The Ogre and I are fighting. I hate it when we fight. It means that he\u2019ll work late, we\u2019ll barely speak all day, the girls and I will have grilled cheeses for dinner, and I won\u2019t be able to randomly throw myself into his arms when he does come home. It also means that there will be an invisible line down the middle of our bed tonight that neither of us dare cross, me out of fear that he\u2019ll think I\u2019m being needy, him out of fear that I\u2019ll think he\u2019s forgiving me. Breakfast tomorrow will be a silent affair, there won\u2019t be an encouraging smile for me when I get back from running, his lunch won\u2019t get made in a timely or particularly charitable manner. I know what fights mean, because lately they seem like a well-choreographed dance that we just keep dancing.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve run through the usual litany of excuses (we\u2019re both stressed, new baby, no family near, no help, no money, no time off, etc.) but this time they\u2019re not holding up. Yes, all those things are true. But none of them are contributing to the fighting, which has but one cause: me.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m angry. A lot. Not all the time, but every four days or so I just wake up furious with everything and everyone. Partly it\u2019s because I\u2019m not getting enough sleep. The last two weeks have been peppered with sleep strikes from the baby and general wakefulness and consternation from the girls nearly every single night. Which means neither the Ogre nor I are getting a lot of sleep, although I\u2019m getting\u00a0 more than he is. I\u2019m getting more than he is because he knows I really don\u2019t function well without sleep. He knows I get angry. So he takes the brunt of the night shifts and then goes off to study all day, an activity that really can\u2019t be done well on little sleep. Housework and child-feeding, however, can be done at least satisfactorily on little sleep. But still, I\u2019m the one sleeping more. And yet I still find myself angry, resentful and lashing out.<\/p>\n
There comes a point, though, where apologies aren\u2019t enough. When I get angry and scream at everyone and then come back ten minutes later feeling horribly guilty and remorseful, an apology doesn\u2019t actually take those actions away. I might be able to wipe the tears from Sienna\u2019s eyes but I can\u2019t take that fear away, that nagging uncertainty that leads her to approach me with trepidation for the next few hours. The Ogre might forgive me but he doesn\u2019t forget, and he has to keep himself braced for the next time I lose control. Eventually it gets to a point where there is no forgiveness, because apologies don\u2019t mean anything. They\u2019re empty words that say only \u201cI feel better now. You have approximately three and a half days of cheerful Mom before I yell at you for no reason again.\u201d That\u2019s the point we\u2019re at.<\/p>\n
Marriage and children have done a strange thing to me. They\u2019ve taken away the vacuum in which I used to exist, so that instead of seeing only the immediate effects of my actions and trying to correct those, I see my actions reverberate down through the years. I\u2019ve seen Sienna\u2019s anger and her tendency to yell and seen myself reflected back at me in those familiar blue eyes. I see the resignation in the Ogre\u2019s eyes, feel the wall go up between us and know that he\u2019s right when he says there\u2019s nothing left to talk about. I can\u2019t keep ripping wounds open in my family and then rushing back to put a band-aid on them. At some point, band-aids aren\u2019t enough. Wounds fester and leave scars.<\/p>\n
I need to change the way I deal with my family and the way I handle myself. I need to grow up and learn to live without sleep and to think of my husband and his needs before my own. I need to be patient and loving with my children so that they will grow up to be patient and loving as well. I need to live virtuously instead of selfishly. But how?<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve known for a while what needs to be done, and I\u2019ve recognized for a while the deleterious effect my temper has on my family. But it seems as immobile and as fixed a part of my character as my love for my children; nothing can change that, and it seems that nothing can change this either. No matter what weapons I\u2019ve attacked it with (prayer, guilt, sheer force of will), still it remains; a deep undercurrent of anger that rises up and poisons everything around me at the slightest provocation.<\/p>\n
And what am I so angry about, anyway? That I\u2019m in this life I swore I\u2019d never live, a stay-at home mom who spends her time researching homeschooling curricula and making chicken stock? That I no longer get to wander around a lazy college campus, reading poetry all day and drinking wine all night? That a night out is now an hour at Starbucks, alone, with a book and blessed silence? That my pants size has increased in direct proportion to my expanding offspring? Well, yes. I\u2019m angry about all those things. But when I look at the three little faces that fill up my hours and when my heart leaps at the sound of my husband\u2019s footfall on the stairs outside our door, I know I wouldn\u2019t trade them for anything. I know that this is, in fact, the life I want and the life God wants me to lead. I know that I have, inside these walls that I get so sick of being surrounded by, the greatest gifts God could have given me: a husband and children.<\/p>\n
So why, why oh why, can\u2019t that be enough for me? Why can\u2019t I embrace this life and love every second of it? I know that one day I\u2019ll look back and long for these days when my children were small and I could tuck them in at night and fit them all in my lap at once. I know that when life hits them hard, I\u2019ll wish the power of Mommy\u2019s kiss would still take the pain away. I know that if something terrible happened and I lost one of them, I would want nothing more than to return to these monotonous, seemingly uneventful days where my biggest concern was how to get them all up the stairs and the only thing I had to grieve was the loss of my own freedom. In short, I know that my life, right now, with all it\u2019s little trials and hardships, is filled with countless blessings. This is my Eden and in it I am Eve, never content with the perfection I\u2019ve been given, always striving for something elusive, something more, something that doesn\u2019t exist. Maybe that knowledge will be enough for me to change. Or maybe this anger is the cross I\u2019m bound to carry, the dragon I must fight but never defeat. I hope not. God, I hope not.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Ogre and I are fighting. I hate it when we fight. It means that he\u2019ll work late, we\u2019ll barely speak all day, the girls and I will have grilled cheeses for dinner, and I won\u2019t be able to randomly throw myself into his arms when he does come home. It also means that there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1110,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[194,6,26],"class_list":["post-377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-anger","tag-marriage","tag-motherhood"],"yoast_head":"\n