I don’t enjoy my child… especially in the evening when she’s been with me all day like a cling on and then wants more from me. Children are draining, I’m convinced that they continue to suck your life force from you until they are adults. It isn’t just during the nursing time frame, but well beyond. Sometimes I want to just scream, “What more do you freaking want from me?” I give everything I have and yet you make me feel (note the blaming language – it is a clue that your ego/wounded inner child is at play) it isn’t enough. Always wanting more more… more… more. It brings me to a place that I know isn’t healthy. It brings me to the place where I fantasize about taking off and living a reckless life of guilty pleasures… alcohol, sex, marijuana, and other free-spirited fun. Then I realize that I’m trying to avoid the emotions she brings out of me (Note that these emotions are mine… and nobody can make me feel them. What is inside you is what comes out…). In these fantasies, I’m again trying to outrun the inner child of mine who often already feels “not good enough” and goes into a rage whenever my daughter wants more from me.
Parenting is not a 9-5… though I sometimes wish it was. As an introvert, I need space. I need it… I don’t just want it… I NEED IT to function like a respectable human being. When I don’t have it, I start to snap and act in unkind ways. Sometimes, when I put her to bed and she pops up for the 3rd time for another “hug” I want to ignore the hell out of her and put up a sign around my neck that literally reads “CLOSED FOR BUSINESS… MOMMY HAS LEFT THE BUILDING… MEET CYBIL… BECAUSE IF YOU FREAKING GET UP ONE MORE TIME, YOU MIGHT MEET MY FULL-ON CRAZY!” I swear I have the neediest child on the planet. She is highly sensitive and seemingly can never get enough of me. I’m flattered that she loves me, but sometimes I feel as though it’s all a manipulation to push me to my edge… see how far I go before I lose my shit.
I have a hard time with boundaries. Adults with an inner child with “not good enough” feelings often do. I often feel awful when I assert boundaries. When I pull back and tell her to get to bed for the 3rd time without doing what she wants (usually more cuddle time), I don’t feel great about it. My child would literally have me move into her room and leave her dad to sleep alone every night if she had her way. It isn’t something I have ever encouraged or entertained, but she is really needy with me and I can’t quite figure out why when she has 2 capable loving parents… not solely me. I feel as though I’m somehow repeating the patterns of enmeshment that I had with my mother. My daughter seems to believe that she is my best friend… not my child in some instances.
I don’t know how to parent other than how I was taught to parent by the one parent who was there for me. My father was an alcoholic and drug addict who enjoyed the party life more than the parent life and played a very absent role. My mother moved back home when she found out she was pregnant with me after a 7 or 8 year relationship with him and so I never grew up in a house with him present. Sometimes when I have these fantasies of running away and being wild and carefree, I realize that his DNA has some part in who I am. I realize that the desire to avoid the underlying feelings is strong and it is the thought of him that prevents me from making that decision. I guess he has blessed my life in some way.
I keep attempting to face these underlying feelings and acknowledge them, yet the “not good enough” demon is strong and fails to die though I wish it would go to rest and not resurface. I keep combating this feeling with other thoughts like, “you are good enough,” “just because you won’t cuddle for another 10 minutes does not mean you aren’t a good enough mom,” “it’s ok to set boundaries around your time and limit interactions when you feel you need to re-center.” Maybe it isn’t a demon that needs to “die,” but a small child within me that needs a big hug and to know that she is loveable and ok… that even though she gets frustrated, feels she can’t measure up sometimes, and needs “alone-time” that she is loved. I have the head knowledge, but I have a hard time feeling it and embodying it.
In my last therapy session, I talked about this a bit. I just want to get to the point where I feel this deep within my core. The embodying/integration process is taking it’s time and my patience is being tested. I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired… even though I am nowhere near as lost as I once was… I sometimes get the feeling that I still have a lot more ground to cover on this journey through life. I still sometimes believe in the idea that the “work” will one day be done… However, I know it most likely never will… it’s part of the human condition. There will always be ways in which I’ll need to work for progress and fight to maintain the ground I’ve won in the battle for the light while advancing slowly, but surely.
My pastor used to talk about the battle that was being waged when I first started going to church and I was a bit dim to what it meant at the time since I wasn’t sure how much of the whole angels vs. demons thing I was willing to buy into. These days, I am awake to the fact that there is constantly a war raging for your soul… old thought patterns to fight back, newer healthier ones to use as weapons. The entire battle is within, which is entirely interesting and insane, when you really think about it. The difference between the before-me and the after-me is that I’m a warrior-in-training… a force to be reckoned with now whereas before I was simply laying on the ground battered and bloody not even realizing that there was a battle going on and that I was on the losing side.
Join me in battle! Let’s work for progress together and light this world on fire! You and I are so incredibly worth fighting for!