“i cannot handle being a mother anymore”

Somedays, I can’t either.

Somedays, the crushing weight of my being a mother sits on me like sleep paralysis, waiting for me to move, almost daring me to. It wags it’s finger in my face, telling me I’m a bad mother, an ungrateful mother, because I cannot keep up with my own children sometimes, because I pretend when my husband and I are out alone that we ARE alone, that no one waits for us at home, ready to cover us in wet kisses and sticky fingers.

It’s the responsibility that gets to me-the knowledge that forever, I am connected to these creatures-I can never leave them, not truly. They will always be a part of me. Their toes will forever be the toes that kicked me in the ribs.

But somedays it’s the drudgery, it’s getting up and feeding them, convincing clothes onto them, sitting with them, then working all day, arriving home in time to listen to them scream about not wanting to go to bed. Those days get to me. Those days test me, because they test my love for them, they test the bounds of my patience and temper. On those days, the bad mommy sometimes gets to come out and play for a bit.

I have been tempted in the past, to throw up my hands, and walk away from it. From all of it. Times when it’s gotten so hard, too hard, worse than I ever imagined, I wanted to walk down the road, climb up onto the highway, and begone. Never to be seen again. I thought it, many times.

But in my eyes, in my heart, I couldn’t do it, I never would. I could never walk out that door and not come back. Because being a mother isnot just a test-it’s a battle. Sometimes it’s lovely and gentle, other days, it’s bloody and loud and frightful. Somedays I don’t like it at all.

But somedays are so fragile and simple, I want to place them under glass so they never disappear. I draw on those days, to get me through the wrong ones.