Growing is important, admitting you were a shithead and incredibly unpleasant is too. I've been thinking about this, especially in regards to restarting this blog. I'd abandoned it for a while because it'd gone of the rails - the rants were mean, not smart or cute, they were shitty and angry and just generally made me sound like this frothing Glenn Beck type of ladyperson.
Which, you know... I can def go there, but I am not that person. I'm not even "drama". I hear tell that I'm (somehow, somewhat mysteriously to me) the level-headed friend who won't feed you a line of bs, someone who can put things in a way that is straightforward but funny. But here, on this blog, it got gross. It got nutty and ugly and it wasn't funny, it was mean and angry and sanctimoniously shitty. Prepartum depression had a whole shitload to do with this, I'm not even gonna lie or dick around veiling that right there. And everyone now is all... "yeah, no shit, Miss Thing". I know. Hey, I didn't even know it was a thing, you know?
Rest assured my baby Tupperware days are over.
So yeah, I've gone back and deleted the grossest, ookiest, and most awkwardly heinous stuff on here. I didn't want to start entirely over. As I read through things here, I actually remembered some stuff I'd forgotten about! How cool! But then, as the pregnancy wore on, so did the shittiness. The "I know it all, fuck you" doctrinaire bullshit started much earlier though, and I want to put an apology and an acknowledgment out into the ether and vapors that is Bloglandia for whatever that is worth or affects.
The best thing, for me, about being a parent and writing and communicating with people as much as I can is that my compassion grows. My capacity to be righteous and stand in someone else's shoes grows and I like that. I can look at things that would just out and out enrage me back in the hormonal psychosis and see where I was coming at things wrong. My big resolution this year was to be more upright and come correct as much as I possibly can. Being judgmental is useful, but being married to those judgments or using that to make value assessments of someone as a whole is not. And mostly, it isn't my thing to concern myself with.
I'm not trying to get up my ass or holier than thou here. I'm not.
But the thing is... hm. The longer I parent two small humans who have their own travails and needs that are occasionally beyond my personal capacity to fulfill, the less apt I am to have a strong opinion about any one way to parent or any one way to be a good person. I have less of a strident political opinion, I have less of a tendency to think someone's trash or stupid or fucking up.
Let me explain how I'm getting to this slightly less awful state of being.
My kids are both extremely challenging. Saderator is a dismantler of anything in her grasp, and a scary, parrot-level problem solver. She's TWO. To watch her during the day, I pretty much have to sit in a central location and keep one eye on her continuously, because otherwise tears, bodily harm, broken glass, cat scratches, bloody noses, or dishsoap in my dvd player WILL occur. I go to bed at night and feel like I've run a marathon, no lie. Mr Man is pretty rough to run himself, but in an entirely different way. Squidge was recently diagnosed with *extreme* Attention Deficit, which we've been half-unknowingly but occasionally suspecting and continually coping with for four years now. It's all been rough. The roughest part is accepting that his brain simply doesn't work like mine, and that when I ask him to engage in the real world and focus that not only is he incapable, he feels worse for my confusion, frustration, and yep, occasional anger. Having a kid who spaces out so hard that he literally wanders into traffic is incredibly difficult, and gives you perspective even on kids who are the opposite, those "monster" children that jump around like holler monkeys and the parents we scorn for their inability to get their damn shit together and punish them accordingly. You don't know their shit. You don't know how often they go to bed late, thrashed, drained, and crying because they feel like they are continually fucking their kids up. You don't know how hard they try the best they know how to help their kids. Sometimes, the kids need help, and sometimes, hard as it may be to believe, the parents are NOT clued in. Denial and butthurtism go a long way when it's your baby. And no, you don't just "get over it". It's a process, sometimes it takes an outside impetus, and sometimes it happens organically.
Not often organically, though. Something about being a protective parent makes you pretty blind to when your kid is wired different, especially if it's harmful. Assbackwards, but pretty true from my (anecdotal to y'all) experience.
My good (dear, sweet, lovely and insanely intelligent) girlfriend has a sweet little boy who is currently being helped with some of his own challenges, and she and I had a good chat about being completey butthurt about not being able to be SuperHumanParent and fix all your kids' stuff on our own, kind of insomuch as it's a phase YOU go through. Talking to her about her experiences and her process helped me define my family's and my personal experience with Squidge's issues. When you have any sort of hiccup that turns into a Big Effin Deal, you get mega butthurt, you have an acceptance period, then a long adjustment period. If you try and work it out you're doing better than so many people, is what you have to remember. Introspection is tough, and it's rare. It's like a mantra: "I'm not fucking this up, because if nothing else, I am TRYING" because that whole process is harder than childbirth itself.
If you can surrender to the fact that no, you are mom but you CAN'T fix everything, you're superhuman. If you can surrender to being human and being flawed and still be able to have faith in what you're doing, you're astounding and I want to be your friend even if I don't agree with your path.
To put your ego aside, to do the absolute best and to try and do the absolute most RIGHT by your kid is the most righteous thing anyone can do. It applies to more than parents and children, it applies to your relationships with anyone, it applies to how you lead your life.
I get a lot of uppity posts on my facebook feed condemning each other for their choices - people who eat "clean", nonparents who want to get up their own superior butts about cloth diapering (get it, pun) and breastfeeding, people who make condescending, classist comments that start with "I don't see how ANYone with HALF A BRAIN can...." yeah. It gets on my tit, man. And I want to open my mouth and be an asshole right back, but then I remember the blog here, the shit I've come with that was so far from correct or righteous or compassionate, and I stop. I've been that asshole, in longer forms. With paragraphs. With judgey shitty statements. With absolutism. So I try to think of my journey here, to being calmer, to being more accepting, to be more willing to slow down and stand in another light and look at things from that angle and see if my bullshit still holds water. I try and be calm, and I try to offer my experience or food for thought from a standpoint that only asks for an effort in the direction of that mentality. Maybe just in the neighborhood of it. Maybe just the same county. But it matters. It matters to not be a dick. It matters to be kind, it's important to try and come clear and correct and from a *truly* righteous heart, not a self-righteous one.
I tell you what, though, it's hard as shit to grow up when you get older. And I wish someone would've mentioned to me that the growing up doesn't start or stop or have a direction. I thought I would've been done eating crow and looking back while cringing by now.
So. You know. That was a lot of brain spew, and touchy feely and awkward for me, but I really feel deeply about it and about what I'm doing here now, so it had to be put out there and established. I love you all, I love writing, and I want to be happy to do it again. But it's all kinda different now. So hopefully now that I've worked that one out and gotten it all out, I can get over my stupid shit tiptoeing around here and get back to it.
Love!
Ms SSA, Deebee, Toadhead, Ms Thang, The Amazon, and always the Squid.
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