Every morning, both of my children are in bed with me before I wake up. I can’t remember exactly when this started, but some time over the last few months, Jonas developed a habit of creeping into bed with us somewhere around 4 am. Julesy comes in at about 7 am when he wakes up for the day. We have a pretty solid routine of snuggling together and watching morning cartoons before I drag us all out of bed for breakfast. It’s actually quite cute. Julesy sits up in bed and says “Mommy, I wanna watch a liddle bit of TV.” And so we do. This morning, Jonas woke up and immediately started freaking out about wanting to watch one certain cartoon. He got lippy, the way he generally does these days, and I closed my eyes to breathe and think for a minute instead of getting frustrated with him.
Just prior to that, Julesy had been headbutting me in the leg – which is his “thing” – the headbutting. I told him to stop because it was really hurting, then I closed my eyes to gather myself. With my eyes closed, I started to think about a documentary we watched the other night which linked ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) with head injuries. I was in the middle of wondering if I’d get Lou Gehrig’s disease if Julesy decided me to headbutt me in the head, when the little fucker did exactly that.
For some reason, out of nowhere, Julesy threw his head backwards with the force of a freight train, smashing me straight down the middle of my face. He managed to hit everything from my forehead to my teeth, which felt like an absolute explosion of pain.
I sat up, stunned, but not numb. Every inch of my face was on fire. Violent anger washed over me and, god help me, I wanted that boy to be in as much pain as I was. Undoubtedly, he certainly was in as much pain because, after all, it was his head that hit my head. As he sobbed, I told myself I should comfort him because, duh, my child was hurt. But, the blinding pain of the knot forming between my eyes turned to blinding rage, and all I could feel toward him was hatred. Pure, unadulterated hatred.
And then, I hated myself for being a horrible mother who couldn’t look past her own pain to comfort her small child. As it was turning out, I realized I’m no different than my bio mom. She was fucked up, and now, so am I. I suppose the only difference between she and I is that I haven’t run away. Yet.
Then, like I’ve felt so many times before, my breath caught in my throat like a noose around my neck, and I started crying. No, crying isn’t the word. Sobbing might be right, but even that doesn’t explain it. I soaked the bed with the kind of tears reserved for the deepest grief. The kind of grief that leaves you begging the world to just make it stop for one minute so you can fill your lungs with air again.
But it didn’t stop, so I called my husband. He answered the phone and I wailed. Pretty quickly, I realized that the kind of wailing I was doing might have him thinking that one of our children was hurt, so I just told him “I can’t do this anymore.” And then I cried harder. He asked me what was wrong and I blubbered that Julesy had bashed me in the face and Jonas woke up yelling at me about the stupid remote and his stupid cartoons and I just couldn’t stand it, and I couldn’t do this anymore, and it wasn’t what I agreed to, and he’s never home, and please don’t make me do this anymore. Do what? I dunno. Suffer like this, I suppose. I was in an incredible amount of pain both from my face, and in my stomach where another knot was forming.
Then he asked to talk to Jonas, and Jonas blamed Julesy for making me cry, but Daddy made him say he was sorry about yelling at me over the remote. Then he wanted to talk to Julesy, who was, by then, completely over the incident and had begun pulling forbidden things off my desk (like the stapler) and laughing hysterically in his mischief. Typical.
I finally let my husband off the phone when I knew there was nothing else he could do. I didn’t feed the kids breakfast. I turned on the TV, pulled a pillow over my face, and went back to sleep. When their fighting became unbearable, I promised them we’d go to the kitchen. Just then, I heard the front door slam, and the kids ran to see who was there. I just figured it was the landlord coming in and out because he had been there all morning working on the basement, but once the kids yelled “Grandma!” I started crying hysterically again.
He had called his mother. He called her to come over and save me from my children, and save them from me. I didn’t want her seeing me like this, but I suppose somebody had to feed my kids. She sat on the bed while I soaked my pillow with ugly tears and squeaked out answers to her questions. Then she told me to sleep.
I couldn’t sleep though. I had to do homework. I got up, showered, and drove to school. I cried a little more anytime I thought nobody was looking. My head pounded. An hour before class started, I fell asleep in my chair for about 15 minutes. My face was swollen. I was a mess. Depression had a chokehold on me and I could hardly do anything but wallow in it. My whole body hurt. My whole life hurt.
I managed to drag myself into my classroom, and settle in to a seat, assuming I’d continue to feel like a pile of shit for the rest of the night. I’m happy to say that the class lifted my mood, as school usually does. Yes, I’m an authentic nerd, but this class was especially interesting to me because it was a Sociology class on Sex & Gender. Right up my alley. And the teacher was great. The kind of person who makes it impossible to be suicidally depressed in his presence.
I could blame today’s breakdown on pregnancy hormones, but the truth is I’ve been on the verge of full-on crying jag for quite some time. I’ve never really recovered from the PPD or PTSD I began suffering from four years ago, and every day is an exercise in trying to feel better.
Tomorrow, I suppose I’ll try a little harder. Today was an absolute bust.
