Alone

Sometimes I really feel like I must be a horrible mother.

Days like today when my son wakes up an hour earlier than usual, when it’s my turn to wake up with him.

When I wake up and I just desperately want to be alone and do my own thing and not be responsible for anyone or anything.
When I just don’t know how to entertain a ten month old properly and when I’m pretty sure he’s sleepy but he refuses to fall asleep and just clings and fusses and I lose my patience because I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH YOU so I swing him up onto my shoulder, probably too abruptly, storm downstairs, clip him in his stroller and take him to the daycare ten minutes after they’re open.

On my day off.

When I guess most good parents are cherishing the extra time they can spend with they’re babies.

But instead I’m stomping down the street, feeling frustrated and inadequate and selfish.

I’m rushing to leave my son for the whole day with people who he likes and who know how to properly keep him busy and give him enriching things to do for 8 hours.
And all the while I’m seething and boiling under my skin.

Raging at the depressing, dank, gray skies that have been non stop since the cold weather broke in March.
Furious at the puddles the stroller splashes through because the puddles never end because it won’t stop raining here, EVER, or so it seems.
Livid because if I hear one more conversation in Turkish or Arabic, see one more piece of old food or garbage left on our windowsill by the neighborhood brats, wade through one more ignorant crowd of roma hogging the sidewalk and blowing cigarette smoke in my face, I swear I’m going to scream and claw someone’s eyes out.

I want to sleep past 9 o’clock in the morning, but even when I have the opportunity, my body wakes me up around 6.
I want an entire weekend free where my husband is not busy with his father rebuilding the house and the weather isn’t too shitty to go out and do something with our son as a family.
I want to feel like a good mother who doesn’t get exasperated when my son shows little interest in a book and doesn’t want any of his toys, and doesn’t seem to want to do anything but cling to me and whine.

I don’t want to come slamming back into the house and have to answer to my husband who thinks he’s done something wrong to cause my anger regardless of how many times I tell him I’m not mad at him.

I want to write this and hit publish and not worry that as soon as he reads it, my husband will come to me feeling hurt that I could write what was bothering me here and let other people read it, but not tell him the problem as soon as I got home.
I want him to know that I’m ashamed of how little patience I seem to have sometimes when it comes to my son.
Or my husband.
Or my cats.

Or, I suppose, underlying it all, how much loathing I often have for myself.

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