Guilt- the breakfast of champions
I am leaving my family to themselves for the night. After a little meeting Tom and I have this afternoon with a producer, I will be heading to a fleabag in Manhattan for tonight and will not be home until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest. This is at my therapist's urging as she feels I may be headed for a breakdown again and I want to avoid my having to go back on medication if it is at all possible. Now, this will illustrate the lengths to which I aid and abet my own illness...
I got up the nerve to ask Tom if he could take over for a couple of days. He, being the wonderful and loving person he is, just told me not to worry about it, that he would make it happen. There were several days I had to make plans to get a hotel, ride a train, whatever, but I could not justify the cost. $45 train ticket? No way. A $100.00 hotel room on top of it? Maybe I don't really need to go. I'll be fine, plus I don't want to miss our weekly play date on Tuesday, and what about the leftovers in the fridge? Even if I leave a note I know they won't eat them up and it will go bad! Who is going to pick up around the house? Do the laundry? Oh, and what about "poop time"? No one can do that but me, right? Anxiety creeps in disguised as logicical thinking.
What if Sullivan thinks I left because I didn't want to be with him?
The idea of abandonment is a big wieght crushing my insides into a big, grey mush. When Tom and I sat down to discuss finding a new home for our dog, Bukka (who has since died of his own accord) because of some behavioral and aging issues that we didn't think we could handle the thing that devastated me most about the conversation was not his actual leaving the home. It was the idea that he might, in his own doggie way, think that I left him out of sheer malice. You can't explain these things to a dog. A dog does not have the capacity to understand extenuating circumstances. To the dog it is a defect of his own "personality" (for lack of a better term) that has driven his pack away. It is much the same with children. You leave. Was it something I said? No, it must be something I AM. Oh God- to inflict that pain on another being is just too much responsibility for me.
After deciding that I would just stay out late on Monday night then come home and be around for breakfast on Tuesday and putter around I found myself crying hysterically in the shower. If I am home I won't be able to resist doing things for the family and they won't be able to resist letting me. No. I have to suck it up and leave for the night. A little clarity will do me good. So I found the cheapest shared bathroom hostel on the Upper West Side and made reservations for tonight. I had thought about doing a B&B in Brooklyn, but I found I just couldn't justify the expense. Hey, little steps, right? So I made the reservations and then I had this dream:
I had plotted to throw Sullivan out the window. I was going to be rid of him and move on with my life. The plan was to throw him out the window, make it look like a home invasion or something, then repel down the side of the building. Of course, in the process of all of this, I was feeling sick to my stomach but I had to go with the plan. Tom was a sort of shadowy, yet complicit figure hovering in the background. When the time came to throw him out the window, (and Sullivan was about 14-15 months old in the dream, not the chatty 3 1/2 year old he is now) Sullivan tripped and bumped himself. I picked him up and hugged him and began to weep uncontrollably because I didn't WANT to throw him out the window. Even so, it had come to this point and I had to decide which one of us it was going to be. I began kissing him all over and telling him that I loved him and yet it was totally ripping my heart in two that I was about to betray him. Then, as luck would have it, I was in the midst of a real home invasion. Big guys were scaling the side of the building and kicking out windows in order to gain access. There was a lot of noise and dust. I grabbed Sully and began fighting my way to the door. Then I woke up.
Yes, I know, in the end I protected him. But, to be honest, I have a hard time forgiving myself for wanting to throw him out the window in the first place. What is worse is that I am quite certain that on some level he knows it. I didn't plan this whole motherhood thing well. But who the hell knows what they are getting into when they start this whole thing? People tell you that it's a big responsibility and that you are the entire world for this tiny creature- but they can never tell you what that actually MEANS. Nor can they ever tell you how you are going to react to that kind of pressure. I thought I was most well equipped for the job. Maybe I was, but somewhere along the line I took it too far and it is hard to go back and make that left turn at Albequerque.
I have a date with the bogeyman tonight, and the bogeyman is me.
I got up the nerve to ask Tom if he could take over for a couple of days. He, being the wonderful and loving person he is, just told me not to worry about it, that he would make it happen. There were several days I had to make plans to get a hotel, ride a train, whatever, but I could not justify the cost. $45 train ticket? No way. A $100.00 hotel room on top of it? Maybe I don't really need to go. I'll be fine, plus I don't want to miss our weekly play date on Tuesday, and what about the leftovers in the fridge? Even if I leave a note I know they won't eat them up and it will go bad! Who is going to pick up around the house? Do the laundry? Oh, and what about "poop time"? No one can do that but me, right? Anxiety creeps in disguised as logicical thinking.
What if Sullivan thinks I left because I didn't want to be with him?
The idea of abandonment is a big wieght crushing my insides into a big, grey mush. When Tom and I sat down to discuss finding a new home for our dog, Bukka (who has since died of his own accord) because of some behavioral and aging issues that we didn't think we could handle the thing that devastated me most about the conversation was not his actual leaving the home. It was the idea that he might, in his own doggie way, think that I left him out of sheer malice. You can't explain these things to a dog. A dog does not have the capacity to understand extenuating circumstances. To the dog it is a defect of his own "personality" (for lack of a better term) that has driven his pack away. It is much the same with children. You leave. Was it something I said? No, it must be something I AM. Oh God- to inflict that pain on another being is just too much responsibility for me.
After deciding that I would just stay out late on Monday night then come home and be around for breakfast on Tuesday and putter around I found myself crying hysterically in the shower. If I am home I won't be able to resist doing things for the family and they won't be able to resist letting me. No. I have to suck it up and leave for the night. A little clarity will do me good. So I found the cheapest shared bathroom hostel on the Upper West Side and made reservations for tonight. I had thought about doing a B&B in Brooklyn, but I found I just couldn't justify the expense. Hey, little steps, right? So I made the reservations and then I had this dream:
I had plotted to throw Sullivan out the window. I was going to be rid of him and move on with my life. The plan was to throw him out the window, make it look like a home invasion or something, then repel down the side of the building. Of course, in the process of all of this, I was feeling sick to my stomach but I had to go with the plan. Tom was a sort of shadowy, yet complicit figure hovering in the background. When the time came to throw him out the window, (and Sullivan was about 14-15 months old in the dream, not the chatty 3 1/2 year old he is now) Sullivan tripped and bumped himself. I picked him up and hugged him and began to weep uncontrollably because I didn't WANT to throw him out the window. Even so, it had come to this point and I had to decide which one of us it was going to be. I began kissing him all over and telling him that I loved him and yet it was totally ripping my heart in two that I was about to betray him. Then, as luck would have it, I was in the midst of a real home invasion. Big guys were scaling the side of the building and kicking out windows in order to gain access. There was a lot of noise and dust. I grabbed Sully and began fighting my way to the door. Then I woke up.
Yes, I know, in the end I protected him. But, to be honest, I have a hard time forgiving myself for wanting to throw him out the window in the first place. What is worse is that I am quite certain that on some level he knows it. I didn't plan this whole motherhood thing well. But who the hell knows what they are getting into when they start this whole thing? People tell you that it's a big responsibility and that you are the entire world for this tiny creature- but they can never tell you what that actually MEANS. Nor can they ever tell you how you are going to react to that kind of pressure. I thought I was most well equipped for the job. Maybe I was, but somewhere along the line I took it too far and it is hard to go back and make that left turn at Albequerque.
I have a date with the bogeyman tonight, and the bogeyman is me.
posted by Bree O'Connor at 1:15 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home