Some days, I find myself shouting: screaming and swearing like a fish-wife and, as I do so, in front of me stands a crying child. Quite obviously terrified, quaking, in case I actually reach out and hit someone. This is all due to: being late for school, again – or someone hasn’t put their socks on, brushed their teeth, or is still: playing lego/drawing/reading/singing on the piano… while the minutes, just literally dissolve into a black hole and we are late, again.
I shout in vain for them to: ‘get a bloody move on’, jumpers unfound, toothpaste strewn down shirts, hair in a tangle and all, for, what?
Conformity.
As we drive silently in the car – my anger slowly draining from my body – the children: quiet, tense, the day just unfolding. I resolve, silently to myself, to apologise and hug them as tightly as I possibly can before they go into school.
I do.
The rest of the day is spent in a grey fug as I feel drenched in dark mother-guilt about my: outrageous behaviour.
And I wonder: did my mother, ever, do this to me?
Yet sometimes, and I have to make this point to you, this is not a regular occurrence, but just, very occasionally, (honestly), I am so lost in anger. I. just. Cannot. Stop. Even when: right in front of me, I can see the destruction I am manifesting in my children.
Motherhood has revealed the darkest side of me: the anger and venom that gently froths, darthvaderlike, just beneath my conscious…Waiting for some unknown trigger to set free the raging torrent across the still-ish waters of family-life and establish literal tsunamis of pain, tears, anxiety and, quite probably: therapy-inducing permanent fuck-up fuelled futures…with an over-priced psychotherapist proferring instant coffee…
And, as the days from that jarred, hurtful, venom-filled moment pass – I carry the wake of churning guilt and bitter after-taste disgust within me. I cannot believe I can behave this way to those I love more than any other beings on the planet…
What is that?
I apologise, again, many days later and desperately seek forgiveness – it is waved off.
But that anger is really, truly, not fine, sometimes it is truly scary and I’m in it and I cannot find a way out.
Fealte & Rosebud 