DAY 14 - Friend (21 DAYS OF RAGE)

This is the 14th instalment of a 21 day writing series about maternal rage and anger.

 I heard the key in the door and felt the relief of someone coming to help. But also I felt messy and gross. When the parent who isn’t at home with the kids comes in form work in the evening, I guess they never know what they’re going to find. I’d also bet that the kind of time everyone has had is going to be pretty obvious within about 3 seconds.

Last winter I was having some health troubles. I’d got a blood test result which in the doctor’s words “could be worrying”. If there’s an opportunity to worry, especially when it comes to health, I’ll take it with both hands. My husband always assumes the best and thinks that bad things only happen to other people. I immediately get set on thinking the worst and planning my own funeral. 

I was walking around with this terrible dread in my body. The children clamouring for me or screaming suddenly or shouting at each other felt completely unbearable in my system. Every ounce of me was focused on trying to hide my fear from them. I did some of my worst ever shouting in those days, and it was horrible for all of us. Each time I apologised and we all made up. But feeling like I couldn’t control meant I felt I was in this schizophrenic cycle of being super kind and connected and then being suddenly mad. 

As I understand it, when this kind of thing happens consistently and long-term in families it creates what psychologists call an insecure ambivalent attachment, where the child never knows where they’re at. Is mum going to be full of rage today, or not? That in a way having a consistently unreliable caregiver is actually better, because at least you kind of know where you’re at. There’s a lot of fear and anxiety if you are not sure what kind of person someone is going to be today.

This particular health crisis was resolved with a positive outcome after 4 or 5 awful days, but the anxiety and other health issues were not over. So I kept spiralling back into a difficult place and when I did, I was not a patient mother.

One day my little boy decided to really be two years old, refusing to come home from the park and take his nap, wanting to “roll around” in the mud, going stiff and screaming when I tried to lift him into his buggy. I was so tired and hungry and desperate to leave the bloody park. Eventually I got so cross that I stuffed him into the buggy like he was a rag doll, and I marched home shaking while he screamed and tried to climb out of the buggy.

My husband happened to be coming into the driveway when we were, and he saw my face. I can’t remember if he took my son for a while or if I managed to get my toddler to nap. Either way, when my husband and me got a second alone I confessed to feelings totally out of control in these moments. I said that I had felt like I could actually hurt him, or maybe I said in that second I wanted to. 

It felt so horrendous to share that with him and also when I had, the weight was lifted. I suppose you have to pick your audience. My husband took me in his arms, I can’t remember what he said but it was something about how it was all ok, and whatever he said affirmed I was not the terrible person I feared. I think I must be lucky because I’m not sure that anything could convince him that I’m not a great mother. I think of all the times I’ve criticised his parenting! And judged him in the moment. He didn’t burden me with that.

He is able to see the nuance in me and nothing can scare him off, which perhaps is our fear when someone starts to love us? That eventually they’ll find out the truth. But then this must be what love is, them knowing you’re very good and very bad - as we all are, with this whole spectrum of human capacities - and loving you anyway.