A Day in the Life: My Son is a Jerk.
Wednesday
I feel… proud. Yes, proud, of my decision to go ahead and take my time and do this install of Mind correctly. By correctly, I mean in length, breadth, depth, and exquisite detail. I feel, correctly or incorrectly, that this is another one of those stories which has more life to it than your normal story blurb that I put on here. It’s far from perfect, and I obviously have quite a lot of writing to do between now and the time where it’s finished, but I want this one to look good. More importantly, I want this one to feel good. I need to pull some victories out of my writing. I’ve felt, the last few weeks especially, like I am failing to live up to my potential. Need that to stop right here.
What I truly want out of this space is for me to formulate the habits of a good writer. By that I mean as follows: I want to develop a routine of writing. I want to stick to a deadline of releases. And I wish to develop my skills and abilities as an author. I know that I do not have a gift for this pursuit. So what I need to do in order to substitute for that lack of ability is to reach down deep in my soul and substitute hard work for talent. Effort in place of skill. I need to write until my fingers ache, create until I know I have nothing left, then keep on going anyway to spite myself. It’s not the most gentle approach, and lord knows I’ve already had a lot of setbacks and moments of throwing my hands in the air. However, I also have moments like tonight, where I sit and write and the words flow smooth as honey. I want those nights, I want acclimation of men and women who are not easily impressed. I want to have something that I’ve built, which simultaneously allows me to make a living outside of a nine to five setting, and also lets me feel as though I’ve done something unique. I wish to contribute, damnit!
Meatsuit Reroot – I didn’t do much exercising Tuesday. It’s a little frustrating, but all I can do is keep on keeping on. Since I woke up at 12:30 (THANK YOU TODDLER-SAN), I’ve gotten in a goodly number of planks. My food has been on diet, and I’ve basically swapped between writing, video games, reading, and doing more planks. It’s not perfect, and I’m still too scared / nervous / unwilling to put weight on my injured body and pursue more pushups. For now, until I feel that my body isn’t suspect, I will continue planking it up as best as I am able. It’s a great exercise regardless. I may need to look into yoga as a consistent thing. To be perfectly honest, I feel that I look extremely dumb doing yoga. Maybe everyone feels that way, who knows.
Weight: 252.4 (Fully clothed in many layers of sweats)
Time weight taken: 5:17 AM
Sleep schedule: ~7:30 PM to ~12:30 AM (Gonna lay back down here soon for another ~1.5 hours.)
Mood: *ominous ice-cracking sounds*
Caffeine intake: ~ 3 ounces of coffee, 3 Pepsi Max cans, and 2 Diet Cherry Pepsi cans.
Thursday
It’s hard for me to catch a breather, or a break, or anything of late. The last few weeks have tried every single portion imaginable of my adult life. I’ve been pushed, pull, strained, heaved, and drawn in every direction it is possible to be. I’ve tried to cope, with medication, with exercise, with writing, and with baby snuggle time. Sadly, the baby is 95% of the challenges heading my direction.
Case in point: Last night. I almost lost my cool last night. My son is going through a growth spurt, so he isn’t sleeping. More importantly, he is screaming his lungs out for an hour at a stretch. Nothing we do can really help: Growing hurts. It involves pain to gain anything of worth. That’s true if you’re a toddler or an aspiring author. Back to little man: He’s in intense pain, and I’m functioning on maybe 8 hours of sleep over the last 60+ hours. When I wake up, I can’t hardly ever go back to sleep. Falling asleep is so very hard for me. It takes over an hour most nights. So when my son wakes me up, that’s it for my sleep for the night. Then it’s back on the destructive cycle of caffeine substitution. It’s not the same as getting good sleep. It’s nowhere even close.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stop the crying, I couldn’t get the rest I needed. I couldn’t distract myself with writing, because it requires that I’m able to actually sit down and focus. Writing requires concentration and quick wits. Neither of which were in high supply last night. I was very firm with my son, being as loud as it is possible to be without outright yelling. No dice. He’s not even two yet. He’s extremely smart, potty trained, understands the full scope of the English language, and knows practically everything about himself from his age (he holds up two fingers) to advanced understanding of human manipulation. That’s right: My not even two year old lies to me. To his mother, and to everyone. So when I raised my voice, as smart as he is, he doesn’t understand why, and so his obvious reaction is to scream louder.
I almost spanked him. I was seconds away, which is terrible for more reasons than I can really list here. Chief among them, it would do exactly nothing. He hasn’t done anything wrong: He’s two and everything hurts and is confusing and it won’t stop daddy mommy make it stop why won’t it stop? That’s his entire thought process. Spanking him then, when he was incredibly vulnerable and desperate for soothing would’ve shattered any possibility of a lifelong healthy relationship. He wouldn’t even understand why I was doing it, only that I was hurting him when he was already hurting. Forever and always, he would approach me with caution and distrust. Wondering if my capricious attitude (from his perspective) would result in more senseless pain on his part.
So I left. I hugged my wife, hugged my son, grabbed my book, and hit the door. Bear in mind, it’s 1:30 in the morning. So I go to the International House of Pancakes. Why? Because my city sucks and that’s my only option outside of Denny’s. The last time I ate there, emphasis on last time, I got horrendous food poisoning. So there I sat, ordering two eggs and two strips of bacon, which in addition to my diet pepsi, added up to seven dollars. So I was out a decent chunk of change, fed on mediocre food, and drinking a stingily refilled diet soda. It helped, sad as the tableau may appear to outsiders. I was in a corner, with a book, and no one to talk to me or to bother me and no screaming baby.
Some people would look at that and call me a failure. Why couldn’t I just deal with my screaming child without resorting to violence? Why did I let myself get pushed to that point? Those people obviously have not had children. It’s not just this one night without sleep: It’s two complete years without a good nights sleep. In my nearly 730 days as a parent, I can count ON ONE HAND, WITH FINGERS LEFT OVER how many complete and peaceful nights rest have occurred in the Wallace family household. I’m perpetually in need of more rest, functioning solely on the dogged hope that maybe tomorrow night, maybe that’s the night we turn the corner. Protip: It’s never the night. Yet I keep right on hoping, because I’m a goodish parent and that’s what you do.
Some nights though, you reach the end of your tolerances. All humans do that, all of us reach the end of what we can stomach, what we can stand. In that moment, when we are unchained from the civility and constructions which we use to operate as a society, we find out who we truly are. Many men in my position would’ve hit their children. Maybe they would even justify it to themselves, somehow. Saying in the face of overwhelming evidence that it wouldn’t have long term negative consequences on their children. I was spanked, and I guarantee you it’s done damage. It’s not that my parents knew it would do damage and just didn’t care: they were simply operating on the information they had available. It was a mistake, but they couldn’t have known at the time.
I know differently, and not only do I know differently, but I see the results of my temperance. Of my ability to remove myself from a situation where I am about to act irrationally. This morning, after stern, nearly shouted words, my son not only giggled as he played with me in his crib upon waking, but he hugged me no less than six times as I dropped him off at daycare, each time with a huge grin. He kept coming back for more. Because he knows, in his bones, that I love him. That even when I’m upset with him, even when I rue the day of his birth, I refuse point blank to take that stress out on him. That, at the end of the day, I am a safe harbor. He can come to me for hug after hug, trusting that the hands held out to him won’t ever cause him harm.
That matters. It’s important. I want to raise a good child, a man / woman who cares deeply and sincerely about the people around him. Who can empathize, who can care that those he interacts with are fellow human beings. It’s not easy, and I know I’m losing no small amount of years on my life with these antics. But Riley didn’t ask to be here. The least I can do, since he is here, is teach him all I can about how to be a good soul. The rest, I leave in his hands. That’s all we can really do in the end: Our best, as imperfect and neurotic as it sometimes is.
Parentfully,
Justin
