Our own monsters…

A friend shared this blog post this morning:

The Bully Too Close to Home

I cried at my desk at work and had to blame it on my cold.

Since I found out I was pregnant I was filled with this sense of purpose, not only to be the best mother I could be (ie: better than mine was for me) but also to raise the most healthy and perfect little person I possibly could (better than I was and am). That is a lot of pressure, on myself and my little girl.

I’ve gone over and over and over in my head all the things my mother and father have ever done and the impact those things have had on me as a person. I’ve compared them to the upbringing of my husband, his stories and the impact they’ve had on him. I judge, critique, and analyze other parents to the point of driving myself crazy…because I don’t want to get it wrong, I want to get it all “just right”…perfect. That is a lot of pressure to put on not only myself but everyone else. In the end, we all suffer.

I can’t really even begin to describe my childhood or upbringing. It’s such a fucked up combination of love and anger and imbalance I wouldn’t know where to start. I even have a hard time computing it all myself most of the time. One moment I recall a loving, fun, bubbly mother letting me do her hair and makeup, letting me crawl into bed with her because it’s “just us, best buddies” against the world…and the next I remember a drunk, drugged up crazed woman dragging me out of bed by my hair screaming about cigarettes or hitting me in the face calling me a “snotty bitch” and asking who I think I am. With my father it’s either bike rides to the park, falling asleep on his chest on the couch or visiting him in prison, waiting for him to never show up for birthdays or catching him doing drugs in a friends bedroom. I’m not sharing this for pity or sympathy or using it as an excuse. I know I have a choice on how I deal with that. I know I’m an adult now and am responsible for how I use that. But I also can’t deny that it doesn’t effect me, that it isn’t hard, and that I do allow it to mess with my head and my heart. I am weak. I’m not perfect. There are times this shit comes crashing through my sunshiny positivity bubble and I’m left a wreck. I let it do that, me. And that again feeds the beast that is my confidence, my motivation, my happiness…the love I have for myself…the love I have left for everyone else.

I have alllllways been a people pleaser. Always. I want everyone to like me, everyone to be happy with me, everyone to approve of me, etc etc etc. I set these impossible standards for myself that just can’t be met. I have such great expectations of how I or others or things should be that when they don’t measure up…I’m crushed. And this compulsion to be perfect causes me to in turn want to raise a perfect little girl. If my daughter isn’t polite or behaving well, what will others think of ME? If my daughter isn’t smart, healthy and kind what kind of parent am I?! Everything is a reflection on me as a mother or as a person. Everything. How my husband or daughters treat me or see me. How my friends treat me or see me. It feels like it’s all a measure of me, of my worth, of my character. Sigh. And my daughter…that poor girl hasn’t stood a chance from the moment she was born…the shoes she is trying to fill continue to grow at an impossible rate that she can’t keep up with. The same goes for me…and probably everyone else I know.

Reading that blog post this morning felt like someone stripped me down, shoved me out in the middle of the world and shined a big bright spotlight on me. I’ve been there. Right there in that situation where my daughter is needing compassion and love and attention and I’m too busy or distracted to give it so she is left defeated and confused and hurt. Isn’t that so sadly ironic?! That in my constant battle to achieve perfection and create the perfect little person, I’m being the exact opposite of what I want and would expect me to be?!

Last night my daughter, husband and I all piled into her bed to read the last assigned chapter of “The Borrower’s” for her schools reading program. It had been a long day. I was stressed about a laundry list of things and frustrated with others not going my way or how I wanted them to so was already cranky. My daughter, being 5 and having just had a few pieces of candy as a reward for something or other was understandably antsy and distracted and not paying attention to what I was reading. We had gone through this the night before, where mid chapter she couldn’t tell me what had happened in the story or answer any questions I had asked. So tonight I got upset, closed the book and said we weren’t going to read if she wasn’t going to be respectful and listen. She begged me to keep going and I said no, kissed her goodnight, and left her crying. She opened her door a few minutes later all teary eyed, poked her little head out, and sheepishly said “I’m sorry”. I snapped “Go to bed Cadence” and this led to the door being shut as she sobbed uncontrollably. My husband got upset and told me that was uncalled for, that she was trying to say she was sorry; he went to console her. I immediately knew I had made a mistake but instead of saying that I got angry at him for “making me feel like a terrible mother”, cursed, and spent the rest of the night alone with a glass of wine. There are so many things wrong with what I did, I can’t even begin to start to pick it apart. I’m ashamed of it. Tears fill my eyes just typing this. But the bully in me snaps “Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You’re the one who did this. Cadence is who you should be feeling sorry for.” And I do. I feel sorry that my little girl, who has inherited my people pleasing and sensitive little heart, felt like she wasn’t good enough, like she had disappointed me, or like she had done a terrible thing simply because she is 5 and wasn’t paying attention. What broke my heart even more was the big puffy red eyes that greeted me when I finally went in to comfort her and make sure she knew it wasn’t that big of a deal, that I loved her, that I understood…that I was sorry…

The thing that confused me most about my relationship with my own mother was how she could fly off the handle one minute in a fit of rage and hit me, call me names, etc then come in crying 5 minutes later, sobbing through apologizes and begging me to forgive her. She always apologized but by the time I was 15 those apologies didn’t mean anything because I knew within the hour or the day or the week she would do it all over again and we would replay the horrible cycle of lashing out, feeling guilty, and taking it back. It broke my spirit, it drained my faith and trust in others, and I have a feeling it altered my own perception and ability to understand the true meaning of an apology, of learning from my mistakes and owning up to them, of what a normal healthy relationship is like. Now, looking back on that, I realize how I am falling into that pattern with my own daughter (as well as others)…the very thing I’ve always fought so hard to NOT do…and it hurts. I know it’s not as extreme as my mother, but my mother didn’t start out that way either…it gradually got worse over time…and I want to catch it, and stop it before it reaches that point. Again, I don’t want to raise another “me”…I don’t want Cadence looking back and fighting those same demons. And I want my apologies to mean something.

So within the last 24 hours my little bubble has been burst. I’m re-reading that blog post, going over all this in my little head, and feeling pretty heavy and deflated. It’s easy to see the negative in it all, to look back and dwell on the hurt and the faults and the “shoulda coulda woulda”s. What’s hard is using all that to learn, to improve, and to move forward without putting so much pressure on myself that I crumble beneath it. As my husband said “No one is perfect. We can’t expect it from ourselves or each other or Cadence.” Sigh.

So I guess my mission is to work on loving and accepting myself, cutting myself a little slack, and finding a healthy balance between self-evaluation and self-deprecation, analyzing my past and using it to grow or allowing it to prevent me from growing, and also understanding the difference between pillars of character to build from and impossible expectations to come crashing down from trying to reach. I am always always open to learning…I need to do so more graciously, gracefully, and peacefully…for myself and those I love.

I am not perfect. I never will be. No one is. No one should be. I shouldn’t strive to be better than someone else or my past, I should strive to be the best I can be…the happiest, the most loving, the healthiest inside and out…for me and for my family. I need to fill my own love cup before I can try to pour into that of others.

I want my daughter to feel good about herself, to love herself, to be happy…I shouldn’t care what others think of how we achieve that or how we get there. This whole mentality of “keeping up with the Jones'” isn’t just monetary anymore…it’s about an image, and that’s ridiculous and impossible…and it goes against everything I believe, everything I preach, everything raw and real and true…

Humbly bare. Always forward ❤