When logic is absent, how does one solve for x?
by Zoeyjane
It’s been a long time. I could say I’ve been busy and that would be more than a simple understatement. I could say I’ve been empty of words, but that would be mere gloss. I could say… a lot about why and make all of the best, most annoying excuses, and I could challenge you to keep reading past those excuses, because goddamn, is there nothing worse in personal blogging than someone saying that they weren’t blogging for a personal reason, but keep coming back to them?
But no. I’m too honest for that shit.
I haven’t been here because I’ve been drowning in life and growth and shrinkage and the inability to put together meaningful sentences.
I haven’t been here because the last time that I was here, I poured half of my heart out about how shameful it feels to get weighed at the doctor’s office, and how minimized I feel because I’m not simply Will Power Girl, able to leap tall scales with a meatball sub in her hand.
I haven’t been here because July 25th was Zoë’s fifth birthday and it felt wrong to blog about something else without first writing her a birthday letter. And because I couldn’t write a birthday letter that wouldn’t, at some point in the future, potentially make her feel like I … well…
I couldn’t write a positive letter, so I felt like I shouldn’t write any damn letter, but if I didn’t write any damn letter, I shouldn’t write at all.
But I need to write. I miss words. I miss the middle of the night soothing I get from busting at the keys on my uncomfortably large keyboard. How conspicuous that makes me feel. There isn’t timid tap-tap-tappings. There’s the sound of finger-sized elephants marching on its keys.
And I need to be honest. Because yes, it’s shaming to be weighed and to have your mental health measured, depending on the number that results. And oddly, when I didn’t get weighed at my last appointment, despite – between me and you – having lost six more pounds since the last time, not invisibly, I was a touch slighted. I felt written off, like I’d been given up on.
Maybe it was just a busy day.
Anyway, yes, ashamed. Send me to the confessional. Because it was also quite delicious, on a nearly-psychotic level, to taste what Megan Fox’s measurements feel like. People have to work their asses off for that shit and I just… happened to fall into it. Gooooood Body. Goood Girl.
I saaaaaid psychotic.
So, here I was, between the line of ‘this shit is toed-up’ and ‘oh no, I just watch what I eat and do a lot of pilates’, and I was cruising. Maybe a little dizzy sometimes, but cruising. This could have worked out fine, until a little woman hugged me and made me feel like my grandmother used to – like she cared (even if just due to shock) and that she would, if I said I needed it, drop everything for 10 minutes and rub my back.
And like I was making my Grandmother worried. Like I was selfishly not thinking of her blood pressure.
I was pretty pissed when it happened, when she said, in front of God and everyone and San Diego, that she was worried about me. I was being spotlit, you know? I don’t like spotlit. I avoid spotlit, unless it’s one of those few times that I choose to layer on pancake makeup. Spotlit is not forgiving and it shows all of the cracks in the basement walls.
A week later, I could’ve started to really lose my shit. Because, Hey, once you’ve lost your shit post-BlogHer, might as well make it a semi-annual event, right? But no. I had work to do, and a boyfriend(?) to entertain me and bake cakes and make me eggs over-easy on Sunday mornings, and a kid who is the reason I went to BlogHer.
I went because I needed to get away. Well, 92% because of that.
I wasn’t just tired. Parents get tired. That wasn’t it. A few months ago, Zoë started a new … phase (please, for the love of god, be a phase). This phase means that she yells at people. 98% of the time, people is Me. So, Zoë is going through an unidentified thing that makes her yell at me.
Why would she yell at me?
She doesn’t want to leave her friend’s house. She wants the thing at the store. She doesn’t want to eat the dinner I’ve cooked, after asking her what she wants me to cook her. She CAAAAAAN’T brush her teeth. Go to sleep without a snack. Breathe, in bed, because she’s sooooo thirsty.
She can’twon’twillneverwillkeeponisjustgonna {insert appropriate threat, action, button-pushing suggestion or otherwise appropriate phrase, here} foreverneveruntilIdie.
She’s become mean with her word choices, and adamant that she will be obeyed. She. Will be. Obeyed. Or else I don’t love her and I never want her to be happy and I never let her have anything and I just want her to be sad forever and never be anything but a crying little girl. And did she forget to mention? I Broke Her Heart.
Every day.
For HOURS.
I’ve used pleases and convincing and choices and restriction of choices and positive results for positive behaviour and positive language and thanks yous and equal-to-the-crime negative consequences and outlandishly-unequal-to-the-crime negative consequences and I’m-going-to-count-to-3-the-choice-is-yours… She’s temporarily lost custody of art supplies, stuffed animals, video games at her dad’s, TREATS. Not like, one treat.
Like, THERE WILL BE NO DAMN CAKE, COOKIES, PIZZA, FRUIT SNACK-ROLLED-UP-THING-CHEWY-CRAP THAT PEOPLE KEEP GIVING YOU, ICE CREAM, BURGERS, ANYTHING FINGER-FOODISH THAT DOES NOT COME FROM THE GROUND OR A TREE IN AN ORCHARD, OR ANY SORT OF PRESENTS-FOR-THE-HELL-OF-IT FOR A WEEK. Not even a new bouncy ball may be obtained from a dollar store, you’re so grounded from non-necessities. Don’t Make Me Cancel Your Birthday, Too.
I would have done it and it would have sucked, since I dropped $250 on the entertainment that’s – more than a month later – still talked about and fondly missed. This was birthday win, by definition and on so many levels.
You thought I meant a stripper, didn’t you?
But really. She had treats, art and stuffed animals confiscated for the entire week leading up to turning five. And that was me holding back…
She woke up on the day of, said I’mFiveI’mFiveI’mFiveI’mFive, Mama, I’mFiveI’mFive – as if I don’t remember the day that my crotch became less foyer and more broom closet due to an incredibly disproportionate head, a vacuum, the miracle of fucking childbirth and a student suture-maker. Then she asked for her felts and talked to them, because she had missed them so.
Really. She spoke in an accent somewhat related to Southern Belle and there was even clasped hands.
But the yelling. I mean, holy shit. If I can step back when it’s not that harshly delivered, my inner blogger monologue quite simply asks her who the fuck she thinks she is. Good thing it’s always really harsh – there’s no risk of that inside voice getting out, when it’s rarely allowed to speak.
Other things the inside voice has had to bitchslap itself from saying:
I don’t want to hug you or hold you or kiss you right now. Sorry doesn’t make it all better.
I am so embarrassed.
The words petulant, spoiled and brat in a sentence.
Because I Said So.
I cannot handle this anymore.
What the fuck is the matter with you?
I don’t want to do this anymore.
Honestly, I’ve had moments when I’ve been mentally calculating how much support I could afford to pay him, so that she could move her in with her dad, and we wouldn’t fight everyday, she’d probably have a lot more fun and so that – if I moved to the weekend parent role – I could have two days of fun time. With my kid.
So that I could actually fucking look forward to seeing my daughter, again. Instead of dreading what challenge(s), fight(s) or generally-classified rude behaviour will be encountered.
Except I can’t do that. Who Does That? You can’t break up with your kid. You can’t say maybe it’s best for everyone if you don’t live with me anymore. You especially cannot do any of that shit, the kid doesn’t think it’s their idea. If you do? Then you end up with a daughter with both mommy- and daddy-issues.
I didn’t buy mine on eBay, you know.
It’s every-but-one night. Six days a week. Until yesterday, she was going to daycare during weekdays – with her friends, who we’ve known for her whole life – and I would attempt to pick her up at 4:30. Between my arrival at their apartment and 8pm, she would lose her shit on me at least twice. I’m not talking about some harsh language or attitude, spanning a few minutes, or a general sense of the naughtiness. I mean, half an hour, plus, of:
- screaming,
- shrieking,
- crying,
- name-calling,
- stomping,
- throwing things,
- hitting things,
- spitting,
- kicking,
- and tossing out threats, commandments, direct insults and heart-crushing self-obsessed proclamations.
Two nights ago, I cried three times. I got kicked and hit and called mean and told that I hurt her heart all of the time because it seems like I just don’t care that she’s sad.
My abusive father died more than five years ago, and I said never again. Yet I grew up to become a 30 year old battered mother. And she’s not even, like, four feet tall, yet.
So, most nights, I get pushed a little further, and most nights, I actually yell back less than the night before because this is a losing fucking battle, here, and I’m not ethically prepared to let my blood boil, knowing that it greases the hinges of doors that shouldn’t open.
But sometimes, I’m brought to such an angry place that my body vibrates and that is when I end up crying and asking her why she’s choosing for us to live like this. Blaming her.
My dad used to do that, with flourish: why do you have to be such an asshole to me? Why are you the one crying?
The closer I step toward that man’s shoes, the more I panic. The more I resolve that I will not ever never will not and can not do a single thing more severe than I am now. And that’s normally when Zoë ends up in her room with the door shut, shrieking that she’s just going to keep screaming louder and louder until I let her out, smashing at the door with her freakishly powerful little fists. And I smoke and try to stop shaking.
She can’t walk down the stairs without smacking herself in the face, but she can throw a two year-olds’ temper tantrum with the coordination of a Cirque performer.
This is bad shit, here, and I have no idea what to do. It feels like I’ve done everything right and not very much wrong and followed all of the advice that’s ever been advised by the gentles, the stricts, the firm hands, the spare the rods… wait, no, not them. There is… nothing left, but for me to continue this abusive relationship and practice unconditional loving and try to root within her that she’s choosing these actions and can choose not to choose them, too. And that she’s not a bad person, but she’s making some pretty fucking terrible decisions lately.
Is she five? God, yes. Does that explain it, or give it merit, or an end-date? Fuck no.
So, it’s been a while.
And it’s partly because I’m in a new kind of hell that I’ve never visited and didn’t create with my own two hands (for once), with someone so short. I have no idea when or from where its resolution will come.
I’m thinking of becoming a praying woman.
