Truth or Truth
“We’re going to play Truth or Truth,” my tipsy sisters inform us, gathered around my small kitchen table. I’ve never played. You get to ask a straightforward question to anyone, and if they answer honestly, the power of the question gets passed to them.
There were some silly and a lot more cutting questions asked, and blunt answers given. As the evening turned to midnight, I had the last question. I turned to my husband, the only man in the room, and asked “If I continued to be the person I have been for the last year, would we get divorced?”
“Yes.”
The first year of my daughter’s life was beautiful and turbulent. I had a gorgeous new baby, a girl! I was so pleased to have a daughter and a son. How could I be so lucky? There is nothing like newborn cuddles and wiggles and noises. Everything they do is wonderful and sweet. The second time around you are more confident, although nearly just as nervous because every new being is so different; you’ll never have all the answers to everything. Children are like small pieces of your heart that live outside your body. They are soft and vulnerable, and you’ll never be able to protect them to the extent you wish you could. And they will test you.
I have yet to meet a person who thrives when they are exhausted. In an unsurprising twist, I don’t either. What was a surprise to me was how intensely it could magnify my worst qualities. My son could sleep on his own right from the get-go. In fact, to this day as he nears his fourth birthday, there have been only a handful of times that he has slept in our bed and rarely has it been for an entire night. When my daughter arrived and wanted to cling to me or Dad for every minute of rest, it was a nasty reality. For weeks, and then months, and then a year, she woke almost every night multiple times a night and would ultimately end up in bed with Mom or Dad (we were sleeping separately for everyone to get more rest). We had a 6 week reprieve, and then teething and a regression hit hard and we were back into it for another three months. When she hit a year, something shifted and off she went to dreamland every night in her own bed, and there she has stayed (for the most part).
For that first year, and honestly for many of the weeks that have followed in the past six months, I have been the worst version of myself that I have ever met. Irresponsible and Indecisive twenty-something me? Move over, you have been dethroned by Depressed and Sleep-deprived Mother of Two thirty-something me. Good God, I didn’t ever believe I could behave so incomprehensibly. Screaming, SCREAMING a raw and guttural cry of frustration at the top of my lungs into thin air as my children both clawed at me for attention. My throat would hurt for an entire day after. I must have been terrifying to them, and yet I was still their greatest source of comfort. How much that hurt my heart, and how helpless I felt to repair what was unfolding.
My adorable little boy became my enemy. Morning after morning, after a long night of waking with a baby to feed and rock and fall asleep next to a restless infant, I would drag myself into our one room living space with trepidation to face what I assumed would be a fight face. My son is a deep feeler, a worrier, and he had spent the first two and a half years of his life being the most important person in the room to not just his parents, but a whole host of lovely, doting adult family members who adored him. What a shock it must have been when his time with his Mother was cut in half so suddenly, and then to have her replaced with someone irritable and impatient must have been scary and jarring. He became a version of himself I had never encountered. Up until that point he was so affable and easy. During this particular period, he would wake up and within minutes be screaming or crying or throwing himself on the floor. Refusing food, defying my every request, and approaching every suggestion with misery and pessimism. And it would often last the whole day through. My poor husband would watch my face fall and my patience evaporate as I snapped at our barely out of the toddler phase son. Sometimes as he would leave for work, I would be lying on the floor in tears already defeated by the day ahead, and there was nothing he could say that would make me feel better.
It's just a phase. It won’t last forever. You’ll miss these days. It’s sibling jealousy. He’s just a kid. No matter how well intentioned, I found all these phrases infuriating. Don’t you think I know that? Can’t you see how much I am drowning? Can’t you feel the self-hatred rolling off my skin? My mind would go to the darkest places and having dug so deep, in my low moments now, there it returns. Why did you ever become a mother? Why are you so intolerant? Can’t you just get it together? I am so bored I am going to scream. Why can’t I be present and enjoy this? I am so depleted and frustrated and incapable. Being a parent is the worst job I’ve ever had. I want to get in my car and never come back. You are ruining everyone’s lives. Everything would be better off if you were gone.
I will never forget the awfulness of which I now know I am capable. I am still terrified that I have traumatized my son beyond repair; that the days that my vitriol had nowhere else to go but into his atmosphere will be a part of his hardwiring. I look at the things that challenge him now and wonder Did I do this? Is he struggling because of me? He is still so young, and of course my rational brain knows that this phase of development is typically difficult. But when we run up against each other, and I am having a day where I am already so depleted that I just want him to put his fucking shoes on or eat his eggs, it’s like my rational brain quiets and my irrational self treats his behaviour as if I am dealing with a fully formed adult. If you had to get up every day and go to work with a boss or co-worker who constantly yelled at you, made getting anything accomplished in a day almost impossible, was totally illogical, and on top of that, you were responsible for all of their bodily functions, you’d probably want to quit. Some days, I want to quit. That’s not in the job description though.
One of my worst moments was when my mother-in-law was looking after the kids while I was doing some outside chores, and my son told her that his bad moods ruin everyone’s day. When she had a concerned conversation with me about it, all I could do was cry. I was so embarrassed. Aside from the actual act of behaving badly with your kids, the fear on top of that is that someone catches you doing something you regret. And here I was confronted with a terrible thing I had said to my young son, which he clearly had internalized. I held him close. I told him that I was wrong, that it was bad of me to say that to him. That nothing he could ever do would affect the emotions of someone else and he shouldn’t have to worry about that. And I repeated our apology mantra: “No matter what we say or do, I always love you.” Taken right out of a children’s picture book.
It's hard even to write this all down for myself. I don’t like to relive it. Somehow, knowing you are reading it though, makes it both better and worse. In a small way, these terrible moments I’ve experienced as a parent are now exposed, although no one truly heard me scream. But sometimes, naming a thing and making it known can give it less power. Maybe, just maybe, I will start to forgive myself. If my little boy can.
The year of intense sleep deprivation has faded, and despite being woken up by at least one of our children almost every night now for some reason or another, I am at least more rested (I did sleep most of last night in the bottom of a bunk bed with a coughing and sniffling 3-year-old who would sit up and say “I am broken. I can never breathe again”). We were also having a house built during this time, which is an incredibly privileged thing to do, but it did put more strain on our family, since my husband was working a full week and then usually spending at least one weekend day working on the house.
We now live in our beautiful new home, everyone has their own bedrooms and I am blessed with children who currently sleep well past 7:00am most mornings despite their young ages. We’re not divorced, and I seem to be slowly crawling back into my better self. Hopefully I can learn from it all, it’s too early to tell.