enduring the assault

I don't know how it happens. Or maybe I do. My childhood. My early training in dysfunctional stress management. The subsequent addictive behaviors and their inevitable withdrawal symptoms. The melt-downs upon which this blog is named after.

My whole life has been punctuated and punctured with spectacular displays of grueling self-hatred that sometimes I share with you, like now, since I've been blind-sided again, and feel desperate for the reassurance that I am not alone, desperate to make something productive of my pain.

Hope has given way to hopelessness. Happy delusion has disintegrated into what? Panic. A yearning to check out, to hide under the covers for the rest of winter until I feel safe to show my face again.

heal my neuroses (dot) com

Okay here's my million dollar marketing idea.

This is for the neurotic parent, the kind of mom (or dad) who's sure she (or he) didn't get the memo or the proper genetic code, the one who is frequently convinced that she (or he) is the shittiest mom (or dad) ever.

Say you're a mom who's finally made an appointment to take her four year-old daughter to get her hair trimmed, because you just can't take the jaw-clenching insanity anymore. Every day you look at your daughter's hair, a snaggled, tangled mess, your whole face tightens into a stressy mask of agony. You don't know how to tame her hair or your anxiety over her hair.

desperado

Just spent a masturbatory hour reading my first blog posts from four years ago. And I've discovered a third reason why I blog, along with (1) exercising my writing muscle, and (2) working to bridge the gap between us by honestly depicting the human condition. Number three would be to survey the distance I've traveled on this path, a path that at the beginning was so fraught with sleeplessness, diapers and self-loathing I doubted I would emerge from it alive.

Hamish is starting first grade tomorrow. Since he and Stella were born I have said, when they're in school full-time, my life can begin again. Well guess what? It's been going on without me all this time. All the Pema Chodron podcasts in the world cannot jar me from living in the past or the future. Eckhart Tolle, come bitch-slap me, please.

head nut

I woke up around 7:30, happy as a born-again Christian. Sipped my coffee, wrote in my journal, gazed around the room approvingly, even pored over a thick interiors book with Stella cozied on my lap, and somehow didn’t think to look at the clock to wake Hamish until 8:39, six minutes before I usually start schlepping everyone out of the house (at least my goal every morning is to leave by 8:45.) With only six minutes to get ready, there was no time for breakfast at the table, so I got them out with the promise of Pop-Tarts in the car. They’re fortified, people.