get mothers back in the work force and away from their children as quickly as possible. I have been fortunate, but that’s not what this is about, today.

Now, as I try to work again, to focus, to reinvent and reestablish my career, I am struck down by how difficult it all is, and how my basic, core wiring is not made for all of this juggling, at all. I struggle with executive functioning, distraction, and staying focused. I need a wife of my own to cushion the fall, to take on some of this load so that I can truly thrive. For me, I’m either hyper-focused on one thing, something people nowadays call deep work, or I am frantically yet rhythmically multi-tasking, doing several things at once as though in some sort of strange choreographed pattern. You can’t interrupt me, offer suggestions nor instructions to me when I’m doing this,. You could ask my mother about this if she were still alive, as I will shout at you for distracting me for my mind jumps rapidly from task to task and back again, in an ecstatic, hyperactive pinging from one element to the next, organising, categorising, bopping like a pinball machine, eventually reaching its goal. I will do many things simultaneously, arranging spaces – sorting, comparing, then organising, categorising, prioritising, and then finally placing things in their right place though some sort of strange sixth sense. This is my gift. Give me any complex problem, and I will see a complex solution inside of it, and I can turn it inside out and put it in order But ask me to clean up as I go, whether in the kitchen, office, or closet, and I simply cannot do it. This, this is my curse.

So to be in a situation where I must not only do, but create, invent, plan, administer, execute, and manage, well, this is a nightmare. It is so only because, on top of these many complex elements, I have a family and a house to manage, and the deep, well-worn, and unforgiving grooves of the last almost 10 years of being either pregnant, trying to be pregnant, and having and caring for very young children who quite simply must come first. Even now, there are fevers, flus, falls, fights, all of them needing my time, care, and concern. I feel almost no progress in my professional life, even though I know that a year ago I wasn’t where I am now, and neither the year before that, and before that, and so on. But I am oh so very far from where I want to be, stuck in a hole that I can’t get out of. I wish I could do better, could return easier to where I left off each time I must walk away from my work, from the endless incomplete to-do lists, with so few things checked off. I can’t seem to find a way to manage the organisation. I always promise myself the nextday and the next will be better, come easier, but does it ever? So many days when my husband leaves for work with the kids to be dropped at school, I don’t even know what to do with myself. I feel lost, and I just want time to stop so that I can be still and recover from all of it. Maybe this is what can finally happen now, if I can keep doing the work, maybe I can recover from all of this and really just enjoy the banal beauty of my life, as the children are wonderful, beautiful creatures, and I can see that now clearer than ever before.

Parenting has not come natural to me, it has been a struggle. I know now that it is so in great part to me being so very broken, and in need of repair. As I continue to work on myself, to work towards emotional sobriety, to reparent myself, I am only now able to really enjoy being with my kids, instead of fearing and dreading my time with them, afraid of what might burst out of me, having such a low threshold for their noise and unpredictability. Now, I am just sad that I wasted so much time being so out of control. Now, I am grateful that I have taken a new path, finally, before the damage had become irreversible.

Now that I am on the right path, I also see bit by bit how much damage I have truly caused along the way. I am also realising that old patterns are hard to break. It’s like driving down a country lane with grooves in the dried mud that pull the wheels down into them as you try to cross. You need bigger tires, new ones, the good ones, or you’ll just slip down into those grooves again and again, even though you try your damnedest to get through the ravine, cursing the car, the tires, and the mud the whole way. But it’s me, my fault, for not learning the lesson all those times before, making those grooves even deeper, instead of just filling them up with a good load of gravel and getting the god damn new tires.

I’m at that point, I’m getting the damn tires. But how? I’ve got to take accountability for how I’ve made the grooves in the first place. It’s not god’s fault, or my husbands, or my parents, or the mud or the rain. I knew there was a problem, many problems, in that ravine of my soul. Alcohol was just the escape, the bad medicine, the relief I so desperately wanted from the fucking storm that brought the rain, again and again. I knew the storms were coming, they always do, so why didn’t I prepare for them? Why did I hope and wish them away instead of getting off of my ass and preparing for them? Well shit, I guess I just didn’t know any better at the time. I guess this what it means to not be so hard on yourself, myself. I didn’t even know what I didn’t know. But still, what a fucking waste.

How may years of my life have I wasted? How many hopes and dreams have I let die, let rot on the vine? How much music is still in me? All these clichés, these sayings, are so because they are true. So now that I begin to see, what do I do? A searching and fearless moral inventory is step 2, I believe. I may not have done the writing yet but now I can feel it, what it means. I wasn’t sure before if I could do it, but now I have miraculously turned a corner, after this same fight, argument, discussion with my husband. Stop having the same fight, stop pointing fingers, stop expecting him to love me differently if he doesn’t know how, and stop expecting him to know what to do if he’s shown repeatedly that he just doesn’t know. Stop having unrealistic expectations for everyone else, and excuses for myself. Stop looking for someone to blame, and start taking accountability for the mess that I am in.

As we were going round and round again, in between my angry explanations of what my husband had done wrong, somewhere in my awareness I began to take notice – we were both saying the same thing about the other person. He/I hadn’t done this or that, had been this way or that way, hadn’t shown love, or hadn’t been receptive to or even noticed being shown love in the way it was given. We were each blaming the other, instead of looking inside of ourselves. I was screaming out to be loved, instead of loving. Acting angry and cruel, instead of acting lovable. Justifying my actions, instead of apologising for them, and then expecting something positive in return, when coming forth with nothing but negativity.

So easy it is to slip back into old patterns, deflecting, instead of taking accountability Avoiding the painful truth about ourselves instead of looking in the mirror at the person being in the reflection. In a Sunday meditation group, I came to understand that I must be the way I want to be – kind, patient, understanding – if I want to be treated in the same way. Long gone are the days of the excuses of a child – I was tired, hungry, frustrated that things didn’t go my way. When I went downstairs to have the ‘diary check’ with my husband, I came down with a peaceful heart, but was triggered at the first sign of disappointment that he wasn’t acting how I expected him to, and lost it from there. How did I think he would respond? Have I such a high standard for everyone else that any deviation from perfect is not good enough? How dare I have such impossible standards? And what could I possibly hope to achieve through this behavioraul mechanism? Why oh why am I like this? I saw a clip this morning that reminded me of what I already know – this is a child wound. The wound is still there from being let down, not getting what I wanted or needed as a child, and not knowing how to deal with those emotions. At least now I know, and I can help my children to deal with the same types of inevitable disappointments, help them to figure out all of their big emotions, and reassure them that even through those big emotions, that they are going to be ok on the other side of them.

The big question is, where in my past did I learn this? Was my father this way towards my mother and vice versa? Was there constant psychological punishment in my home due to some damaged interactional play between the two of them? I guess I will have to reflect and learn to unlearn this. Enough of giving everyone such a hard time. Everyone keeps telling me to not be so hard on myself but honestly, when I hear this I know that they mean well but also that they are wrong. I must continue this deep introspection. Maybe I am the problem, it’s me. Maybe this burden of my past has become such an integral, driving force of my personality that it has taken over who I really am. But I do know, this I know deeply and truly, that it is time for me to lay this burden down, as it does not serve me and my loved ones at all, anymore.

—

Anti-Hero

Sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby
And I’m a monster on the hill
Too big to hang out, slowly lurching toward your favorite city
Pierced through the heart, but never killed

Did you hear my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism
Like some kind of congressman? (Tale as old as time)
I wake up screaming from dreaming
One day I’ll watch as you’re leaving
And life will lose all its meaning
(For the last time)

It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me
At tea time, everybody agrees
I’ll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror
It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero

Taylor Swift