I hate when we fight :(

I’m Sorry
You know what sucks? Fighting with your child. You know what sucks more? Sending your child off to your ex’s immediately in the midst of/after a fight. You know what sucks even more than that? Not then seeing that child for three days.

While I idolize the “still together families” for a whole bunch of reasons, I also know that getting a parenting break can feel really, really nice. However, when that break comes on the heels of harsh words, and loud sighs, and almost there tears, it fucking sucks. And every god damn time I get back home, walk up the stairs, and retreat to my room I feel it – that overwhelming urge of wanting her back. Of NOW being ready to love bigger, to love fuller. It’s this strange sensation because as just as soon as I feel able to relax from meal prep, from clean up, from nagging her about chores or tooth-brushing or technology, it is then where I feel this expansion, the ability to be more of the parent I so desperately want to be. Literally we had all day to hang together and we spent most of it different rooms, but now that she’s gone I just want to call her up and tell her I’m sorry.

I’m sorry we were fighting. I’m sorry I’m so hard on you. I’m sorry I sigh so much. I’m sorry I don’t practice what I preach. I’m sorry I’m not better at this. I’m sorry that the very things I hate that people do to me I catch myself doing to you. I’m sorry I’m not patient. I’m sorry I’m so critical. I’m sorry I try to make you exercise, and have hobbies, and eat something other than cheese. Well I’m actually not sorry for those last few things, but I am sorry that I haven’t found a better way to frame these things than through exasperation and eye rolls.

For some reason, it is easier when we fight and she’s still under my roof. When I know that in an hour or two things will have settled back into a tempo we both are used to and I’ll get to kiss her good night, and read her stories, and annoy her all over again in the morning. It is the options that her physical presence here affords me that make it easier I think.

But tonight I won’t have that chance. Tonight is “dad’s night.”

Instead I got a car ride full of silence, a begrudging good-bye, and no look back as she exited the backseat, locked arms with her dad, and leaned her head into his arm as they walked away.

I don’t blame her. I can see how my cataloging of all the things she is failing to do – pick up after herself, brush her hair, take some time off tech, listen – might feel like a shaming. She told me she couldn’t complete any of them because as she tried, I was already barking out the next thing she needed to do. As a parent, I often don’t know when she is playing me and when I’m truly being too hard/demanding too much. I remember from my college days that intermittent reinforcement is the worst kind, and as a mom I really struggle with this. I’m a lot of empty threats with a super serious consequence thrown in when I decide I’ve finally had enough – from laissez faire caretaker to rigid taskmaster.  The problem for her, and for me, is the roles change without warning.

I remember the days she hated going to her dad’s. Hated being away from me period. That was its own kind of frustrating, but tonight seeing her happy to get out of my car and into her dad’s arms hurt my heart in ways that I’m grappling to articulate.

Does anyone know what I’m saying? Can anyone relate to this?