It’s been a minute since I’ve posted. There has been a lot of travel lately with my day job and my family life. Although it has been fun, it is hard to pretend everyday life is normal. Everyday is a new hellish nightmare crisis and major political scandal in the US. Navigating that and trying to keep my shit together in my daily life came to a head today.
I have been so angry. Angry at the injustice of it all, and angry at the lack of action on so many people’s parts. It seems the moment something becomes a slight inconvenience people check out. They truly believe that just posting some shit on social media is enough. IT👏🏼IS👏🏼NOT👏🏼ENOUGH👏🏼! It makes me angry that so many are standing by. I’m sure they have their reasons and it’s not like I’m sacrificing every little convenience, but I’m definitely giving up some things in my life to fight. I wish more people would be willing to do more, even if it’s calling their reps.
Today started out rough. I was trying to get out the door and nothing was where it was supposed to be because the day before we got back from traveling. No one wants to unpack when they get home from a trip. Then there was some stupid reason my husband got irritated with me. I have a tendency to not let things go, so naturally it escalated and he said something that I felt was a judgement on my parenting. Whether he meant to do it or not doesn’t matter. It cracked the dam holding back the anger.
After an uncomfortable dinner of me holding back my wanting to scream at him every thought in my lizard brain, I get to do the bedtime routine. I actually very much enjoy doing the bedtime routine, and look forward to it. Yesterday we went to clean up the playroom and my son didn’t want to participate. It’s been a struggle getting him to pick up his toys consistently. He accepted his “punishment” if I had to pick them up, and apologized. Later that night he asked to go pick up his toys, and apologized for throwing them while I was picking them up, making a bigger mess.
This morning he asked for his punishment, which was no toys from the playroom for a day, to be lifted and said he would help clean them up that evening. You can see where this is going… I am trying to get out of the habit of repeating my ask to him. It’s been hard finding ways to get him to comply without doing what my parents did. That is not how I want to behave.
So it’s the end of the day, and I’m the one he pushes his limits with. After asking twice and him saying “no, mama pick up.” the dam broke. I gave my baby a forehead kiss, turned around to hubs and asked him to take over, as the tears came. Tears of anger and frustration and feeling like a failure. A failure as a parent and as a partner and as a US citizen.
Sadly, I have no advice and no plan. I am not doing better than any other parent navigating living in the US at this moment. I only hope they are doing something, anything, to move us in the right (that is to say left) direction….