The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly Cry

I have a difficult son.  When he was an infant, people would always ask me if he was a good baby and I never knew how to answer that.  He cried a lot, was difficult to nurse, rarely slept at night, and never let me sit down and hold him at the same time. I had to be standing. No, he was not a good baby.  He was difficult.  I remember someone saying that they had such a good baby because she really only cried when she was hungry.  I thought, “well, so do I, I guess.  But as it turns out, he is hungry every hour and a half, all day everyday!” I knew motherhood would not be easy but I never knew it would be this hard.

That’s what every mother says, right?  “It’s so hard, but you know what? It’s the most rewarding thing in the whole world!”  Yeah, yeah, ok.  Obviously it’s rewarding.  Everyone knows having kids is rewarding, ok?  You don’t have to remind me of that every time I try to convey to you that I have a difficult son.  Just, let me have my moment and then at the end of the day, I’ll let the mom guilt marinate and remember that this time is fleeting.  You don’t get to take away my moment of complaining and find another way to make me feel bad for not “enjoying every moment” with my difficult son.

And yes, he is a difficult son.  He wants to be picked up and not touched simultaneously.  It’s a classic move called “Pick me up, don’t touch me”.  He wants food but doesn’t want to eat it (or “I’m not hungry, now feed me”).  He constantly wants something out of reach.  He will always find the most dangerous thing in the room to play with.  He hits me in the face and laughs and it hurts me physically and emotionally.  I am convinced he gets enjoyment from my torment. He’s difficult, man!  He really is!

You’re tempted to console me or tell me it will be ok or share war stories of how you had it even harder right about now.  I don’t want you to do any of those things.  I don’t need or want your advice or condolences.  This is just the way life is.  This is just the way that he is.  I just endure and move on. Survive and advance. No sense in dwelling on these things by talking about my feelings all the time.

And THAT is probably why I had a slight nervous breakdown this morning.

This morning was not unlike most of my mornings but it was just that all of my difficult son’s bad behaviors happened in the span of one hour.  He just woke up angry.  His breakfast pouch spilled all over him and as I cleaned it, he threw a tantrum and there was no pleasing him.  He pulled out all of the stops.  I got the “pick me up, don’t touch me” followed by the “I’m not hungry, feed me” and just throwing himself on the floor in between these two acts.  Then my husband Skypes in and I think “thank GOD!  Maybe he can help!”  Normally, difficult son loves talking to his daddy.  NOT TODAY!  He cried the whole time and just had no interest in the iPad.  Now I am starting to run late and we are way behind schedule.  I tell my husband that we can’t talk this morning and that I have to get ready and get him ready and there is just no time.   We catch eyes for a moment and he knows.. oh he knows that it’s coming.  He knows, but I don’t know it yet, so I just continue to endure and move on.

I resign to the fact that he is just going to keep crying no matter what I do, so I decide to make my breakfast and ignore him.  He presses on, I press on, and with each passing moment of tears and tantrum, a part of me withers away.  I put my smoothie in the blender and when I take container top off to put the tamper tool in to break up the fruit, the smoothie furiously erupts out of the top and gets all over my shirt. That’s when it happened.  I officially lost it.  I scream “DAMMIT, SON!  YOU THINK YOU’RE THE ONLY ONE THAT CAN HAVE A TANTRUM?  WELL, WHY CAN’T I HAVE A TANTRUM!”  (This is putting it nicely.  There were way more curse words involved.)  I catch my breath and  I shake it off, pushing back the inevitable one more time, and reach for a to-go cup.  As I pull it down from the top shelf, my poor organization skills with Tupperware get the best of me and all of the lids come falling out and onto the floor.

And THAT is when I started crying.  I cried hard. REALLY hard.  I hooked my arm around my face like Dracula with a cape and sobbed out loud. The tears ran the makeup off my face and started to drench my chest.  My shoulders were shaking and I keel over. It all just got to me.  The deployment.  The pregnancy. The difficult son.  Missing my husband.  Missing my sanity.  Trying to figure out how we got here in the first place.  I just let it all out.  It was a raw and real and an ugly cry.  I’m talking Clare Danes kind of cry.  And all the while, my son had finally stopped crying and I was feeling horrible that when he had stopped crying, I was the one crying.  He just looked up at me with his huge, delicious eyes and slowly walked toward me.  He went to the table and got his bowl, walked it over to me, and sat down in the chair that my lap created by kneeling on the floor. As he sat, I stroked his hair and smelled it deeply.  “I love you so much, you beautiful, difficult boy.”  We sat there for a few minutes and when he was ready (or when I was ready), he walked with me out the door, and back into the chaos that is our daily life.

I guess we both just needed a good cry in order to get on with our day.  And now we continue to endure, survive, and advance.