Because I Can't Let it Go

Some weeks ago, I found myself engaged in a one-sided battle on my favourite social media site, Facebook. It was one-sided because all the pain the other person caused wasn't something I addressed. All I did was absorb it and hurt.

I did the unthinkable in public. I said I was tired and crabby. I said that about attending an event at my kid's school. Suddenly, I found myself wearing the frame of the portrait of the Not Good Enough Parent.

And it blew me away.

I wanted to stand in a room with the other person and download my whole experience as a mother, to have that person lay with me as I cried myself to sleep, to panic with me as I fell behind on bills, to sit with me as I scrabbled to keep my civility when my kid was being a (totally normal, totally within the average parameters and completely infuriating) jerk and I couldn't tell another soul to just "deal with it" while I hid in the other room with a good book. I had to stay Right There, mothering and Being Amazing and remembering all the Love & Logic training I had and not responding like any other human would... by ferociously barking.

You see, though I am in a serious (and amazing) relationship, I am functionally single. My mate, my partner, my other half is on the other side of the Atlantic ocean. We're four thousand, five hundred and two miles apart. Give or take a few yards. Or meters. Whatever. Somewhere out there, on the other side of a gigantic body of water filled with whales and sea cucumbers and darkness and rogue waves, is my support system. We don't exchange supportive looks across the room. He can't feel my temperature rising in ire, he can't take my kid for a man-to-man walk, he can't provide the third person perspective so agonizingly necessary in parenting.

Nor can my mate contribute to the household's finances. The money he budgets with barely covers his own basic needs. Thus, I'm on my own here. Not enough money for bills and groceries all in the same week? I weigh the priorities. I'm no longer growing. I can survive on my physical storage units (read that: my muscles because I'm already pretty skinny) in favour of supplying my offspring with the nourishment a kid needs during the adolescent growth spurt. I tell myself that I'm from pioneer stock. Before that, I'm from warriors. Between the bloodline of oxen crossed with Viking, I should be alright. Just don't ask me about my bone density. Or my teeth. Or my brain function when I'm faced with bouts of malnutrition. I get my nourishment from watching my son grow strong and healthy.

So, in being admonished for not being glitteringly grateful for every photographable, scrap book worthy and bragging rights firm event... I found myself utterly furious. I spent days examining the root cause of the fury and I came up with this: privilege. From a position of privilege, my exhaustion was being criticized.

And I realized it was bullshit.

Every night, I put my kid to bed with snuggles and assurances. I tell him to have sweet dreams and I tell him I love him and that I will do everything I can to make things be okay. Every morning, I wake him up with a silly story of "what is this chicken doing taking photographs" or "well, I'm sorry but I lost the car to a giraffe who wanted to drive to the Statue of Liberty. We're walking today." Every night, he snuggles down in his bed and tells me it is the safest, most wonderful place in the world. Every morning, he smiles himself awake and tells me I'm silly.

My son wakes up and goes to sleep feeling loved, secure and happy.

I can't make myself be grateful for every event. I can't see how other people with harder lives have more of a right to feel pain. I can't imagine telling another person that what is hard for them shouldn't be and that their struggle isn't valid. All I know is that I do the best I can and that my son feels safe. I see in his beautiful, content face that however I do this parenting thing, it's right. It's good. It's valid.

And I do judge the people who discount and belittle that. I do judge the privileged who dare to judge me. I swear on the contented, sleepy sighs of my kid that I will not do that to anyone else. I am a single mother of an amazing child. No matter how I do it, that my kid is doing alright is the only confirmation I need.