Once in a little while, some random comment will make me think, reflect, and slowly fear, uncertainty, regrets all begin to creep through my mind, little by little, eating me up. Quite often, they are issues closest to my heart, my kids, my relationship with them, my day to day impact on them….
Someone said to me yesterday “You need to sort yourself out. Quite often you pass your worries, anxieties to your kid. Sometimes you said he is difficult, but it’s not his fault. You are the cause. He is a good kid with a good heart. He is a kid that tends to pick up a lot of feelings around him and tend to keep it in. He has no outlet to express. So he runs, he climbs, he jumps and physical acticity is his outlet.”
I came home with a heavy heart. I vaccumed the house. Paid the bills. Clean the kitchen. Check my emails. And then I stop. And I feel pain.
Oh yeh. I haven’t felt this bad for such a long time. Grief begins to wash over me.
Because so often we become so hard on ourselves when we try make everything right. We strive to be the “all-round-well-balanced-I-can-do-it-all” person. And more often than not we are still trying to. And I think really, most times we only do well in certain thing and not all. Afterall I am a woman juggling different roles sometimes all at once. So many different roles and responsibilities to play, to take on and no wonder once in a while I feel like I have lost my grip on things. I can’t be the same woman as I was before.
Truly at the end of the day, I am just like anybody, I have my good days and my bad days. On a good day, I would be fine, contended, satisfied and life goes on like a breeze. On a bad day, things would easily go pear shape. I try to pick a fight with the husband, raise my voice. Frustrated at my own self. It becomes a cycle.
In hind sight, as always, I realise there is better way to a situation. And I am trying to be better everyday. Reading. Searching through the internet for information. Attending parenting courses. Or sometimes just by saying yes to the kid.
What she said to me was the truth. Perhaps along the way on this intricate world of motherhood, I have sometimes become insensitive to his needs and feelings. But those ocassions are still far less in comparison to the times when I have been there to nurse him, comfort him, feed him, dress him, reading him the same story over and over again, cook for him, putting up a brave face for him on his first day at kindy, that I was the one that couldn’t sleep the night before he starts kindy, that I am still his main caregiver from the very first day I brought him into this world.
Who said being a mother is easy? It’s never easy. And I am still learning everyday.
Sometimes I become paronoid that one mistake I made would completely tarnish his whole childhood, that he would never know how to have fun, that he would have complex, that he would struggle, that he would feel hurt, or even an odd chance he might be considered as a “weirdo” by some and etc etc.
But me of little faith sometimes. Surely as a kid, my parents would have said certain things to me that might have sounded awful at that time. But hey, I am still ok, at least I think I am.
So, what happened today was just a gentle reminder to myself that I can make mistakes too. But I learn from it and move on.
Also perhaps it’s also time for me to dust off my yoga mat and rejoin a group yoga class again to stretch n relax.
We can sit in the garden enjoying delicious lunches…
JD running around unde the glorious sun and immitating my “downward facing dog” yoga pose
I feel a surge of energy today.
They have been going for morning and evening walks together. Everything is good with the walks, but he would bully my dad into carrying him because his little feet were too tired. Gee! JD knows whom to bully. And my dad being the doting grandparent, would happily obliged…
