Voices Carry

Last night the dogged exhaustion of raising a two year old surfaced in my body earlier than usual.  I crawled into bed at eight-thirty and decided to let myself take it easy for the night and to let my husband put our son to bed.  I flipped on the t.v. and skimmed over some family-friendly sitcoms.  You know the shows with the really fat but loveably funny guy who is married to a really skinny, beautiful but nagging wife?  I hate those shows.  They aren’t anywhere close to the realm of believability.  But I like how they desperately try to relate to us, with titles like “My Wife and Kids” or “Family Matters.”  And some of it is funny.   It’s easy for me as a wife to laugh at Debra’s antics on “Everybody Loves Raymond,” because she is saying what any woman would say if she were married to that Kermit sounding buffoon of a husband.  We laugh at her unkempt house, her defensive rapport with her in-laws and of course, we laugh at the cartoonish face of Ray’s brother Robert.  We laugh at all of these things but they have no relevance to what goes on in our own homes.  Every major problem finds a solution and is tidily wrapped up in thirty minutes.  Ray actually apologizes for most of the stupid things he does.  And in real life, Debra has had four plastic surgeries.  This isn’t my life.  These aren’t my problems. 

As I continued to flip through the channels, I stopped at something interesting: “E Investigates: Mothers Who Kill.”  I was struck by the salacious title and decided to park on this channel for a bit.  How horrific, I thought.  How could any mother do that, moreover, how could any human being do that?   If I couldn’t relate to “Everybody Loves Raymond” I certainly wouldn’t be able to relate to this show.  But as I listened to story after story of women who reached their breaking points and snapped under the pressure of motherhood, a strange kind of sympathy arose in me.  One story was of a Midwestern wife whose husband worked out of town and who was raised by a perfectionist, religious mother.  She told her husband every time they spoke on the phone, “I feel like a failure,” but he didn’t listen.  She attempted suicide twice, once by taking sleeping pills and once by slitting her wrists when her son was out of the house.  Something in her soul wasn’t right, and her desperate cries for help were not being taken seriously.  Nobody was listening to this woman.  Nobody put her in therapy or tried to reach out to help her.  As I listened to the horror that followed, I felt an odd and unsettling connection to her.  Not that I would ever or have ever thought of killing anyone, especially my children.  That is unthinkable and unforgivable to me as a mother.  But what she said, “Nobody listens to me,” “I feel like a failure,” “I’m not a good mother,” “The pressure is too much.”  I swear, I’ve said those exact same things at some point over the last two and a half years.  And then I really freaked out; I could relate more to these seemingly unimaginable stories than to the situations on “Raymond.”   Because they were true. 

And then the name Andrea Yates popped into my head.  Remember her, the woman from Texas?  Her husband ignored desperate pleas for help and countless signs of serious depression.  She turned into a psychopathic monster and systematically drowned her children in a bathtub.  When I searched her story online, hundreds of others came up just like hers; mothers who drowned their children, abandoned their children, or drove their children into lakes.  Mothers who were broken, deranged, and passed a point of no return.  It’s easy to assume that these mothers were on the verge of psychoses anyway, so that just one wrong turn or one missed pill set them off.  These women were capable of doing something horrific, but who’s to know that if somebody had just listened to them, maybe their fates and their children’s fates would have turned out differently.  It’s easy to distance yourself from the gruesome acts of others when you are able to think clearly and make good choices.  Don’t get me wrong, I hold these mothers fully accountable for their actions.  They had a choice and they chose wrong.  They are far removed from me, because they had nothing to ground them and no moral center in their distorted realities.  But as I listened to story after story of women who were told that they were bad mothers, who confessed that they felt like nobody cared about them, and that their families and friends had let them down, again, I felt that there but for the grace of God…

Their stories start the same.  Nobody thought they were capable of doing it.  They might not be as different as you or I.  And then they snapped.  We call them monsters, and they are.  But how many times have you felt like a monster, even called yourself one?  How many times have you spanked out of anger, yelled at the top of your lungs in the face of your child, or just plain felt like you had lost your grip temporarily on reality?   I’ve lost count.  I'll tell you a story that I'm not proud to tell.  There was a day not too long ago when I had to call my husband to come home.  It was shortly after my dad had died.  It was on a Saturday and my husband was working on the house we were renovating for my mom.  He worked every weekend on the house.  This was before I enrolled my son in the Parents Day Out program.  I didn’t have any breaks, no free time, no alone time. Some of you mothers are snickering to yourselves because you don’t get breaks either, but I was used to them.  I was used to my husband coming home every night and relieving me for a couple of hours. On one hand, the Romantic in me grew closer to my son and we bonded more during that time than we ever had before. On the other hand, I was alone with my son seven days a week, most nights too.  Every spare moment my husband had he spent working on the house.  We took on that project and we needed to get it done as quickly as we could.   That particular Saturday, my son wouldn’t stop crying.  I was losing it fast.  He had been crying for three straight hours.  The more upset I got, the more upset he got, and we went round and round.  There is nothing more nerve wracking than an inconsolable baby.  At the end of my rational rope, I started crying uncontrollably and screaming, not at my son, just in general.  I had to leave my son in his crib and literally walk outside to cry in the garage.  I punched a wall.  Still crying, I thought, this is nuts.  I have to call for reinforcements.  My husband didn’t want to be interrupted that day, but I made him listen to me and after some hysterical crying and begging, he came home.  When he got home he calmed my son down and he finally went to sleep. I was still shaking so badly that I had to go for a drive just to calm down.  I don’t know if you’ve ever had a day like that, but that day in particular I felt defeated.  I felt like I had come so far just to fail.  I felt like I had to scream at my husband in order for him to hear the desperation in my voice, a voice that told him over and over, I can’t do this.  I need help.  And I have a group of friends who validate me, a good upbringing, a network of support from my parents and siblings, and a good husband who is willing to drop everything to come home to comfort me and my child.  Just think if I didn't have those things and a disastrous series of events occurred.  I am faced with a stinging realization that I am just as susceptible to snapping like a fragile twig as the next mom.

Moms, we need to talk.  We need to talk about why nobody talks about this.  It is okay to be insecure.  It is okay to be unsure.  It is okay to be sad, depressed and lonely.  It is okay to hate your job every once in a while.  Why is that so hard to talk about?  Who said that if you complained about being a mother then you must be a bad mother?  Somebody must have said that at some point, because we are so afraid to talk about it.  My husband complains about his job, that doesn’t mean he’s not good at it.  Maybe you don’t know what I’m talking about, and that’s okay.  But surely you’ve been sleep deprived and have said or done something ridiculous, even destructive.  Or maybe you’re on the brink of doing something intentionally destructive.  Not going so far as hurting your children, but maybe you’re thinking of hurting yourself.  Or leaving your husband.  Or something else as equally damaging.  Listen to me, stop.  Find someone.  Talk to them.  And if you have to scream to be heard, scream.  Open your windows and scream so loud that the neighbors hear you.  Scream so loud that your husband hears you.  So loud that your parents, in-laws, sisters, brothers hear you.  You need to tell someone what is in your head before what’s in your head turns ugly.  You need to tell your friends what you’re going through.  If they’re not going through the same thing, honey, they are lying and you need to call them out on it.   We need to let other moms know that it’s okay to voice what’s going on in our heads, even the terrible insecurities, because the consequences of not doing it are dire.  We need to stick up for each other.  When somebody tells you that pregnancy isn’t all that hard I want you to lift up your shirt and show them your misshapen belly and stretch marks.  When somebody tells you that it doesn’t take a brain to raise children I want you to show them your framed college degree, your SAT scores, your IQ chart.  I want you to challenge them to a battle of wits.  I want you to win!  When someone says that stay at home moms have it easy, bring up Andrea Yates and others like her who cracked under the pressure of parenting.  You have my permission to say to them with all your earned smugness, you wouldn’t be able to handle it like I do.

This is why I started writing.  I had to tell you that I’m scared and I’m insecure.  Last year was the hardest year of my life.  I had to scream.  And because I did scream, or write, as it were, and because of you and your reaction to it, I now feel like I’m starting to heal.  Writing these stories has been more therapeutic than counseling.  I’ve loved telling you about my dad, my mom, my son, all of my defeats and some of my victories.  I implore all of you mothers out there to do the same.  Do not stay silent.  Start healing.  Start a blog.  Start a group.  Write it in a journal, or if writing’s not your thing, make time to sit down and talk to a friend, or a pastor, or a counselor.  You might be surprised at what happens when we tell each other the truth.  You might find that there are others out there who just need someone to say it first.  Be the first.  We know and accept the beautiful and magical parts of being a parent.  We never like to face what’s ugly about it.  Say it, “This is hard.  This is what I chose, but it’s hard.”  You could be reaching out to someone who was on the verge of a breakdown.  Promise me you’ll talk.  We’ll talk about this.  And then let’s sit back and be amazed at the results.