One thing I hear often when I’m struggling is what a Good Mom I am. A Strong Mom. A GREAT Mom. A real ‘Mama Bear’.
I have one daughter with autism. I have another with POTS that has to receive homebound instruction instead of going to school because of how debilitating her symptoms became.
So I struggle. Often.
But it’s amazing what you get used to. Even the crushing weight and loneliness of single parenting.
As I told my therapist, it’s not that I believe they’re lying– those people so in awe of my mothering skills–but it’s just interesting that being this Good Mom feels just like being a terrible mom.
Being a Strong Mom feels exactly- and I mean EXACTLY- like I’m failing my kids.
Being a Great Mom feels like I am drowning in a still sea beneath a starless, moonless night.
And being a Mama Bear sometimes makes me feel like I want to claw through my skin, through the walls, use my teeth to tear through those who have caused all this grief in the first place, and run into the wild forever.
Do you know what it feels like to be strong all the time? Exhausting. It’s fucking exhausting.
No one tells you that. But to be fair, these platitude people–they have safety in their lives. They have support within their homes. It’s hard for them to fathom a day of struggle after struggle with no soft place to fall at the end of it. And then to wake and do it again. Every day.
But it doesn’t matter; the message is clear. When a near stranger tosses you a, “You’ll get through this- you’re so strong!” Or a friend reminds you to, “Stay strong for the girls.” It’s just a reminder that ladies:
You’re a bad mom if you can’t be strong all the time.
So, you disconnect with what makes you weak, with those things that make you vulnerable. You close the borders to what makes you able to connect. And that changes you. Severs you from the things you used to need for yourself in order to keep you safe from taking on more damage than you can handle. Because YOU have to be strong. For your children.
That kind of strength is isolating. That kind of isolation makes you strange. That kind of strangeness is lonely.
I wonder what it would be like to be a rested mom. A supported mom. A mom that isn’t constantly in survival mode.
I wonder how much my children suffer when I do.
And It’s not that I don’t want to be strong. It’s that I’d like the opportunity to be other things too. And it would really, and I mean really, be nice to not have to be strong alone.
For example, I didn’t want to have to be the only strong one there a few years ago, when my stepcat got a tooth infection that during emergency surgery was found to be advanced, incurable cancer, and I had to wake up my daughter and rush to the vet so that we could say goodbye to him on the operating table because he wasn’t going to wake up again.
Or, when I assumed that everyone’s throats were sore because of all the crying we did that day, but lo and behold, it turned out to be COVID, and I was left literally running from the couch –where my youngest was with her 104° fever and extreme pain in all of her limbs, to her sister– who was in the bedroom coughing up blood.
And I did let their dad know what was happening, but the level of concern whenever I‘ve told him that the girls were sick in the past was basically, “Welp, that sucks.” It’s never, “Let me talk to them. Tell them I love them. Do you need anything?”
No. If I get a response at all, it’s basically. “Keep me posted.” Or maybe just a “👍”.
This was no different. Something along the lines of ‘That sucks. Keep me posted.’ Along with him emphasizing how HE couldn’t afford to get sick right now. Then I didn’t hear from him for 4 days.
I was unable to notice though, because on day two, I got taken down by COVID as well, only mine manifested as a crushing headache that led to a trip to the emergency room.
Imagine that. As a parent, imagine what it’s like to have to leave your sick children home alone because you need urgent medical attention. It’s an awful feeling, but by the time my friend got me to the ER, I couldn’t feel my limbs and wasn’t coherent, so it wasn’t like I had a choice.
But after the worst had passed, when I did finally hear from my children’s father again, he actually did offer to pick us up some groceries.
Not to sound ungrateful, but I thought I was dying. Thanks for the bread.
And it would’ve been great to have someone to lean on when that same year, I got a Facebook message to let me know that I should probably say goodbye to my dad now. Even though nobody had told me that he’d been sick. Depression had finally gained ground on me that year, and when I’d stopped hearing from my father, I actually just assumed that he just didn’t want to talk to me anymore.
Isn’t depression neat?
By then, it had convinced me that people were just being charitable if they checked in, that no one actually liked me. Depression made everything feel like weight. If someone asked me how I was, my stomach would twist. Do I tell them the truth? Or were they just being nice by asking? Surely, they were just as sick of hearing about my troubles as I was of having troubles. But the troubles were there regardless, had been there for two years by that point, and that weight was so, so heavy.
So, I stopped reaching out. Didn’t bat an eye when people stopped doing the same, because of course they would. Even my dad. I got it together enough to have a dazed, 5-minute video call to say goodbye to him. But, I couldn’t even cry, all I felt was numb beneath that crushing heaviness.
Obviously, I made it through. I’m still here, writing stuff in stolen hours when I can. But each moment carries these tiny, pressure-born fractures, so many tiny fractures that I’m surprised I don’t sound like broken glass when I walk. And now, when my autistic child hits me because I’m brushing her hair wrong, or I have to dodge Legos or stress balls or anything else in her hands that comes flying my way during a meltdown, I hear myself very calmly telling her to just take a time out with her blanket on the couch. I hear myself say that, and my hands start to shake.
But it’s fine. She apologizes. I feel strong again.
I bask in my strength because what else am I supposed to do? Start drinking? Start fucking a vapid bar slut to bury my worries away while my family flounders without me? No, someone had to be responsible and strong, and that ended up being me. Now I’m trying to make my daughters strong in a way that doesn’t make them jingle like broken glass.
I do wonder if I’m doing a good job, but fortunately I’m too busy being strong to dwell on that one.
