Family and Fear

Last weekend, we went to the mountains in West Virginia with D’s mom, dad, brothers, and uncle.  Mini is weird around both extended families.  He hasn’t warmed up to them the way I would have expected him to by this point (3 months away from turning 4).  He is shy.  He doesn’t talk much.  He doesn’t hug them and kiss them much, and he doesn’t accept hugs and kisses from them much.   I had these dreams of my children playing, laughing, snuggling with their grandparents, who are absolutely obsessed with their grandkids and love them FIERCELY.  I never had much of a relationship with my grandparents… Could count on my fingers the number of times I’ve seen them in my 37 years.  I knew it would be different for my children.  Their grandparents would be an extension of us.  Their grandparents would be KNOWN.  They would be SPECIAL.  It is heartbreaking to be around Mini when he’s with our parents.  Last night, my mom watched the kids while D and I went to dinner.  I said to him on the way to dinner…  I was prepared for parenting to be overwhelming and frustrating.  That’s what everyone tells you it will be like.  I wasn’t prepared at all for it to be this heartbreaking.  And that’s what parenting is for me right now…  Each day is filled with all these little heartbreaking moments.  It’s disguised as other things.  But really, at the heart of this parenting struggle, it just breaks my heart.  I told my mom I don’t want her to give up on loving him.  I told her I don’t want his grandparents to “tolerate” him.  I want them to LOVE him.  She promised me, that just like her own children, she would never, ever, ever stop loving him.  She promised me.  I thank the Universe for her love of Mini and I needed to hear her say it.

Other than heartbreak, the main emotion that I feel almost all the time these days is fear.  I’m afraid, quite literally afraid, almost all the time.  D tells me that I have nothing to be afraid of.  My mom asks me what I’m afraid of.  Both of them aren’t helping.  I DO have something to fear (albeit undefined at the moment).  And, questions of any kind these days send me reeling into anxiety.

The truth is, I’m not entirely sure what I’m afraid of.  I just know I feel scared.  I know I don’t ever feel at ease when I am with Mini.  When I take him to school, I am afraid he won’t be happy, that he won’t behave, that he won’t connect with other children, and that he won’t participate.  When I am at the grocery store, I don’t know what to buy because I don’t know what he’ll eat.  When I take him to speech therapy, I’m afraid he won’t talk, that he won’t listen, that he won’t LEARN.  I’m always, always, always afraid he won’t learn.  I’m equally as afraid that he *can’t* learn.  I’m afraid of both the can’ts and the won’ts.  When he comes home each day, I’m afraid that he’ll throw a tantrum….  And I’m not necessarily afraid of the tantrum, but I’m afraid that tantrums aren’t normal, and if they aren’t, then that’s another thing that’s abnormal.  When he repeats phrases he likes, or phrases from movies, I’m afraid because that’s not normal, and the more things he does that aren’t normal, the more ABNORMAL he is, and that’s scary.

Everything abnormal feels like a thing I have to fix, and I don’t know how.  I feel responsible for changing his behavior, and responsible for healing him, in EVERY SINGLE INTERACTION I have with him.  I can’t ever just relax and BE with Mini.  I always have to be directing him, molding him, changing him, redirecting him, talking to him, making him talk, helping him understand, helping him learn, building him up, providing structure….  And on…. And on…. And on….

IT IS SO EXHAUSTING.

I don’t know what I’m doing.  I don’t know what I’m trying to fix.  I don’t know what’s wrong with him.  I’m not an expert mom.  I’m not an expert anything.  I’m scared that what I’m doing, which is EVERY SINGLE THING I can think of, isn’t enough.  How terrifying is it that my baby may need something that I don’t KNOW about and can’t FIND, and in the meantime he continues down a path that isn’t the best for him because of my lack of knowledge and my lack of mothering skills?  How terrifying is it that this could continue to be my fault?

I AM SO EXHAUSTED ALL THE TIME.

I wish I could stop being afraid.  D once told me that my fear of things is what exhausts me so much.  I think he’s really on to something.  If I could just let go of this non-descript, generalized fear, then I think I’d be able to be a bit more focused in every-day life.  I think I’d be able to… gasp… enjoy things sometimes.  I think relaxing on occasion would be really good for me.   I know I’m on this wild roller coaster…  Where I’m mostly on downhills, even though physics says I’d have to go up first, it just seems like I’m going down and down and down. 

Hope prevails sometimes, though.  I do feel hopeful sometimes.  I feel hopeful that I will, one day, be on the other side of this struggle of ours.  I know I’ll learn from this and know that I’m getting stronger each day that I face my fear.  Looking back at the beginning of this struggle, I’m now doing things that used to seem terrifying to me.  So I imagine that, a few years from now, I’ll look back and this time and smile, feeling so grateful for this time of uncertainty and learning, and what it taught me.  I’ll feel grateful then, to have had the opportunity to become the person I am in a few years.

Right now, in the thick of it, it just feels lonely.  And scary.  It feels like a dark time.