I write because I must and I must to stay sane. I write only
of my own life and my feelings. I write in hopes that it will help me feel
better that my life will become easier and that I will gain greater
understanding.
To begin with I would like to state that I love my family
very much my husband, my children, and our pets
this is not a disposition on how I feel unloved or that I do not like
having a husband and children but more a thought process on how my mind wraps around
my life and job. I have only one job and purpose in like and that is to take
care of my house, my children and my husband. I spend every day and night doing
nothing more or less. My every waking and sleeping moment is spent making sure
that the well-being of my family is the best that I can do. So shall we begin?
I became pregnant with my oldest daughter four years and
nine months ago this week. I had just turned 21 at the end of July and was “defying”
my parents by living with a man they did not like. The man was not a good man
and I would spend a little over two and a half years never really being with
him but remaining on his leash. The man made sure that I would never be in a
relationship with anyone else more than a couple weeks and at the same time
never allow me to be in a relationship with him. The man was physically and
mentally abusive and I still to this day have many issues that have yet to be “fixed”
because of the things that he did. Anyways, I spent the nine months of my
pregnancy working as a waitress, and at about six months pregnant I moved back
in with my parents because I was not able to provide for myself. All this time
I would still sneak and see my ex, the one who impregnated me and refused to
believe that the child was his, while still living with my parents and
accepting their help. This story although should be told does not need to be
told right now the main thing you need to know is I had my daughter, was a
single mother, lived with my parents for a couple months, worked in customer
service once she was born, still “fooled” with my ex, and met my husband about
six months after my daughter was born.
My husband is a good man when I met him we both worked
together and I was just looking for someone to settle down with while he wanted
a one night stand. He never left. I put him through a lot in the beginning the
start of child support case, paternity tests with my daughter, and repeatedly
breaking up with him to get back with my ex so that my daughter could see her
birth father. It took my husband actually trying to leave back to his home
state and never come back for me to realize that I wanted to be with him and no
one else. My husband stayed only knowing that I would never speak nor see my ex
again. I have not. My husband asked me to marry him between May and July I got
my ring on my birthday when I turned 23. We also got pregnant with our second
child the beginning of July after financial hardship we moved to Kansas to live
with my mother to give her help around the house and company. In March of the
next year my second daughter was born with this event my husband signed up to
join the United States Army so that we could have a better life. At this point I was taking care of two
children and keeping house for my mother. Life was hard then but I at least had
help from my mother and breaks to relax and be alone with my husband I will
forever be grateful for that. After my husband graduated basic and AIT we moved
to Georgia where my husband’s orders were placed. A week in Georgia we became
pregnant with our third child, a son. So that brings us almost current our
oldest is four now, middle is two almost three, and the youngest is one. My
life has not changed since moving here besides a bigger house, and adding to
our family with two dogs. So why do I give you this brief background story into
parts of my life, so that you may understand that when I give certain facts you
can see the background of those facts and hopefully understand me a bit more.
My life now is continuous, which in truth it has been since
my daughter was born. Since the birth of my oldest child I have not had one
full day alone, and by alone I mean truly alone every moment of my life has
been spent with either one or more of my children or my husband or even one of
my parents or siblings. I do believe that the world thinks it is funny to watch
me spend my life like this. Life was tolerable in the beginning I knew the
choices that I had made and the consequences that had arisen out of that, I was
able to take care of my child with happiness and a look of optimism. By the
time my second daughter was born I was still able to walk around with a sense
of happiness and understanding, I chose to have a second child and I chose to
stay home and take care of my children rather than work. Which I will explain
because it really needs to be understood as to why I stay home and not work
where my husband does which in today’s world is quite hard to do with three
children. I used to work I held a job from the day I turned sixteen up until my
daughter turned a year old. I loved working, of course I got tired with it from
time to time but that is what sick days were for. My last job was at SITEL
where I met my husband he had lost his job there when he was going to leave me
and at that point in our life because of daycare costs and adding him into our
income situation he stayed at home with my daughter. It didn’t last long though
within a couple months he had had enough of a crying child 24/7 and when I lost
my job in June of that year it was decided that he would find a job and I would
have to stay at home with my daughter because I did not have the money to put
my daughter in daycare so we both could work. I have not worked since. So now
my life consists of child involvement every day and night and if not in the
form of my actual children, at times it is my husband who is acting like the
child. Once we had two children there was no way I could ever go back to work
the cost alone in daycare would have rendered it useless for me to work. I
would be basically going to work to pay the daycare bill and getting a break
from the children. Which now that I think about it may have been a good idea so
that I could have maybe gotten a much needed break from time to time. Now that
we have three children the cost of childcare is even more so if I ever get to
go back to work it will only be once I have children in school all day.
So now you know why I do not work and you understand my
past. The hard thing now is trying to explain to you what I am feeling and why.
I don’t want to sound like I am complaining or that I hate my life, what I want
more than anything is an understanding maybe even a sense of calm that someone
out there knows what I am going through. Let me state a couple things before I
go through my feelings, I know several people who have the same number or
children I do and some even have more, they do just fine and have no issues,
the difference is that I feel I have no support at home and what support I do
have is not adequate. My husband will be livid when or if he ever reads this
but understand it is really just how I feel.
I try my hardest with my children. It has hit the point in
my life that sometimes forced thoughts come through my mind about no longer
wanting to be a mother, wanting to just walk away from my husband, my children,
everything to just be able to live alone in solace. These feelings are not right;
it is not what I should be feeling. I wake up each morning wanting to just lie
in bed and not go get my son who has awoken and is now jumping up and down in
my crib, or go get my daughter who is screaming at the top of her lungs that
she wants to watch Dora. I never want to cook anymore, cleaning is depressing,
playing with my children is pained, and time with my husband is useless. Oh and
before you suggest it I cannot just ask my husband to watch the children so I
can go out with friends, I have no friends, my husband has ruined ones that I
had or people just do not like me.
My day begins around five a.m. sometimes earlier; honestly
it is whenever my husband’s alarm goes off on his phone. I must turn off his
alarm and wake him up so that he can go to PT, if I do not wake him up he will
sleep through his alarm and miss work. After he leaves I am able to go back to
sleep most of the time, if a child has woken up I stay up with them, otherwise
I sleep until either my husband comes home from PT or one of the kids wake up.
Weekends I cannot sleep in either because if I try my husband just gets pissed
because he never gets to sleep past six, even though as he tells me this on the
weekend it is between 830 and 900. Hmmm….that sounds like sleeping in to me.
After I get the kids changed and dressed in the morning we stay upstairs until
I have the strength and will to go downstairs. Once we get downstairs cereal is
the order for breakfast. The kids demand their TV and so we watch Dora or Umizoomi,
who would have thought. Lunch has to be ready around eleven so our son can take
his nap. After lunch both our middle
daughter and son go down for a nap. Our oldest is supposed to nap, needs to nap
but she refuses, so she stays downstairs and is supposed to lie down. That
however does not happen so I spend what should be my quiet time of the day
trying to get my oldest to lie down and stay lying down and staring at my house
wanting and needing to clean but not having the drive to move. Somewhere in
there my husband comes home demanding his lunch and sometimes he brings someone
else with him that I then have to feed as well. About three the kids start to
wake up if my oldest has not woken them up with her screaming or my screaming.
They are brought down stairs and changed in time for me to turn on the TV to
once again watch Dora. Most of my day is also spent yelling at my children to
listen to me, I start so nice and calm willing and hoping for them to listen,
yeah never happen. So usually a couple hours in I have to yell. “Don’t color on
the walls” “Stay out of the fridge” “Turn off the hose” “Do not go outside”
These are just some of the most common and easiest yelling I have. I don’t even
know where they get the colors because we hide them all because they already
decorated most of our house.
By the time my husband gets home I am frazzled, pissed,
tired, wanting to cry, and still keeping a smiling face. Doesn’t matter my
husband comes home pissed or tired too so getting him to watch the kids without
him himself yelling and over disciplining is useless. He has two things in the
house I ask him to do so I do not have to do everything, the dishes and the
garbage. The last time both of these things were completely caught up and done
correctly was the last time I got pissed off enough to do it myself. He does
help, just not the things he needs to be doing, he tries to pick up but he has
a tendency to put things in piles and throw things into drawers so I have to
turn around and do everything over again so that it is done correctly. My house
is currently a mess while I am writing this, the toys strewn all through the
toy room, dishes in the sink, counters and stove dirty, fridge full of liquid
since someone broke a bottle of soy sauce, dirty clothes overflowing, house not
vacuumed or swept or mopped. The house needs to be cleaned I really need to do
it but cleaning a two story house by myself to perfection will take more than
one full day and I would have to have the children out of the way and my
husband cannot do that.
My husband does not have patience it takes the smallest
thing to get him yelling so I feel a lot of the time I have to compensate for
his behavior and the kids know that and therefore do not listen to me. They do
not listen to my husband either I think because they know that no matter what
daddy is going to yell and get mad. Part of my husband’s issue is that fact
that he doesn’t fully understand how young our children really are they may be
able to understand some things but they are still young and still cannot just
be given orders and expected to follow through with it and remember them for
all time. Or if they follow the orders one time my husband expects that from
that point on they should always be able to do those same tasks. I personally
think that if you word it correctly and if our children had a more stable
happier home life it would be so much easier to get them to do things. But as
of now our life is turmoil, our home is turmoil and nothing is going to fix it.
My husband and I fight mainly about what he is not doing, what he is doing
wrong, and how much I hate my life at times. I try I really do.
When my husband is
home he spends most of his time trying to watch his shows, play on the
computer, read, or play on his phone. He takes an hour long bath daily
sometimes longer, frequently takes a nap and doesn’t like to get off of the
couch or his chair. Both my husband and I have a problem I call couch
parenting. We have issues of telling our children to do something or stop
something simply by telling or yelling from the couch or chair.
I know that I have issues too. I know I need to calm down
and be more active with my children, I know I
need to be a better parent but I really feel that if I cannot get time
away to be by myself in quiet I am going to go crazy and just get worse. I know
what type of parent I need to be, I know how to accomplish this and most of all
I know how and why I need to change. I just can’t literally I think about it
all the time what I need to do and why, how I can be better, and when I need to
do what things. However I wake up each morning dreading my life because I never
get a break. My husband’s brilliant idea for this is to just yell at me well go
upstairs or just go out then. My response, if I go upstairs I just have to hear
the children be yelled at and getting in trouble constantly with him, and if I
leave where am I to go, I don’t have friends to “hang” with and I don’t have
money to go sit somewhere. I thought about going to the park and just sitting
but here that is not a good idea way too many bugs and way too hot. Besides I
feel that if I just leave for a day or for some time I will come home and my
children will not have been paid attention to and will have just “gotten in
trouble” all day. Somewhere somehow there has to be a way for me to get a break
so that I can come back refreshed and ready to take care of my children. I love
my children so much and everything I do is for them. I want them to have the
best life I could possibly give them and the happiest. I want to achieve that
for them but to do that I have to be happy myself and I am not. My husband will
learn he is young and if I had the patience and the time I can show him how to
be a parent and if he is not willing to accept my help then he will have to
find his own help or I cannot be with him.
So there it is as much as I can explain there is so much
more yes so much more to explain my complex feelings but this gets the gist of
it out there. I do not want anyone to think of me as a bad mother. Please
understand that I love my children dearly and what I have described are some of
the worse times but we have a lot of good and loving moments and days. Soon my
husband will be deploying and what little help I can wean out of him will be
gone and I will be doing this myself before he goes I will learn how to be the
better mom I need to be. I will reach my goals even if it means hiding all
emotions and moving forward and pretending and practicing so that my children
do not have to see anything but a happy loving mother. I will be that good mom
for my children. I may not get the break I need but somehow I will accomplish
what needs be done so my kids can have a wonderful happy life.
Thanks
