***Update: When I wrote this, I deliberately excluded a piece of rather important information which was that I had just discovered I was pregnant. This was why my emotions were (and still are) very close to the surface. I was (I still am) also worrying about how I would handle being a parent of two and how our life will look when the baby came since Erik will still be studying and it will be in the middle of the school year which is an inconvenient time to go on leave. This was one very major reason why I broke down, it was both worry and hormones. At twelve weeks pregnant, no one can tell but I cry at everything from obvious things like children being victims of bombings to feel good stories.***
I started this blog a long time ago and had all these plans to be consistent with it, not just with regularly writing in it but the way it would be written. Each post would start the same way and no post would be longer than 500 words because, as an English teacher, I know how exhausting it can be to read texts longer than 500 words. Though, when I think about it, that is probably because reading 128 one thousand word essays is my least favourite thing in the whole wide world so what is exhausting is probably not reading one thousand word essay but many in a row. So, if you're going to keep reading, I suggest you don't read anything else today or you will hate your life. I was also going to end each post the same way. Well, it's been about 3 years since I have posted here and a lot has changed so I am going to do away with all those rules and just write what is in my heart. I am going to do this for two reasons. Firstly, what I have in my heart is an ocean longer than 500 words and secondly, I need to get this stuff down in some way, shape or form for my own sanity. I know this is a public place and I have chosen not to be anonymous here, I could write this in a private diary or a letter but I have so many loved ones overseas and I am OK with the universe knowing what I am going to write, part of my problem is trying to hide my feelings, conceal, don't feel, if you will so it is good for my sanity to write this here. I really recommend you stop reading because this is long and probably uninteresting to most except my closest family and even those don't have to read it. Putting it down on digital paper is what needs to happen so I get it out of the ocean in my heart.
I can see that I really need to update this blog as it says that I am about to become a mother. I have in fact, been a mother for more than two years. I have a beautiful two year old who is my world. In my work with children, I saw how parents doted on their children. I saw how they loved them and I thought I understood. I didn't truly understand until I saw her, squinting in the operating theatre lights and coughing up amniotic fluid (She was an emergency C-Section, that is maybe a story for another day.) There is something that happens in your brain, some people describe it as a space that you never knew existed is suddenly filled but I think it's more like you get an extra slot in your head just for that child, a really big part of your brain is now filled with that child, not even just your need to take care of the child but who she is and what she is doing, always. When you are not with her, that extra slot somehow gets bigger and the child, in idle moments, can take over all your thoughts. It is easy to lose yourself as this giant extra slot in your brain swells with thoughts of her, taking over all other thoughts. I now understand parents I may not have understood before, parents who I thought were behaving in a way that was detrimental to their child's development. I perhaps still disagree with their parenting style but now I understand that all parents are doing what they think is best for them, and their child. They make mistakes, we all do but they are doing their best. I have learnt that is is impossible to judge another parent (OK, there are times I would judge of course, if what they are doing is abusive but you know what I mean) because I don't know them and I don't know their child the way they know him or her. In this way, I hope that others do not judge me for the things I do and the mistakes I have made and will make in the future.
The main thing I wanted to get off my chest is a story of what happened the other day and how it was a symptom of a bigger problem. We are currently staying in Erik's (I have no idea if I have kept him anonymous on here or not, maybe I should have reviewed old posts before writing this) family's summer home. This is a sacred place for Erik. It is a log cabin in the middle of nowhere in Lappland, Sweden. His parents live here full time but during holidays, the family all come together to enjoy living in the country and what can only be considered an easy life. My two year old's older cousin (OK, let's keep her anonymous at least and call her Little M) had his 6th birthday party. This party started after lunch. After lunch, Little M is meant to have her nap. I could see she was overly excited by all the older children but I thought I'd try. I tried to put her to sleep the easy way which, for her, is breastfeeding. She is not meant to breastfeed during the day but if there are extenuating circumstances like she is in a strange place surrounded by exciting people and things, I think it is OK (I would like to write a post on my much changed opinions on breastfeeding since becoming a mother later too but let's keep that out of this story, it will be long enough as it is. For the story, all you need to know right now is that I breastfeed her to help her fall asleep). She didn't sleep. She clearly had energy to burn and was not interested in staying in her room. If she doesn't sleep from breastfeeding, there is no point in trying anything else. Breastfeeding is like a cheat for switching her off. She is at an age now where she does not always need to sleep during the day. If she has had the chance to sleep in and hasn't been too active, she can often stay away until 19:00. I knew that today was a day when she would need to sleep as with all the exciting things at the cabin, she had been very active, which is why I cheated but even my cheat didn't work.
By 16:30 ish, the party was over and she was distraught, exhausted and unreachable. We tried to give her food because that is always a good way to give a tired child some energy but she was already past the point of no return and was just screaming and crying and not listening or looking at the food. I stood with her in her grandparents' bedroom where the older children were watching a cartoon. Watching TV is another way to keep her awake. If she falls asleep while watching TV then she really really needs to sleep. She fell asleep at 17:00 ish. This is an awful time for her to fall asleep. She hadn't eaten any dinner and she would view the sleep as a nap and would wake up hungry in an hour and a half ish, just in time for us to start her bedtime routine which, she would of course, not be ready for because she'd just woken up from a nap. It would mean she would not be tired enough to sleep again until about midnight. I took her to our room and the first thing I hated happened. Erik was angry with me for letting her fall asleep. I lay her in the bed and I could have gotten up straight away and gone and done something else but I couldn't face people. I sat next to her on the bed and cried. Eventually, Erik came in because he realised he had been too harsh and was coming in to apologise. I was very much feeling inadequate and weak because I didn't disagree that it was an awful time for her to sleep so him making me feel like I let her fall asleep made me feel like I wasn't doing my job as a mother. Sometimes though, you just have to see that all the things you did didn't work because your child simply had to have her needs met.
At I guess 18:00 (That is when dinner is usually but I don't know what time is was exactly) it was time for dinner. Little M was still asleep. I decided that I might gently encourage her to wake up by opening the blinds a little to let in some natural light. The goal here was that she had slept a short time and would have energy to eat and not be up until midnight because she was still tired. Then I went out of the room, tried to hide that I had been crying and went to have dinner. About 5 minutes later, Erik came in with a rather sad but awake Little M. She was struggling and crying and did not want to sit either on her own at the dinner table and eat or with me and eat. She wanted to sleep. Apparently Erik had kissed her cheek and that coupled with the open blinds, that had been enough to wake her up but clearly, she was not done sleeping and my hope that a short sleep would rejuvenate her enough to at least eat dinner did not come to pass. I asked Erik to make her some välling (This is a Swedish drink people give their kids in a bottle before bed. It is basically watery porridge and Little M has it every night before bed, she sleeps more calmly if she has drunk it) so I could try and get some food into her at least. I tried. I held her in my arms and tipped her head back and put the bottle in her mouth. I really tried.
Erik's very kind family had many suggestions for me. They are great. They have more experience of parenting than me and they told me what they did with their children. They were not judging but I have never been good at taking advice. Whenever people give me suggestions, especially when I am already vulnerable and stressed from crying and hearing my child cry, it makes me feel like they are saying 'No, you're doing it wrong. You're not good enough'. That is how I felt. I know that wasn't their intention and I do appreciate their suggestions. They are things they have said before and things I have tried. I know what works with my child and what doesn't. Some of what they said is what I do, based on their advice. Other things, well they may have worked with their child but they do not work with mine. Being given advice I have already been given also makes me feel like the person is saying 'You didn't listen. You are doing it wrong.' I am writing this not because I want people to stop giving me advice, that I react in this way is my problem, not theirs. I am writing it so you know how I was feeling at that moment.
I decided I couldn't continue ruining the dinner with the writhing banshee in my lap so I took her with the välling to our room. I didn't really want her to sleep at that moment because I could see the only way she would sleep, even though she was tired, was if she got to breastfeed (this would calm her enough to realise she was tired and fall asleep) and that would mean I would miss dinner. I decided instead to sit next to her in the bed while she screamed and cried. Of course, I would have preferred cuddling or holding her and calming her to sleep but when she is like she was, she refuses to be touched. I sat next to her with the iPad on her favourite show in the hope it would distract her. It was being ignored. I waited for Erik. I knew Erik would finish his dinner and come straight to me so that I could go eat. I had a plan. I would go eat my dinner then come back in and get ready for bed then put her to bed for the night. I was calm in my head. At least, I thought I was. But, when Erik came in, instead of calmly saying what I just wrote, I started crying and the first thing I said was 'I can't do this anymore'. After that initial outburst, I was able to calm myself enough to tell him my plan. Then, I don't know what happened. She didn't want me to leave and she was grabbing at me and screaming. I screamed. I shouted. I have never reacted that way to anything. Just as my first statement to Erik came out of my mouth without any premeditation, without me even realising I felt that way, so were the primal screams coming out of my mouth at that moment. I wanted to break something. I remember once after some issues at school, I had a visit with the school counselor and I came back to Geography class and just started, quite calmly, breaking my ruler in half and half again until it was in little unusable pieces on my desk. This kind of felt like that but a thousand times worse. I think if I had been facing the window, I would have punched the window with my fist. Instead, I threw pillows around and screamed until I was calm enough to leave.
I still needed to eat and I knew there was no way I could hide that I had been crying this time or that I could calm myself quickly enough to sit at the table to eat. I decided that Erik's family knew me and cared about me enough that I could go out there sad. The first thing Erik's mother asked when I came was if everything was OK. I said no it was not OK as I proceeded to almost break the salad bowl while putting salad on my plate. I was shaking, trembling is perhaps a better word. I held my eyes and tried to calm myself. I have experience with pushing down and hiding emotions and I used all my strength to try and stem the downpour. Since that happened, it seems that my emotions are always near the surface. I am crying as I write this and it is one of the reasons why I need to write this. The internet has always been a haven for me to say the things I am not allowed to say. I could not push my feelings down. I don't know if it was just that ocean of sadness I have inside me finally filled to the brim or if perhaps the weather there is simply so bad that there are constant floods. I ate my dinner, first not looking at anyone, then people wanted to comfort me. They were all very nice and I appreciated it. I got up after finishing my food and I was told to sit back down and let Erik deal with Little M. But, I had a plan. Erik knew my plan and was expecting me. I was unable to express my plan to them because I was simply too emotional and ended up crying and just saying I had to go back. It must have seemed that I did not want to go back and that I felt like I was a prisoner. I didn't. When I went inside, Erik's mother, who had gone in to help Erik, stopped me and told me not to go in. She said Little M was not abandoned, she was with her father and that I had to let him calm her on his own, I had to let him be a father. MI knew I could calm her and put her to sleep in a second but instead, I went for a walk and Erik's mother promised to call me when Little M was calm. She did this and I came back, still feeling awful. Later, Erik was on his way to take the now calm but wide awake child to the trampoline. When she saw me, she was so happy and spent the rest of the evening with me and fell asleep late.
This experience taught me many things, mostly about myself. If you had asked me how I felt about my current life situation and the routines we have made as a family three days ago, I would have said I was happy and meant it. I think it is not bad weather or an overflow or emotions, I think there is a monster in me hiding under the surface. I didn't know it was there but it is getting more and more restless. I have learned that I need to stop some of my default settings. If I think something should be done, I do it. I don't even think about asking for help. If I am home with my child, as I am now that it is summer holidays, that means I want to be with my child. Helping her to have a good time by taking her places and having her participate in everyday chores, that is something that has to be done, so I do it. I don't give her father space to do things. Not because I don't want him to, but because he and I have always been opposites in things like this. He doesn't always notice when things need to be done and if he does, he takes a lot longer to get them done. He is more motivated to do things if I ask him to though. My problem is I don't ask, I don't even think of putting the responsibility on someone else. I realised last night that the reason why I don't remember to invite him if Little M and I go and do something is because I stopped inviting him out to do things with me long before Little M was in the picture. He does not like social situations. I got out of the habit of asking him to do things with me if there was a possibility he'd have to interact with others before we had a child so now it never even crosses my mind.
Like most two year olds, Little M is obsessed with Elsa. To be more exact, she is obsessed with the song 'Let it go'. I watched that film before she was born and the song spoke to me even then. The line 'conceal, don't feel, don't let them know' is something that I was taught from a young age. I actually wear most of my feelings on my face and everyone can tell what I am thinking but there are specific emotions I hide without even realising I'm doing it. I have always related the song to a specific series of events in my life that have scarred me. It is where the ocean started. This experience and the way I have been feeling, without knowing I was feeling it has made me realise that the song applies to me here and now in a different way. I need to allow my child to have a relationship with her father. I think one of the reasons I have been so upset is that I am worried about this. I worry about when I have to be away in the evenings or if I have to be gone overnight in the future or, God Forbid, if something happened to me and I was never able to be there for her again. She needs to have more in her life than just me. I need to let go. This can be difficult as we have very little family in the same town as us. I have had many friends invite me to do things this summer which would be great but I have always had to decline as we are out of town in the summer home with Erik's family. She needs her father. I need to give him space to be her father by not taking all the responsibility. I need to change my natural state of being. I have to stop automatically hiding my feelings. I need to stop thinking that the selfish thing is not spending every minute possible with my child and that the selfish thing is actually that I take up all of her time and don't allow others to find a place in her heart. I would hear people say that in order to be a good parent you have to have your own interests and do things for yourself as well but I never really understood it. It always seemed like choosing to sometimes not be with your child except for when it is essential like when you have to go to work, go to the doctor or run an errand was in some way neglecting them. The idea of 'taking a break' from your child seemed silly and weak. Why would I take a break anyway? Being with her really is my most favourite thing in the whole wide world but now I realise it is like being on a constant rollercoaster. If being on a rollercoaster were my most favourite thing in the whole wide world, I wouldn't want to be on one constantly but I might say something like 'I love riding rollercoasters so much, I wish I could ride them all the time'. The truth is, it is healthy to not do your most favourite thing in the whole wide world constantly. I need to let it go, I must stop trying to be the good girl I always have to be, the perfect girl is gone. Here I'll stand and here I'll stay. Let the storm rage on.
P.S. I wrote this yesterday and cried while I wrote it but I read through and edited it today and found I was calm and happy. As I said, I needed to write this down, I don't think it's a monster in the ocean anymore, just a storm that I needed to ride out.
I started this blog a long time ago and had all these plans to be consistent with it, not just with regularly writing in it but the way it would be written. Each post would start the same way and no post would be longer than 500 words because, as an English teacher, I know how exhausting it can be to read texts longer than 500 words. Though, when I think about it, that is probably because reading 128 one thousand word essays is my least favourite thing in the whole wide world so what is exhausting is probably not reading one thousand word essay but many in a row. So, if you're going to keep reading, I suggest you don't read anything else today or you will hate your life. I was also going to end each post the same way. Well, it's been about 3 years since I have posted here and a lot has changed so I am going to do away with all those rules and just write what is in my heart. I am going to do this for two reasons. Firstly, what I have in my heart is an ocean longer than 500 words and secondly, I need to get this stuff down in some way, shape or form for my own sanity. I know this is a public place and I have chosen not to be anonymous here, I could write this in a private diary or a letter but I have so many loved ones overseas and I am OK with the universe knowing what I am going to write, part of my problem is trying to hide my feelings, conceal, don't feel, if you will so it is good for my sanity to write this here. I really recommend you stop reading because this is long and probably uninteresting to most except my closest family and even those don't have to read it. Putting it down on digital paper is what needs to happen so I get it out of the ocean in my heart.
I can see that I really need to update this blog as it says that I am about to become a mother. I have in fact, been a mother for more than two years. I have a beautiful two year old who is my world. In my work with children, I saw how parents doted on their children. I saw how they loved them and I thought I understood. I didn't truly understand until I saw her, squinting in the operating theatre lights and coughing up amniotic fluid (She was an emergency C-Section, that is maybe a story for another day.) There is something that happens in your brain, some people describe it as a space that you never knew existed is suddenly filled but I think it's more like you get an extra slot in your head just for that child, a really big part of your brain is now filled with that child, not even just your need to take care of the child but who she is and what she is doing, always. When you are not with her, that extra slot somehow gets bigger and the child, in idle moments, can take over all your thoughts. It is easy to lose yourself as this giant extra slot in your brain swells with thoughts of her, taking over all other thoughts. I now understand parents I may not have understood before, parents who I thought were behaving in a way that was detrimental to their child's development. I perhaps still disagree with their parenting style but now I understand that all parents are doing what they think is best for them, and their child. They make mistakes, we all do but they are doing their best. I have learnt that is is impossible to judge another parent (OK, there are times I would judge of course, if what they are doing is abusive but you know what I mean) because I don't know them and I don't know their child the way they know him or her. In this way, I hope that others do not judge me for the things I do and the mistakes I have made and will make in the future.
The main thing I wanted to get off my chest is a story of what happened the other day and how it was a symptom of a bigger problem. We are currently staying in Erik's (I have no idea if I have kept him anonymous on here or not, maybe I should have reviewed old posts before writing this) family's summer home. This is a sacred place for Erik. It is a log cabin in the middle of nowhere in Lappland, Sweden. His parents live here full time but during holidays, the family all come together to enjoy living in the country and what can only be considered an easy life. My two year old's older cousin (OK, let's keep her anonymous at least and call her Little M) had his 6th birthday party. This party started after lunch. After lunch, Little M is meant to have her nap. I could see she was overly excited by all the older children but I thought I'd try. I tried to put her to sleep the easy way which, for her, is breastfeeding. She is not meant to breastfeed during the day but if there are extenuating circumstances like she is in a strange place surrounded by exciting people and things, I think it is OK (I would like to write a post on my much changed opinions on breastfeeding since becoming a mother later too but let's keep that out of this story, it will be long enough as it is. For the story, all you need to know right now is that I breastfeed her to help her fall asleep). She didn't sleep. She clearly had energy to burn and was not interested in staying in her room. If she doesn't sleep from breastfeeding, there is no point in trying anything else. Breastfeeding is like a cheat for switching her off. She is at an age now where she does not always need to sleep during the day. If she has had the chance to sleep in and hasn't been too active, she can often stay away until 19:00. I knew that today was a day when she would need to sleep as with all the exciting things at the cabin, she had been very active, which is why I cheated but even my cheat didn't work.
By 16:30 ish, the party was over and she was distraught, exhausted and unreachable. We tried to give her food because that is always a good way to give a tired child some energy but she was already past the point of no return and was just screaming and crying and not listening or looking at the food. I stood with her in her grandparents' bedroom where the older children were watching a cartoon. Watching TV is another way to keep her awake. If she falls asleep while watching TV then she really really needs to sleep. She fell asleep at 17:00 ish. This is an awful time for her to fall asleep. She hadn't eaten any dinner and she would view the sleep as a nap and would wake up hungry in an hour and a half ish, just in time for us to start her bedtime routine which, she would of course, not be ready for because she'd just woken up from a nap. It would mean she would not be tired enough to sleep again until about midnight. I took her to our room and the first thing I hated happened. Erik was angry with me for letting her fall asleep. I lay her in the bed and I could have gotten up straight away and gone and done something else but I couldn't face people. I sat next to her on the bed and cried. Eventually, Erik came in because he realised he had been too harsh and was coming in to apologise. I was very much feeling inadequate and weak because I didn't disagree that it was an awful time for her to sleep so him making me feel like I let her fall asleep made me feel like I wasn't doing my job as a mother. Sometimes though, you just have to see that all the things you did didn't work because your child simply had to have her needs met.
At I guess 18:00 (That is when dinner is usually but I don't know what time is was exactly) it was time for dinner. Little M was still asleep. I decided that I might gently encourage her to wake up by opening the blinds a little to let in some natural light. The goal here was that she had slept a short time and would have energy to eat and not be up until midnight because she was still tired. Then I went out of the room, tried to hide that I had been crying and went to have dinner. About 5 minutes later, Erik came in with a rather sad but awake Little M. She was struggling and crying and did not want to sit either on her own at the dinner table and eat or with me and eat. She wanted to sleep. Apparently Erik had kissed her cheek and that coupled with the open blinds, that had been enough to wake her up but clearly, she was not done sleeping and my hope that a short sleep would rejuvenate her enough to at least eat dinner did not come to pass. I asked Erik to make her some välling (This is a Swedish drink people give their kids in a bottle before bed. It is basically watery porridge and Little M has it every night before bed, she sleeps more calmly if she has drunk it) so I could try and get some food into her at least. I tried. I held her in my arms and tipped her head back and put the bottle in her mouth. I really tried.
Erik's very kind family had many suggestions for me. They are great. They have more experience of parenting than me and they told me what they did with their children. They were not judging but I have never been good at taking advice. Whenever people give me suggestions, especially when I am already vulnerable and stressed from crying and hearing my child cry, it makes me feel like they are saying 'No, you're doing it wrong. You're not good enough'. That is how I felt. I know that wasn't their intention and I do appreciate their suggestions. They are things they have said before and things I have tried. I know what works with my child and what doesn't. Some of what they said is what I do, based on their advice. Other things, well they may have worked with their child but they do not work with mine. Being given advice I have already been given also makes me feel like the person is saying 'You didn't listen. You are doing it wrong.' I am writing this not because I want people to stop giving me advice, that I react in this way is my problem, not theirs. I am writing it so you know how I was feeling at that moment.
I decided I couldn't continue ruining the dinner with the writhing banshee in my lap so I took her with the välling to our room. I didn't really want her to sleep at that moment because I could see the only way she would sleep, even though she was tired, was if she got to breastfeed (this would calm her enough to realise she was tired and fall asleep) and that would mean I would miss dinner. I decided instead to sit next to her in the bed while she screamed and cried. Of course, I would have preferred cuddling or holding her and calming her to sleep but when she is like she was, she refuses to be touched. I sat next to her with the iPad on her favourite show in the hope it would distract her. It was being ignored. I waited for Erik. I knew Erik would finish his dinner and come straight to me so that I could go eat. I had a plan. I would go eat my dinner then come back in and get ready for bed then put her to bed for the night. I was calm in my head. At least, I thought I was. But, when Erik came in, instead of calmly saying what I just wrote, I started crying and the first thing I said was 'I can't do this anymore'. After that initial outburst, I was able to calm myself enough to tell him my plan. Then, I don't know what happened. She didn't want me to leave and she was grabbing at me and screaming. I screamed. I shouted. I have never reacted that way to anything. Just as my first statement to Erik came out of my mouth without any premeditation, without me even realising I felt that way, so were the primal screams coming out of my mouth at that moment. I wanted to break something. I remember once after some issues at school, I had a visit with the school counselor and I came back to Geography class and just started, quite calmly, breaking my ruler in half and half again until it was in little unusable pieces on my desk. This kind of felt like that but a thousand times worse. I think if I had been facing the window, I would have punched the window with my fist. Instead, I threw pillows around and screamed until I was calm enough to leave.
I still needed to eat and I knew there was no way I could hide that I had been crying this time or that I could calm myself quickly enough to sit at the table to eat. I decided that Erik's family knew me and cared about me enough that I could go out there sad. The first thing Erik's mother asked when I came was if everything was OK. I said no it was not OK as I proceeded to almost break the salad bowl while putting salad on my plate. I was shaking, trembling is perhaps a better word. I held my eyes and tried to calm myself. I have experience with pushing down and hiding emotions and I used all my strength to try and stem the downpour. Since that happened, it seems that my emotions are always near the surface. I am crying as I write this and it is one of the reasons why I need to write this. The internet has always been a haven for me to say the things I am not allowed to say. I could not push my feelings down. I don't know if it was just that ocean of sadness I have inside me finally filled to the brim or if perhaps the weather there is simply so bad that there are constant floods. I ate my dinner, first not looking at anyone, then people wanted to comfort me. They were all very nice and I appreciated it. I got up after finishing my food and I was told to sit back down and let Erik deal with Little M. But, I had a plan. Erik knew my plan and was expecting me. I was unable to express my plan to them because I was simply too emotional and ended up crying and just saying I had to go back. It must have seemed that I did not want to go back and that I felt like I was a prisoner. I didn't. When I went inside, Erik's mother, who had gone in to help Erik, stopped me and told me not to go in. She said Little M was not abandoned, she was with her father and that I had to let him calm her on his own, I had to let him be a father. MI knew I could calm her and put her to sleep in a second but instead, I went for a walk and Erik's mother promised to call me when Little M was calm. She did this and I came back, still feeling awful. Later, Erik was on his way to take the now calm but wide awake child to the trampoline. When she saw me, she was so happy and spent the rest of the evening with me and fell asleep late.
This experience taught me many things, mostly about myself. If you had asked me how I felt about my current life situation and the routines we have made as a family three days ago, I would have said I was happy and meant it. I think it is not bad weather or an overflow or emotions, I think there is a monster in me hiding under the surface. I didn't know it was there but it is getting more and more restless. I have learned that I need to stop some of my default settings. If I think something should be done, I do it. I don't even think about asking for help. If I am home with my child, as I am now that it is summer holidays, that means I want to be with my child. Helping her to have a good time by taking her places and having her participate in everyday chores, that is something that has to be done, so I do it. I don't give her father space to do things. Not because I don't want him to, but because he and I have always been opposites in things like this. He doesn't always notice when things need to be done and if he does, he takes a lot longer to get them done. He is more motivated to do things if I ask him to though. My problem is I don't ask, I don't even think of putting the responsibility on someone else. I realised last night that the reason why I don't remember to invite him if Little M and I go and do something is because I stopped inviting him out to do things with me long before Little M was in the picture. He does not like social situations. I got out of the habit of asking him to do things with me if there was a possibility he'd have to interact with others before we had a child so now it never even crosses my mind.
Like most two year olds, Little M is obsessed with Elsa. To be more exact, she is obsessed with the song 'Let it go'. I watched that film before she was born and the song spoke to me even then. The line 'conceal, don't feel, don't let them know' is something that I was taught from a young age. I actually wear most of my feelings on my face and everyone can tell what I am thinking but there are specific emotions I hide without even realising I'm doing it. I have always related the song to a specific series of events in my life that have scarred me. It is where the ocean started. This experience and the way I have been feeling, without knowing I was feeling it has made me realise that the song applies to me here and now in a different way. I need to allow my child to have a relationship with her father. I think one of the reasons I have been so upset is that I am worried about this. I worry about when I have to be away in the evenings or if I have to be gone overnight in the future or, God Forbid, if something happened to me and I was never able to be there for her again. She needs to have more in her life than just me. I need to let go. This can be difficult as we have very little family in the same town as us. I have had many friends invite me to do things this summer which would be great but I have always had to decline as we are out of town in the summer home with Erik's family. She needs her father. I need to give him space to be her father by not taking all the responsibility. I need to change my natural state of being. I have to stop automatically hiding my feelings. I need to stop thinking that the selfish thing is not spending every minute possible with my child and that the selfish thing is actually that I take up all of her time and don't allow others to find a place in her heart. I would hear people say that in order to be a good parent you have to have your own interests and do things for yourself as well but I never really understood it. It always seemed like choosing to sometimes not be with your child except for when it is essential like when you have to go to work, go to the doctor or run an errand was in some way neglecting them. The idea of 'taking a break' from your child seemed silly and weak. Why would I take a break anyway? Being with her really is my most favourite thing in the whole wide world but now I realise it is like being on a constant rollercoaster. If being on a rollercoaster were my most favourite thing in the whole wide world, I wouldn't want to be on one constantly but I might say something like 'I love riding rollercoasters so much, I wish I could ride them all the time'. The truth is, it is healthy to not do your most favourite thing in the whole wide world constantly. I need to let it go, I must stop trying to be the good girl I always have to be, the perfect girl is gone. Here I'll stand and here I'll stay. Let the storm rage on.
P.S. I wrote this yesterday and cried while I wrote it but I read through and edited it today and found I was calm and happy. As I said, I needed to write this down, I don't think it's a monster in the ocean anymore, just a storm that I needed to ride out.