Don’t Tell Me To Go Hug My Kids Tight, Because I Don’t Want To

What I am about to say probably won’t sit well with some of you. Some of you will even feel the need to immediately point out all the circumstances in which this could make me the worst person to ever walk this planet. (Ha! How I wish I would at least get rich selling out on everyone’s hatred of me after this!) Let me clear the air before we take this any farther-

I know! I know there’s others who would give their last breath for the opportunity. I know there’s others who long to know what it feels like at all. I know this could potentially be the very last time. None of those facts is relevant to the happenstance I’m delving into here. So, nice try, but I won’t be guilted or beguiled into dismissing my own, very valid feelings. With that being said….
 
Sometimes, I DO NOT WANT TO GO HUG MY BABIES TIGHT! Please don’t offer me those advising thoughts of comfort when I’m venting to you about how I’ve just had a really, particularly horrible, bad mood rising, kind of day. One which warrants a warning badge and implosion eminent disclaimer. I’m sorry, I’m not sorry.

Those four adoring, precious, and utterly beautiful, beast-like wild creatures capable of demonic level possession behaviors over anything and everything trivial are the last things I want to go hug.

No matter how deep the love one has for their children is rooted, no matter how far across the great divide one’s love stretches, and, no matter how long, or how short, the love between a mother and a child has existed, it is perfectly normal, and incredibly healthy, to need time, alone. Time alone to refresh the mind, body, and spirit. Especially, if you are a real, true-to-the-definition-of, introvert like myself. When I cannot make the time to do what’s necessary for my remaining sanity to stay intact, it’s easy for the kids glued to my nerves with the extra strength maternal superglue secreted the moment the cord was cut, to push me to the brink of self-implosion.

Chances are, those devilish imps, at the very least, just maybe…… slightly….. possibly…. probably… Okay! Okay! They are most definitely responsible for this Dolores Claiborne meets Freddy Krueger state of mind which I have found myself in a time or two or three dozen, over the course of motherhood. Days like these make me want to run away; far, far away, deep into the hills where I shall find a dark cave and live in hermit-like reclusiveness with only me, myself, and I, to live out the end of my days in peace and quiet!

These Blue Moon kind of days usually start off on an angrivated note. Life bears down on me with the same force exhibited due to the gravitational pull on a constipated elephant.

The kids will be extraordinarily ornery, and ready to battle to their inevitable groundment at the slightest inkling a No is about to be dropped from my mouth like the atomic bomb.

The boys, ages ten and eleven, will be at each other’s throats all day long, yearning for a taste of the other’s blood. Every time I turn around, one of them will be kicking, smacking, poking, prodding, or throwing something at his otherwise best friend, just because, only to be greatly offended when his punching bag punches back. My girls, ages 3½ and 7, will be doing their own feminine version of the sibling assault, complete with eardrum shattering shrieks, slamming doors, fingernail gouging, and hair-pulling. Putting all four hoodlums together with the expectation for them to share the air they breathe and enough space their personal bubbles interlace is like crossing some weird space/time barrier and finding your house right smack dab in the middle of battle during the Revolutionary War. You really do not want to go there.

During the course of this no-good, horribly rotten, wish-it-never-happened day, the youngest child will throw melodramatic tantrums over everything, anything, and nothing. Even when everything goes her way. In between her fits of toddler blasphemy, she’ll sneakily empty the refrigerator of all of the condiments, hide my wallet and car keys deep in the linen closet, and dump the entire contents of my bookcase, though her own, overflowing with much more durable children’s books, sits right beside it, to use as a makeshift hopscotch path. Her brothers will, in turn, choose to go on strike against The Motherhood Force. Refusing to budge from their beds until I begin implementing punishment by disconnecting the Wi-Fi, confiscating all their gadgets and chargers, and handing over the list of Attitude Adjusting Activities. Completing the entire list is required in order to earn back the stripped privileges. Undeterred by the war line drawn in unison against the rules and responsibility I stand for, however, they will continue opposition against the other. Refusing to fight on the same front, they lose sight of the main target, going back to trying to obliterate themselves into tenebrous oblivion, as they do. Meanwhile, my oldest of daughters will be going about doing what she does best: pot-stirring. Every chance she gets, she sticks her nose in business which isn’t hers, adding in her two cents whether it was asked for, or, not. She’s a master in provocation and perception, already, though she’s only just entering the second grade. Well, so she believes. The Motherhood Force knows better.

There’s no doubt to anyone who knows me, my kids are my entire world. For goodness sakes, I’m a sahm without a village, outside of my internet tribe, for any sort of support. It’s just me and my kiddos, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred sixty five days a year. The fact of the matter is, I may never have experienced this I do not want to go hug my babies tight feeling necessary in order to write this, if my husband’s job allowed him to be home with his family in the evenings or to wake up with us in the mornings, instead of just going to bed for his “night”. Unfortunately, our life doesn’t fit the basic square mold, so it’s no wonder, my perspective doesn’t fit in one, either. It’s never my intention to reach this point. The after effects will linger in my brain for a few days like the poison from a bee’s stinger. It happens, though, and I’m not going to deny it or sugar coat it.

It is in this place, where I am so extremely exhausted mentally, it’s a painstaking chore to muddle through the day on autopilot, in which I reach this point and there’s no going back.

This, I do not want to look at those wickedly nefarious children, let alone hug them tight for even a brief second point.

My children will more than likely reciprocate those same sentiments towards me, just as well. Go ask them yourself the next time we’re having one of these “needs a do-over days”. If you can make it through the barricades they’ve built in their doorways to block the entry of anyone over four and a half feet tall- because, they do not want to be hugged tightly, held near, wrapped in love, snuggled closely, or smothered with anyone else’s emotional state.

I can’t blame them, because neither do I!

By: Kristina Hammer, aka, The Angrivated Mom