Mother Guilt
My kids started giving me the full-court press last night at dinner.
‘Get a real job.’ (*whose voice is that? really, i mean it. Who has told them that I don’t have a real job? I write and I raise them. What is not real? )
‘I think you’d be fine in a classroom mom. You’re not that deaf.’ (oh but honey, i am though.)
“I’ve never even seen you in ‘business casual’ mom.” (since when is this a complaint a regular child voices?)
This was dinner. In order to defend myself, I end up pledging all my energy to the ‘i really am deaf, guys’ team. and I am not deaf, let me be clear. But I AM profoundly hearing impaired. Being in a classroom full of joybombs isn’t something I think I could do well with my hearing. Not being in charge of the learning of the loves, or the distinguishing of one voice from the multitudes, and I am a very ardent believer that a good classroom is a noisy one, 78% of the time.
Spending any minutes at all thinking about how much hearing loss I have sucks. It does. I do not like it, at all. Feeling guilty or bad around my children because I can’t meet their expectations is killer. I feel so much guilt, like I have to ‘prove’ something to them, and the idea that I am not good enough, right now? Holy simolians….
It is true that I don’t earn a lot of money doing what I do. I mean, this here blog earned me 17 cents last month, though. (i’m winking at you.) The gods of blogdom don’t pay me til I hit $100, so I think when I hit 74, I’ll be allll set.
But get this, I make money on writing. Legitimately. Every month. And you know what? That is not something to be discounted. It’s only getting better, kids.
But my god, the guilt. The ways in which I want to shape myself to fit into something for them? Ugh. I can feel my inner glow contorting itself to fit what they think I should be. Wanting to satisfy whatever it is they think is better than what i am right now.
And I know that I do this in a million ways every which way. In dating, fuggetaboutit. But also in ‘what will the teacher think?’, ‘what are the other mothers doing?’, ‘what will i tell my mom?’
And then there are the ways which no one but me will ever see. ‘will the waitress judge us because of the rice that fell on the ground?’ (boy, thats ages ago…fuck covid, again.) ‘does the bank teller judge my messy penmanship?’
Some of these are absolutely fucked up, guys. There is literally no reason that my brain should travel those paths. As far as my kids go, there is no choice. What comes out of their mouths is just what needs to be addressed, that’s all.
I know, its just tip of the iceberg thinking, there is so much in there. so much womanhood, so much conditioning. Mother guilt. Woman Guilt. GAH.
i know, i know.
and so on, and so forth.
love you,
me.
*and yes, if its their dad’s voice wishing me to get a ‘real’ job so he could pay me less, i just point to the mandate of the court, and how i willfully and happily take less than that already, because of the ‘strain’ it causes him. roll right off me, devil! (i’m winking again, but in a snarky, vicious way…)
