It’s been about a month that I have been doing the full-time work outside the home gig combined with the 24/7 single parenting gig.  I love my job and the financial security it brings, but I still feel completely unacclimated to this new way of life.  It feels like everything is speeding by at an accelerated rate, and I am in one of those dreams where you run and run and run and don’t feel like you’re getting much of anywhere, while something nameless is chasing you.

I feel so afraid.  Is it my imagination, or has the dynamic between Sami and me changed?  He is so sensitive that it frightens me because I see myself in him.  One hint of a thwarted desire sends him into screaming fits of rage.  I feel terrorized by it all.  

Today, we tried to go to my single mom’s group gathering, and he had woken up prematurely from a nap and just kept screaming over and over again that he wanted to go.  I was simply too tired to deal with it, and I was frankly embarrassed, so I left.  I just broke down sobbing in the car because I felt like such a horrible mother and then I feel like maybe there is something wrong me or him or both of us.  I just want to have a little time socializing with some supportive adults, and then I feel like crap for having these needs.    

The number of temper tantrums a day sometimes seems endless, and I have grown exhausted to the point where I can barely tolerate them. I have to admit that I have started to be afraid of my child sometimes.  The screaming jangles my nerves so much that I do anything to make it stop.  I hiss and I plead and I bribe and I threaten and I seethe with rage, sometimes quiet, sometimes not so quiet.  

Both of us need to find some coping skills.  I need to revisit my positive discipline tool box.  I refuse to sit in this sense of parental disempowerment.  Our time together is so limited.  I have to figure out how to work with him and work with myself through the tantrums - his outer, my inner.  My intention is to have more peaceful times with my son, to feel more connected to him, and for us to be in much more of a groove than we are right now.  I get so caught up in the day-to-day that I lose sight of my intentions and go into a kind of auto-pilot mode.

I called Man on the Horizon crying today, but he didn’t know I was crying.  He thought it was my cold.  Or maybe he did realize I was crying but didn’t want to embarrass me.  He was so supportive and kind and gave me some tips on how to work with three year-old angst.  He is two years ahead of me in parenthood, so he has a lot of insights that are very helpful.  One suggestion he gave was that I might want to give Sami a lot more explanation as to what we are going to be doing - to “talk things up” as he put it.  I do that sometimes, but not enough.  So I’m going to try that a lot more.  

I don’t want to show him my scared, vulnerable face.  I myself don’t want to see it.  I want to be this together, Super Woman single mom who does it all with grace and looks fabulous doing it.  And maybe that is me some of the time, but there is also Broken Single Mom who has absolutely no idea how to get through the days.  

But somehow we do and somehow it works - so imperfectly.