I hear it is supposed to be freeing and energizing

I am starting to think that it is me. I mean, I’ve felt that before obviously. I don’t know. I just have NO lasting relationships. Well, not NONE, I guess… but you know what I mean. Memories of my teens and twenties are littered with now-defunct friendships. It may very well be that I don’t build relationships with safe, healthy people to begin with? But I don’t know, because so many of those people I’ve written off after years, who have in turn written me off as well (that is always how it happens) are married, still friends with each other, have happy-seeming families, etc. I don’t know.

And I just want to get it together for my son. First, so he can grow up in a "village" of grown-ups who care about him, and second, obviously, so that if there is some sort of glaring flaw in the way I relate to people, that I don’t do it to him and push him away, screw him up, what have you.

And parenting is so weird. And no one can tell you exactly how to do it for sure. And he pushes and pushes and pushes until I snap sometimes and then I want to say things like, "Why do you MAKE me scream at you?!" that make me feel like some sort of abusive husband blaming the victim… but it’s TRUE. I wouldn’t snap on him if he wasn’t so aggressively and unyieldingly dead-set on getting precisely what he wants at every moment despite my very best, masters-degree-in-early-childhood-education attempts to get things to go smoothly, pleasantly, respectfully.

It really stinks that I don’t have a husband and he doesn’t have a dad.

I read somewhere recently that someone said self-pity is the gravest sin of the human heart. But, man… my life is HARD, though 😉

I wrote two checks tonight, and have a wage garnishment about to start for a couple hundred dollars (how embarrassing, gah) and then after that, no more debt except my (crazy, crushing) $80k of student loans. I guess I should be happy to have all the negative things on my ridiculous credit report resolved… but I feel nothing about it, really. Except that I am just so stupid for ever letting myself get to this place to begin with. And why in the HECK did I amass so many student loans?!

At least I can be glad that being in my master’s program allowed me to be with M for his first year, rather than having him in childcare from the get-go. I guess I can look at it that way. Except I’d feel better about it if I felt like I’d consistently been a really really really good mother. Was I at least really good back then? I mean, I THINK I was at least good for a year, lol, before he developed a will of his own and started annoying the bejeebus out of me.

Okay, so I am just trying to be really honest. I hear it is supposed to be freeing and energizing. So far I just feel like a jerk who no one is going to like.