It's The Letting Go

There's so much about parenting that no one tells you far beyond shitting on the birthing table, bleeding out of your lady bits for weeks on end, stiches in said lady bits, and loss of bladder control. All the above sucks, albeit worth it, but I’m talking about something else entirely.

Let me paint everyone a picture of what my weekday evenings look like...

I can usually be found in the kitchen, cooking dinner, music playing, with a two-year-old hanging off my leg screaming for candy while the dog barks and chews on something he shouldn’t be, while the thirteen-year-old.... wait.

Where the fuck is she?

She’s in her room, go figure. Miserable, dramatic, emotional, and 100% oblivious to the chaos.

By the time dinner is done, I likely look like some sort of swamp demon- hair in disarray, wild eyes, and barely a single shred of patience left. Dishes everywhere, food on the floor, dog is still barking, toddler is still screaming, teen daughter is still oblivious.

Get it? It’s rough. I wouldn’t trade it, but some nights I wish I could just drive away. Hell, despite my overweight stature and chronic arthritis, I would fucking run down the street some nights if it meant preserving the last bits of my waning sanity.

I, fortunately, am lucky in the sense that I married a wonderful man, who cooks, and does dishes, and cleans, and has my back literally 100% of the time. He keeps me grounded and sane just when I think I am about to lose it.

I digress...

Despite the likelihood that this is what most people think is hard about parenting, this isn’t what I am getting at, with this less-than-eloquent piece of writing. They tell you this shit. Hell, if you know anyone like my grandparents, you’ve heard it, right after they tell you how you just must have children as soon as possible, because they’re blessings, right?! Nothing like telling you how wonderful and blessed you’ll be with children, just to follow up with:

“You just wait, you’ll never sleep again!”

“Wait until they’re teenagers!”

“You have no idea what you’re in for!”

Gee, thanks assholes.

But this isn’t it. This isn’t the hardest part. I will take the newborns with the shit up their backs, constant spit-up, crying all night, colic, gas, pinkeye, croup, tits that leak milk through your clothes in the middle of the grocery store, peeing every time you sneeze, crying uncontrollably because you just love them so much.

I’ll take the screaming toddler, permanently attached to my leg, wiping snot on my shirt, and defying my every word.

I’ll take the angsty teenager. (That might be lie, because fuck me, teenagers are weird little beings)

“Jesus H. Christ, bitch, what are you getting at?!”, says the whole three people reading this.

Here goes:

It’s the pain of parenthood.

The intense, emotional pain.

Wiping tears from their little faces when someone is mean to them and subsequently wanting to throat punch the little shit who hurt their feelings.

Worrying day and night, losing sleep, losing sanity, losing sex-drive, struggling at work because you’re distracted, disconnection from others.

It’s the suicidal teen who hides in her room, barely speaking to you, the co-parent who suggests poor parenting on your part despite the fact that you’re the one who has done all pediatricians appointments, dental appointments, coordinated group and individual therapy, school counseling, called mobile mental health crisis to report potential unsafe behavior, talked them through arguments with friends, arguments with stepparents, encouraged them to connect with others, try new things, cooks every meal, packs lunches, drives them to and from school, buys sports uniforms, play costumes, goes to fucking Walmart at 9 PM for project supplies because it’s due tomorrow and the little doofus never said anything.

It’s worrying if they will ever eat anything green again, if they’ll ever open up about the important stuff, if they will be okay one day.

Will they go to college? Will they ever be able to handle being an adult? Will they drink and drive? Will they make good choices? Will they get pregnant before they’re ready?

Have I irreparably fucked them up beyond repair? Have I made the right choices?

It’s googling every hot parenting question there is, only to find that everyone else is asking the same thing, with no clear answers on what the right path is.

It's working with adults every single day, 37.5 hours a week, who struggle with mental illness, nearly all of which is exacerbated and/or caused by trauma, shit parents, sexual abuse, molestation, assault, drugs, crime, and a whole metric fuck-ton of other awful things that they did not deserve to go through. When you do this for a living, you connect it to how you’re raising your kids, and it makes you wonder if you’re doing anything right.

It’s the “letting go”.

It’s letting go when you drop them off at school, because in America, we must have guns despite the countless school shootings that have happened, and likely will continue to happen.

It’s letting go knowing they may fail at something and worrying about how you will help them through it.

It’s knowing without a doubt that they will be rejected countless times and knowing the pain they will feel as a result.

It’s knowing the truth about life and its complexity, its countless challenges, its brutality, and knowing they are going to be in it one day, for real, all on their own.

It’s the insatiable drive to protect them and fighting against the reality that you just can’t.

It’s the letting go.