Bite Me

So far today can bite my bippy.  In fact, this whole week can bite me and if things don’t improve I may send myself to a deserted island or at least to the closest Amish community. 

Last night, while playing, Emily thought it was funny to bite me on the shoulder.  It hurt so much that it brought tears to my eyes and I actually had to walk away.  This morning she thought it was okay to hit me in the face as I was putting her into the car seat because she wanted to get something off of the seat and, apparently, I was moving too slowly for her.  I’m starting to get really frustrated by this feeling – I feel like I am her personal punching bag and I just don’t get why I get the brunt of it all.  She doesn’t bite her father or hit him the way that she does me.  This morning, I feel like I am doomed to have a daughter that hates me because I hated my mom for so long when I was growing up.  I hated her for being an alcoholic and for all of the insanity and chaos that came along with it.  I will always hate her, to some extent, for what she did to me and for what she made me endure.  That wasn’t my fault but somehow, I feel like this is some sort of karmic retribution even if none of that was my fault.

My job frustrates me every day and I am tired of my only challenge being things such as forcing myself into the loop on topics I need to be aware of in order to do my job.  I’m not challenged on a professional level; my skills are not improving, my resume isn’t getting more impressive as the years go on.  I’m doing the same exact work I was doing when I started here and it’s been four years.  I’m a little bored and frustrated by the same ol’ same ol.

My life frustrates me.  I do so much for that toddler, I am the one that is alone with her most often and yet, I’m the one she beats the crap out of and disrespects on a regular basis.  I worry about my Dad every day and I miss the hell out of my mom every day, some days more than others – I think today may be a ‘more’ day.  I miss my cat and I’m angry that he had to die within 6 months of my Mom; two days after my sister’s birthday and just a few days shy of the 6 month anniversary of my mom’s passing.  I hate walking into my kitchen and automatically looking down to check his food and water, and it not being there. I hate that I know I didn’t give him the quality of life he deserved over the past few months because I just couldn’t take him laying on me after my daughter had done the same for an entire day.  I hate when I open the refrigerator and Rob has decided to place his things in the front and the things that I need in the morning – like the milk for Emily – are pushed to the back so I am forced to rearrange things in order to get things done.  I hate coming out of the bedroom in the morning to find that there was food left out on the coffee table the night before, or food left out on the counter from the night before; it’s as if I should somehow magically know that it was there and it was my responsibility to clean it up even though he’s the one that put it there.  He’s being passive aggressive and I don’t like it.

My whole demeanor is one of frustration and irritation; I am pretty positive that I am  not pleasant to be around and I just can’t shake it.  I’m sad.  So sad that even as I type this, I am fighting back the tears.  I welcome the time in the future when this doesn’t happen anymore.  When bad days don’t just creep up on me, slap me in the face and ruin everything I do and prevent me from being happy for more than a few minutes or even moments at a time.  Anything ‘not good’ – like the face hitting in the car by the toddler – ruins an entire morning that was previously pretty good and happy.  I can’t get past that moment, or the biting incident last night, and it’s stupid, I know that.  I know that it’s ridiculous to let something so small ruin my morning and possibly my day, but that’s the way it’s looking. I can’t stop feeling like a crappy mom, and I can’t stop feeling crappy about myself today; I can’t stop feeling like its my fault that she’s hitting me and biting me – which logically I know makes no sense, but that’s how I feel today.  I feel like something is lacking in my parenting that is causing it and who knows, maybe there is or maybe I just suck at being a mom.  And all of it is stemming from this inability to put my emotional issues about having a dead mom to the side.  I can’t pretend that I’m okay all the time; I just don’t have that in me, especially not since she died.  I lack the patience I once had, I lack the stability that I once had inside me that helped me to maintain my composure when I was upset.  I lack a lot these days, the biggest one of all being my mom.  She wasn’t supportive, she wasn’t a cheerleader by any means, but she was my mom and I miss her every single day and her poor parenting and her poor choices make me look at myself and wonder what poor choices am I making to make my child act out the way that she is.  I didn’t act out; I sat silently in the background until I found my voice as an adult.  But my child is finding her voice more and more every day, and yet again, this feels a little too much like karma or at least some sort of cosmic intervention sponsored by my dead mother.