“Parenting S.O.S”

“Parenting S.O.S”

With all due respect to others that won’t admit so,

Parenting really crushes a soul.

Try as one might,

The only antidote is to temper your own expectations,

So that disbelief at the ordinary can become as sublimated as one’s ego needs to be in order to raise little versions of yourself.

Ego, must go, be gone,

Ergo: let go.

Somewhere along the line,

You realize how impossibly frustrating it must be for your partner to deal with you,

As it becomes evident that three foot versions of yourselves that share genetic material, are enough to send one to the cold slumped embrace of a worn body pillow.

Tears are friends,

Screaming into a howling wind is your best friend.

The best time is when everyone is asleep,

Unless of course, you awake to disembodied eyes an inch from your face saying in a stealthy whisper, “Daddy…Daddy…Daddy”.

Give away all your “good” furniture, and don’t warm to the idea of any type of boundary.

They find you when you poop.

They find you…when you poop!

The first few years are dedicated to just keeping em alive.

The next few are populated with a litany of negotiations, and then someday, you have strangers that look like you, hating you because you became your parents and asked them to be accountable for their behavior.

There is no experience quite like the raising of children.

Nothing so hard and fraught with uncertainty, but also nothing so deeply imbued with a sense of the possibility of imminent loss just when you hold onto it the hardest.

So much to lose, so much to do, so much to prove.

We’re all screwed.

Mayday! Mayday!

Play date! Play date!

A parenting S.O.S, from one in distress.

I’m doing my best.

I’m doing my best.