You Should Be So Lucky To Hear My Whine

There’s an aspect of every relationship that most everyone is willing to complain about, call others out on for doing, but never admittingly speak aloud, in regards to ourselves. Newsfeeds on Facebook are filled with parents telling of how they can’t take any more of the noise. Husbands accuse wives, wives accuse husbands, all because everyone else is a culprit, except ourselves. No one stops to say, “Yes, it is me. I do that. I am a whiner!”

Until now. Because, guess what? I am a whiner!

Yes. I certainly, most definitely am. At least with my husband & children. I think, in a really psychologically twisted sort of way, whining symbolizes a level of comfort within a relationship that implies there’s a special bond with great depth that allows for safeguards to go down, true colors to shine through. Which is why whining is such an off limits, socially unspoken topic, that we avoid taking any personal accountability & love pointing out examples of such faux taboo from others. Well, I’m breaking my silence on the subject & publicly fessing up right now.

I am the biggest whiner in my house, behind closed doors. I am just as dramatic about hunger, lack of sleep, pain, & feeling overwhelmed, as all four of my kids. Combined. I am the first to bombard my poor husband when he wakes up, with all the woes I have endured since we last spoke at his lunch break at work, around 8pm or so. I don’t talk maturely to him about the petty bullshit, stereotypical of every thirty-something couple scripted in movies & sitcoms alike. I whine. All drawn-out & pitiful sounding, in a tone higher in pitch than my typical one, sounding just like a hormonal twelve year old girl who hasn’t gotten her way.

It’s like an internal coping mechanism that allows my brain to survive the countless times I want to lose all sanity, but cannot, due to the fact that I’m labeled as a responsible & productive member of society, a mother, a wife, & a, *gulp*, grown-up. At least, it is for me, & it’s also the same reason child psychologists explain away why our children whine: it’s a way to release the burden of stress accumulated from a continuously developing awareness of one’s self & environment that leads to budding perceptions of responsibility, maturity, & intelligence. In latency terms: the overwhelming stress of continuously growing up & acting one’s age day after day. Let’s face it, it’s hard to be a mature grown up constantly, with very limited perks once you add marriage & kids into the equation. No different than it must be stressful for a child to be expected to conform to a world full of rules & boundaries set by the strange creatures, called grown-ups, that we are to them. Sometimes, we just have to break free of those boundaries & regress backwards to an earlier state of mind to feel better. When we talk in that mindframe, it comes out as a whine.

Only thing is, as any whiner probably knows, the whining has an opposite effect on people then we truly intend. I don’t want to get on my husband’s nerves, but I do. What I want to accomplish is just to dump a load, melt into his arms, & pretend the world around me doesn’t exist for a moment. I want him to scoop me up, rock me like a baby, & feel like I don’t have to worry about anything, not even my own self, for just a bit. Why our voices boxes express this actual cry for attention as a nerve-wracking, pitch of annoyance, is a cruelty beyond my understanding.

There’s just no getting around my whining. I’m sure if I wanted to, I could help it, but I don’t want to. I’m horrible at verbal communication tactics, as it is, unable to clearly express what’s going on in this abnormal brain of mine through words. It’s taken almost the whole duration of my marriage, almost 9 years now, for my husband to figure out how my immature, irrational, lacking forms of communication work, I can’t go changing the system now. He’s just a man after all & those were 8.5 of the longest years of my life!

So, if I ever let you in real close, let you reach that level with me where you’re the kind of friend to me that my husband is, you’re bound to hear me whine. I’m a whiner & damn near proud of it, because it means I’m coping. I’m adapting. I’m able to let things go & dump the load on someone who knows how to handle me at my finest worst & take it as it is- my way of communicating the fact that I just can’t take any more of the roles that define my life at the moment. That I need my friend.

Thank You More Than Cheese & Beer for another great Sunday Confessions prompt, please go over & read the other bloggers who linked up! Please check out her Facebook page to find more anonymous confessions from her page followers. You can follow my Facebook page at The Daily Rantings of an Angrivated Mom.