Tag Archives: falling short

I cannot give him a different mother

I cannot give my child two emotionally stable parents.

I cannot give my child a home without yelling.

I cannot give my child a home without irrational outbursts.

I cannot give my child the serene, fully consensual, peaceful environment I desire for him.

I cannot give my child a non-crazy mother.

But.

I can show him how to apologize.

I can show him how to breathe through anger.

I can show him how to try again.

I can show him how to survive a tumultuous childhood, as I did.

I can show him how to heal.

I can give him me.

31 Comments | Posted on 3 July 2011 by Arwyn | Category: Body, Parenting | Tags: bipolar, falling short, Mental Health

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A really bad day

I wrote this three weeks ago, but couldn’t bring myself to publish it at the time. Then, the day after I wrote it, things got better. Not great, but better, and all that changed was me. Sometimes, asking for help is enough to receive it, even when we ask an empty room.

I have never deliberately hit my child.

I start with this, hold it out as an emotional talisman, to ward off the evil I from what I say below.

I have never purposefully hit my child, but I have hurt him, caused him physical pain through deliberate action as surely as though I had raised my hand to him.

My hand — this hand, gripping his as he struggles to pull away, as he screams “Stop! You’re hurting me! Let go of me!” I feel his ischemic skin under me still, can recall the grating of his bones as they attempt to twist away under mine. There were extenuating circumstances, to be sure, but aren’t there always? They feel like excuses, the same as any other abuser: I had to, he made me, it was for his own good. Did I grip tighter than necessary, in anger, squeeze more cruelly in my rage? I cannot say no and not know it a lie.

I feel still his flesh under mine, and the urge to hurt my hand in restitution (not revenge; its agony is too well earned) is a physical force, like gravity, pulling me to hit, to cut, to bruise and bloody and break until the feel of him pulling from me fades, until the blood pounding in ears is drained, until I cannot hear him pleading me to stop hurting him, mama, stop hurting me, let go!

***

This body of mine doesn’t deserve to feel good, to be pain-free, when it contains the tactile memory of harming my child, when it contains the potential to do so again. A part of me knows the uselessness of this limited thinking — pain begets more pain, healing begets healing — but I cannot convince the core of me it does not deserve to suffer for what it has done.

***

He won’t get in his car seat. So often, it comes down to that ridiculously mundane thing. I want to loathe the contraption, to curse the laws of state and physics that demand its use, but rationally I know it is little more than a symbol for both of us. If it were not the seat, likely it would be something else, some other point that would act as fulcrum and wedge between us, would be come the trophy in our struggle: his control, my freedom; his freedom, my confinement.

So often we don’t go out, not because he wouldn’t go — he’s happy to strap in when the bookstore or preschool is on the other end — but because the return is so agonizing. I have a choice, always, between the sedentary depression of staying home, or the awful antagonism of trying to return.

My impulse, so often, is to go out — when I am manic, to go and run and do, when I am depressed, to go and get away and be anywhere but here, when I am relatively well, to go and get things done. To be confined, trapped, at home or in a place not my choosing, unable to leave at all at my will, is not mere inconvenience: it is sickening. It is, perhaps, not unbearable per se, but sometimes it is more than I can bear, and often more than I am able to bear if I am to also, ever, have the ability to do anything but survive it.

At some point, the human body breaks down under stress.

I think I can be stable on my own, have learned through trial and so many errors how to manage my moods to minimize instabilities, when my time is my own. But when it’s not — when my every movement must account for the dictates of a capricious creature, not deliberately but casually cruel, uncaring of my needs and the demands of my moods — and it always is so — I don’t know how to not lose it, except through a grip so tight it twists arms and damages tissue. It hurts.

***

When I can, I wait for him. I give him time and space to choose. I give him control over as many parts of the experience as I can: arms under, pull out the bottom buckle (for it inevitably ends up underneath him), clip the top, guide the clasp to the buckle, your hand on mine as I click it in place. Before then, even: how many more times would you like to go down the slide? Yes, you may open the door yourself, climb in yourself, close the door in my face and make me knock and open it again from the inside yourself, fine. Whatever. Rituals are developmentally appropriate, if damned annoying, so knock yourself out making me knock, kid. Just get in the damned car seat.

Sometimes this works. Other times it does not. Today was an other time. Today was an abundant heads-ups, lots-of-options, still-didn’t-want-to-leave, carried-him-out-kicking-and-screaming day. Today was half an hour playing in the car and finally an agreement to leave and we’re scraping the bottom of my well of patience, dragging up brackish tones that are as close as I can get to the calming voice I know would help, but it has to be enough, and it will be enough because he’s getting in his seat — except wait, now he wants to get out and have me knock on the other doors, and maybe that would have been the magic step but after so many prior misdirections, I cannot try, there is not one last chance left and I lose it and I force him in the seat, and the straps are scraping his skin and his tears are falling on my sleeve and his body crumples under my “superior” strength, as I prove to him, viscerally teach, that might makes right, and I am glad we got rid of the car with the clutch because I can drive away left-handed, my right reaching back and stopping his from undoing his upper buckle — his arms twist in my hand — as he screams and curses and cries and some stranger in a truck stopped at the light next to us stares through the window and wonders if he should call the cops and I swear to god I’m not sure he shouldn’t.

That was today.

***

Some of you are thinking I give too many choices to a child, would chide me that it’s my own fault, I need to put my foot down. To you I say, fuck off. Not only are you wrong because it is wrong to treat another so, I’ve already tried that anyway: all upping the pressure does is quicken the explosion, and we are both that much more miserable that sooner.

Some of you are thinking I am asking too much, not giving enough, not patient enough, not creative enough in my solutions, too insistent that we ever leave the house or the park or the preschool, and to you too I say fuck off, because sometimes there is no more to give, no more daylight to stay out, no more blood sugar to wait another half hour, no more options when the appointment is across town, no creativity left to be had when it’s taking my all to just not hurt myself or him. If you want to move me to the mythical land of everything I could want in walking distance and a dozen alloparents when I need to tag out, then we’ll talk. Until then, take your shoulds and shove ‘em.

Some of you, too, are thinking it’s all normal, and this too shall pass, and I’ll laugh at this some day and to you too I say, no matter how well meaning your platitudes — and I know they mostly are — fuck off. This is not a way anyone should have to live, this is not ok, this is not merely the moanings of a bad-day mother. Everyone has bad days; not everyone is trapped at home in terror of a tiny tyrant and their own responses to such. Not everyone has to chose between going crazy at home and going crazy out, when crazy is not an overused hyperbole but a terrifying, dangerous reality.

(Some of you are thinking this is nothing, and you are carrying secrets far worse, and wondering if I feel this bad about this, how should you feel? And to you I say: I’m sorry. I offer you all the compassion and love and forgiveness I cannot draw forth for myself. I hope for you the solace and strength and healing, for yourself and your children, that I despair of finding for myself.)

I do not claim to be unique. I would not presume to declare myself worse off than everyone, or anyone, else. But before you shove me into the slot you lined up for me — monster, martyr, mundane mother –, before you wag your finger or pat my head or dial CPS, hear me.

Do not judge me and so dismiss me, whether as over-permissive, overbearing, or ordinary: see me, know me. Help me.

46 Comments | Posted on 25 January 2011 by Arwyn | Category: Body, Parenting | Tags: attachment parenting, bipolar, cycle of abuse, falling short, Mental Health, violence against children

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Quick Hit on Ineffective Parenting Techniques

Parenting techniques that are utterly, pointlessly ineffective:

Yelling at your child not to yell.
Threatening your child for unsocial behavior.
Demanding that your child stop making demands upon you.
Disconnecting from your child seeking connection (manifested, for example, as pleas for attention: “Look at me! Watch me! Did you see that?”)
Getting stressed at your child for not going with the flow.
Insisting that your child not insist everything be done exactly their way, because you want them done your way instead.
Swearing at your child to fucking stop swearing.
Screaming at your child because they won’t stop screaming.
Throwing your child’s toy because they won’t stop throwing it.
Commanding your child to relax.
Ordering your child to speak gently.
Grabbing an object from your child to teach them that grabbing objects from others is wrong.
Lecturing that your child cannot control another’s actions while controlling their actions (by, for example, requiring they get buckled in their car seat right now).

How do I know these parenting techniques are completely ineffective, other than that, when written like this, it becomes obvious how unbelievably foolish they are? Because I have done each and every one in the past week. Many times. And they never, ever work.

So why do I keep doing them?

(…don’t answer that.)

(But if you want a real answer, it’s because kids are triggering, I am my father’s child, and this parenting gig is hard.)

50 Comments | Posted on 19 January 2011 by Arwyn | Category: Parenting | Tags: cycle of abuse, falling short

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How far I’ve come

Twelve years ago, I was almost flunking out of high school, only in part due to getting could-not-do-anything-productive migraines 4-5 days a week. My moods shifted faster than my classmates’ relationships, and though I didn’t have the name for it I spent most of my days in generalized anxiety spiking into panic at every casually or pointedly cruel thing said around me — so only several times a day. I sent off applications to safe colleges, everything on the west coast, comfortable, familiar. I mostly did not get in.

Ten years ago, a good day’s accomplishment was getting out of bed. Getting dressed was worth celebrating. Housework was far beyond me. Working as a temp — a call at 8:30am, “Can you be there at 9?” “Make it 9:30.” — relied on my ability to flick so quickly into what I now know as hypomania, relied on knowing I would never see these people again, on knowing tomorrow would likely be another day I did not have to pretend to be what I thought a real person was supposed to be, would not have to force myself vertical and presentable. I did not take longer assignments.

Eight years ago I was withdrawing from college. Again. I’d started medication, divalproex sodium, and that was going to cure me; we’d packed up our possessions, bought furniture in flat boxes, and drove it most of the way across the country to this town with one redeeming feature: the college from which I had just withdrawn because it was better than flunking out from chronic absences. I did not know who I was, what good I was, if I could not do college, be a student. I could not see a future, and mostly did not believe I had one.

Six years ago I was in therapy. I had walked away from the campus I’d once looked to as my salvation, and now, in a falling apart house not two blocks away, tried to ignore its omnipresent reminder of my failures. I measured my life in weekly appointments; talk therapy Tuesdays, massage or acupunctures Thursdays. I had half a dozen nearly-maxed-out credit cards, a partner stuck in a place without employment for him because of my proven-false belief that This Time Would Be Different, a concussion I never sought help for from a coping mechanism I never told anyone about, a coccyx and back in so much pain I could hardly lie or sit down — but could hardly do anything else –, and a house that immediately let the rare visitors know of my two incontinent pets. Life was surviving each day, hoping and trusting and often despairing that somehow, eventually, the work I was doing on myself would pay off.

Four years ago my partner started a dream job in Portland, all our possessions and two of our pets were in Indiana, and I was in California with my mom and my dog and a round-the-clock rotation of hospice aides, waiting for my father to die. I was off medication and on fish oil, suddenly away from my professional support system, grieving for a parent not yet dead, and yet, somehow, more stable — less crazy — than I could ever remember being. I was bleeding every 27 days, hoping somehow that the weekend visits from The Man would mean this month no period would come.

Two years ago the Boychick was one and a half years old; I’d survived his infancy, become a valued member of the moderation team on a large parenting discussion board, and was about to gamble $10,000 — $20,000 total over the life of the loan — on the idea that I was well enough and committed enough to massage that I could, and would, make it through the 555 hour program at Oregon School of Massage. The three hours a week I was to be in school would be the longest I had ever been away from the Boychick in his life, and neither of us were sure we were ready for it. It was to be the most I had asked of my body in a decade, apart from the six hours of the Boychick’s labor, and I definitely wasn’t sure it was ready for it. There was a blog registered in my name at raisingmyboychick.blogspot.com and the tagline “Feminist thoughts inspired by parenting a presumably-straight white male” in my head, and I, familiar with the defeat of attempts never given a fair chance, assumed that would be as much as would ever come from it.

And now: I’m one quarter away from graduating and becoming a licensed massage therapist; I write a frankly magnificent and provocative blog with regular, substantial updates; am, according to Babble, the Most Controversial mom on Twitter; have my work referenced in college papers and used in childbirth education classes; get mentioned in newspapers internationally; edit one of the most honest, raw, and breathtaking anonymous blog series on the web; have gone from daily spikes of 9/10 pain, weekly migraines, and severely limited movement to having little pain, monthly migraines, and a body more and more able to dance through my days; have started submitting work for paid publication; and, while writing this, received a rejection from a magazine editor — and survived. And I do it all with a not-quite-four year old in tow, keeping the both of us alive and more or less well by myself 32 hours a week.

***

I will always be bipolar. I will likely always have pain and the need to be especially considerate of the limits of my body. My life will never look “normal”, I will never work in an office 8-5, and I may not ever earn enough to solely support myself and my family. There are so many things I want to be doing for which I simply don’t have the time, or the spoons; maybe eventually I will add more, or, I am sure, change what I choose to do; maybe I’ll be able to do less, and will scale back as needed. I still don’t know what the future holds — though I have some hopes, the foundations of which I am working on even now — but, most days, I am reasonably sure I’ll be there for it. Most days, I live, not pausing in awe at what a wonder, and a change, that is.

That is how far I’ve come.

22 Comments | Posted on 8 December 2010 by Arwyn | Category: Body | Tags: bipolar, chronic illness, disability, falling short, life, Mental Health, school

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“Too crazy to parent”

“I couldn’t subject kids to my craziness.”

“I’m not sane enough to be a parent.”

“I’m doing the world a favor by not passing on these crazy genes.”

All these and more are phrases I’ve heard — excuses from the childless, defenses from the childfree.

The very last thing I want to do is attack those who, for whatever reason, have chosen not to have children. So many women — though far from all — are pressured to reproduce, or at the least (as though adoption is a consolation prize, a mimicry of “real” parenting) become mothers in some way. I support without reservation the choice to remain childless/free, and consider it my duty and honor to protect and defend all the reproductive choices of women, and to counter the misogyny of external pressure to procreate.

But I am a crazy mom. And the child of a crazy parent. And when I hear these excuses — when no excuse should be needed for what is a respectful and deserves to be respected choice — it gives me pause. I squirm. I do not speak out, because the last thing a woman-under-attack needs to hear is how her defenses against unacceptable insinuations hurt me — but hurt me they do. And I remember.

A disclaimer: in defense of the childfree

I am the last to argue that parenting is universally good for one’s mental health. I entered the experience armed with terrible-truth telling tomes like Mother Shock, Operating Instructions, Inconsolable, and though I was filled with an irrational ache, an indescribable emptiness that itself adversely affected my instability, and would trade it for no other life path, neither would I do readers the disfavor of lying that it has not, in measurable ways, challenged and, yes, harmed me. From uncontrollable hormonal waves to sleep deprivation to insanity-inducing sensations, to triggery toddlers and more-triggery preschoolers: parenting has not been easy or kind to my mental wellness. I fault no one for hearing these honest, if one sided, truths and deciding to say “no thank you” and book another cruise to Cuba. This isn’t about attempting to persuade anyone to parent if they lack the wholly irrational drive on their own.

But it is about what else is said when, hearing of diarrhea diapers and untameable tantrums, one announces “I’m too crazy to parent.” Because meaning to or not — and it mostly isn’t — it says parents aren’t supposed to be crazy. It says children are better off without crazy parents. It says my life, on both ends, is wrong.

Unattainably high ideals for parents, unacceptably low ideas of craziness

Whenever I write posts like this, someone says it isn’t about me, and I’m being too sensitive, and I take words too seriously. And it’s true, to some extent: I don’t believe anyone who says these things to me is intending to speak about anyone other than themselves, and their truths. I am not trying to (as though I could!) ban anyone from using phrase “too crazy to parent” referring to themselves. I don’t think these words are spoken of oneself out of malice for others, nor do I wish to silence the stories of those who have desired children, weighed the possibilities, and decided the risk to themselves and their health was too great. Because that is the truth of many, and deserves respect and recognition no less than any other honesty.

But for many others, it seems not a deep-thought truth, but a talisman waved to ward off “and when can we expect pitter-patters in your halls, hmm?” I do not blame the inclination to reach for whatever will shut those over-nosy voices up, but I protest when what reached for harms me.

Harm me it does, twice over, for the idea of “too crazy to parent”, outside of a deeply reflective context, is based on impossibly, unattainably high ideals for parents, and on insulting, unacceptably low ideas of craziness. When spoken of oneself, it may be either an honest assessment of ability, or internalized ableism (or some inseparable tangle of both). From here, outside the speaker’s heart, I cannot know which it is, and so I do not disagree; but I hear it so frequently from those who I know consider themselves more stable than I (or no less so) that I know not all instances can be free of this internalization.

Parents are not perfect. Parents are not meant to be perfect; I consider it inevitable, nigh on my duty, that in some way I fuck up my child — just like every other parent. Us crazies certainly don’t have a monopoly on fucking up our offspring; indeed, I dare you to find me one parent, anywhere, anywhen, who has not burdened or blessed their child with some form of awkward, hindersome baggage. Craziness, uncontrolled, might affect the quality or degree of mess we make of our kids, but in the fact of its existence makes us different not at all.

All parents fuck up our kids in some way, to some degree, but some fuck them over. Some fuck them — unfortunately not merely metaphorically. Some people — people I love — were abused, abandoned, neglected, never allowed the abundant love and adequate parenting that was their birthright. Some people are parents in name only, and need to be disallowed from damaging their children any further. I do not pretend that these things are not true. I do not wish to silence those whose parent(s), crazy or broken or both, were very much not a blessing or gift or growth opportunity. Sometimes “crazy” and “abusive” go hand in hand.

But they are not synonymous.

Not crazy, not sane, but… self aware?

My dad is not neurotypical — there are many diagnoses he’s been slapped with over the years, and suspicions of others abound, but I find an appropriate approximation of his challenges is communicated with the combination “bipolar” and “Asperger” — and his craziness has wound around the deepest parts of my psyche, choked off some growths, clouded some areas, heaped manure on some ground. He fucked me up, unquestionably, inescapably.

And yet — I was also gifted tools to cope, skills to survive, and (paradoxically with my pathetically low self esteem) an absolute arrogance that I deserve to exist. As I am. As fucked up as I am. As broken as I have been made. I, understandably I’d say, bristle when however unintentionally someone supports the meme that crazy (fat, different, indebted) people shouldn’t parent — that I should be other than I am. Whatever burdens were placed on me by the parenting I received (and they are numerous, and heavy, and uncomfortable to carry), I was also taught how to be strong; to ask for help when needed; to take a rest when needed; that those that love me would share my load — and though they are lessons I will spend my life repeating, striving always to get right, I am better off for having the introduction early on in my life. Rather than lessons taught in spite of the craziness I was exposed to (that was inflicted upon me, at times), they were wound up together, one growing in response to the other. It was not the crazy per se that granted me these lessons, but awareness of what the crazy — as well as not-crazy human failings — could do, and would do, that allowed them to be given me.

I do not have the name for what this quality is, but it is what matters far more than crazy or sane, neurotypical or not, patient or prone to agitation. It seems some form of self-awareness, some ability to reflect on the whys and wherefores of one’s failings, some meta-parenting that makes up for many imperfect micro-parenting moments. (Which is not to encourage overthinking this whole ridiculous enterprise-called-parenting either — as I said, I don’t have the words, and that always leaves me flailing, circling around in oft vain attempts to flank and flush out the exact idea I am attempt to pin down so I can communicate it.) Whatever it is, it allows one to recognize and acknowledge the fuck-ups and then teach (or at least search for) ways to cope with them.

What frustrates me perhaps most of all is that this nameless quality seems so very closely related to the awareness that leads people to state they are “too crazy to parent”. Rightly or wrongly, it makes me want to shake the speaker and say “You’re wrong! You could be exactly the type of parent the world needs more of! You know your challenges, and you know enough to take steps to compensate for them! I want you by my side! I want you raising my children’s peers!”

I won’t, of course — no one needs more outside opinions on their reproductive choices. But if you say to me “I could never have kids — I’m too crazy to parent!”, and you see me cringe, this is why: this frustrating mix of hurt and anger, of thwarted desire and repressed opinion, of raised brow and bitten tongue. I’m not going to tell you not to say it. But I will ask you to think about what you really mean when you do.