All Apologies

I do my best.  I am with my girls alone a lot.  Their day to day is primarily, well, entirely, my responsibility.  I do my best.  But there are certainly times when the stress, my emotions, the weight of it all gets to me and I let it out!  That usually comes in the form of screaming and yelling and carrying on and saying stuff crazier than even my parents said when they were yelling at me.  Truthfully, I feel terrible about it, especially when swear words come into play.  My people know that Mommy says bad words and rather than copy me, they are trying to reform me.  It takes a village, you know, to raise up everyone.

I hate it though.  When I have come to my wit's end and I unleash.  I hate seeing them looking at me, hoping, wondering, willing me to be better, and I am petty and tired and frustrated and mean.  The difference though, between my experience and theirs is the apology.  After every outburst, every lashing, every moment when I know there is a better way to handle things, we talk about it.  We talk about my feelings and theirs.  We talk about what made Mommy get to the crazy, especially when the crazy is not at all their fault but the fault of my being tired and overwhelmed and shocked as shit that I have woken up as the person in charge and I really just want to chill out for a second.  They are learning, at the same time as I am, how to deal with their emotions and the emotions of others, how to listen, how to laugh, how to rage, how to respect, and how to love. 

I never quite understood as a girl or teen or young adult or older one that one can have the full range of emotions, truly, and still be cared for, still be loved, still have a place in a family or group.  I have tried to present, to represent, rather than just be myself.  I do not want this for my children.  I do not need them to be proper, young ladies at the expense of themselves.  Of course I do not want them to be cruel or selfish, but I want them to be themselves fully, to accept and feel and express their full range of emotions.  So when I laugh, I laugh hard.  And when I cry, the tears are hot and if I am not hysterical, visible.  And when I am angry or frustrated or frightened or at my end, I tell them,.  I show them.  And I apologize when I hurt them in anger, when I am make them feel small, when I take them down with me when anxiety controls my head and heart.

I feel like I am apologizing all the time.  So often that I sit up at night and hope that they will come through it alright.  That they will know that their mother loves them more than anything she ever had or has since they came.  I tell them how I am learning this as I go, that we are all learning and often confused and sometimes selfish and once in a while irrational, but that we all come back to this.  That we love each other, live to make each other happy, support each other on this journey, and are able to say we are sorry when we break the promise to love and respect each other.  Saying sorry is one of the hardest things, I have found, for children to learn to say truthfully, not just mouthing the words, not just repeating what adults ask them to say, but meaning in their hearts.  It is also hard for adults.  There are many apologies I deserved and did not receive.  I still feel the sting of not hearing those words following particularly cruel assaults and emotional betrayals.  The girls will hear them from me.  They will know that I am trying, that I tried, and that I have honored our pact to love, respect, and support each other on the journey.



(c)  Copyright 2013.  Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.