There are some days when it feels like it’s not worth the struggle. I am having one of those days. Between my physical problems, the general frustrations of everyday life in winter, and constant arguing with my littlest kid, I would like to run away and never come back.
I feel at war with myself, really. My nature is to be fairly bombastic – I flare pretty strongly, and frequently as well. It isn’t reasonable, however, to spend life continually bursting into flames. I have developed a strong sense of self-control, since I am a responsible adult. (I realize those things don’t necessarily follow one another.) This means I continually bite my tongue, especially at home, whence many frustrations come.
Well, I’m tired of it today. My tongue hurts. I have bitten it enough that it’s no more than a bloody nub today. I desperately want to say some hurtful, mean, nasty, completely inappropriate things, especially (and this is *really* bad!) to my littlest kid.
I do not have a particularly good template for effective parenting. Some of the nasty, mean, hurtful things I’m biting back are things I regularly heard directed at me when I was a kid, #2’s age and older – younger, too. I know how much such things hurt, and how long you carry them with you, and how heavy that load is. I know there has to be some way to get through to her that doesn’t involve soul-murder or savage humiliation. I just can’t think of any right now.
So my tongue is a bloody stump. My guts roil with fury and frustration. I wish I could find some relief somewhere.
Elsmama 
Boy, I hear you. The good thing is that you are differentiated enough to recognize what you want to say isn’t perhaps what you *truly* mean. It’s the voice of anger, old toxic shame, and rage. I had a conversation with someone very recently, and I suddenly realized that different life experiences give us “gifts”. I have abuse in my past. Abuse gives us “gifts”, too. I’ve found that rage is one of abuse’s “dark gifts”. The funny thing about rage is that it rears its ugly head at the most inconvenient of times. Your kid gets snarky and defiant; Killer Roy, the rage monster, wants to dump a pile of old, generational garbage onto your little kid just because they thought might test drive their ego. That’s what I named my “dark gift” of rage–Killer Roy. Killer Roy wanted to do all sorts of things with me, and he would transform into all sorts of mean shapes. He has a really big brother that goes by the name of Kamikaze Kevin–another “dark gift”, shame. Roy and Kevin harassed me for years, but, after years of deep work, Killer Roy, is truly gone. Kevin? Well, he’s just Kevin now. Sometimes he still shows up, and I tell him to leave me alone. It’s really weird, but I actually did name them. I used to actually say, “Killer Roy, I didn’t invite you into this conversation I’m having with my daughter, so leave the room.” For some reason, the intensity lessened, and I felt better. Same with Kamikaze Kevin. I used to feel immense shame for watching TV at night. I don’t know why, but, then, I would just say, “Kamikaze Kevin, I didn’t invite you watch TV with me, so go away. I’d like to watch TV by myself, thank you very much.” And, it really made a difference. It let me know that those feelings were not really ME. The were really something else, outside of me, or bursts of chemicals in my brain, or whatever. BUT, they were not a part of my identity, and they were not a part of my ‘definition’ if you will. This let me distance myself from those “dark gifts” and get a hold of myself in the hard moments where I had to think on my feet–like when one of my kids was test driving her ego…. directly at my face….over and over again. Do I make an iota of sense? I don’t know if this will resonate with you, but it’s gotten me through some tough times. xo
I never really thought of personalizing the rage and shame monsters. I suppose one could do the same with the self-defeating one. I believe I need to think on this.
Honestly, though, for some reason the littlest one finds my every button and tromps on it. Regularly. And she gets nothing out of it: when the defiance comes out, no good ever comes of it. All that ever happens is she loses access to something she really likes and wants to do. I am nervous that there is some connection that isn’t happening.
Or maybe I am so out of touch with the 6-year-old way of life that I don’t remember that my older one behaved like this, too. I don’t *remember* this kind of thing with the elder, but maybe I am faulty in the remembering department.
Thanks for your encouragement! It helps a lot!
(Sometime soon I think I will have to dig up some of that old toxic crap and write about it. It may be time.)