Been Raging

... And not in a fun way.

“All I want is a chance to miss my kids.”

Whitney said this during our three-woman Artist’s Way workshop, and it gave me a chill. Bear with me as I break out of the self-improvement formula these essays have been following—things are hard! But I’m getting better! The message is true, even now. But first, I need to rage about the pandemic and about the models of motherhood I’ve internalized, which smother my spirit and pop out as sulfurous bubbles on the surface of our family’s cerulean pond.

A few years ago, while fighting with my mother, she said to me: “Your anger is frightening.” My anger is sharp and quiet, like a sword flung in the dark. You don’t realize you’ve been sliced until your head falls off your body. I’m mixing metaphors with bubbles and blades, but I want you to smell the stink of a repressed feeling; I want you to know that the anger feels like a violent ambush.

I wielded a weapon on December 22nd. I remember the day because we were in Christmas-prep mode and I went to the city for an appointment. I hung out with a seething version of myself. After that day, I gave her a name: Natalie. Natalie took me through the usual cycle of feeling angrier and angrier until I lashed out with accusations, this time at my husband (hi, Christopher, thanks for subscribing!). Then I felt ashamed, slept poorly and filled my morning pages with remorse, which macerated my heart until it was soft and open enough for me to show up, humbled and needy. This is a horrible cycle and I do it all the time.

Snow yesterday, so no school twice this week. The boys have gone to class for five days in the last five weeks. I was supposed to spend all day at home, drinking hot chocolate and sledding. I was supposed to be on the floor, playing Monopoly and eating popcorn and making memories my children will never forget. Snow days are the best days! For whom?

Friends, I put on a cartoon and I left. I had the scantest expectation that the boys would stay quiet during Christopher’s work call. I wrote this at an empty workspace because the roads were covered in ice. I would have dug my car out of a ditch with my bare hands to be there instead of making more precious memories with my children.

Let me make two things clear: we can afford childcare. Other than the last month, school has been in-person. These are outlandish privileges. There are mothers carrying the weight of many worlds; working multiple jobs while parenting alone; caring for dying elders. Whatever excess of childcare I absorb is nothing compared to what these women are living.

Every woman I speak to is raging. Parents are cracking up. Tuesday, the barista who handed me my large hot chocolate and two candy bars told me she was blind with anger. “You deal with chocolate, I deal with vodka,” she told me out of nowhere, or perhaps she could see me trembling. It took her ten seconds to add:  “I can’t look at my husband anymore. He’s so depressed, I’m sick of it.”

We’re raging because, as Anne Helen Petreson reported, there are no margins. The reserves are gone. Instead of putting their heads on a soft bosom, or a warm hip, our kids rest on bone.

We have to ask—what is the message in this anger? Intellectually we know it’s institutionalized patriarchy; imbalanced pay; undervalued domestic labor. But we’re not fixing these problems tomorrow, so what do we do in the meantime? Personally, I have to own how much I’ve agreed to the systems that bind me. How much have I bought into the idea that a mother should be perfect at all times and at all costs? The forced closeness of the last month has thrown this into un-ignorable relief.

If Natalie is my angry interior self, Daisy is my perfect mother. Daisy feels ashamed to put on cartoons (and then more cartoons). Daisy is always available to take the kids sledding, to play on the floor, to sacrifice her work for her children’s beautiful memories. She knows how lucky she is to have the chance—how dare she squander it? I get angry and blame other people for Daisy’s martyr-ish existence, but I made her. I acted her out for years. By taking ownership of how I’ve bought into the myth of idealized domesticity, I find there is some space; a tiny crack in the door. I’m running to it.

Last week a new, very perceptive therapist told me: “You can trust your choices, Isabel. You can trust the choices you’ve made and the ones you will make.” For a while I needed the security of a close, nurturing family environment. By mothering my children tenderly, I mothered myself. Daisy was born of purpose. God bless her. But frankly, she’s gotten a little righteous and judgmental. “You’re allowed to change your mind,” the therapist told me. “You are allowed to want something new.” I felt my chest quake when she said this. “Am I?” I thought. I’ve agreed to this role, so who am I to change? Who am I to ask for more?

I felt my discomfort around motherhood climaxing as I listened to the purposely anti-climactic score of The Lost Daughter, which I watched last week. The ever-rising string instruments underpin the feeling that something horrible is about to happen to one of those girls. Bianca will be carried out to sea; Martha will grab one of the kitchen knives. We feel the brink of tragedy. But (spoiler) nobody gets hurt, at least not in the way we expect, and that’s the point. Motherhood requires so much psychic energy. Even if the physical accidents don’t transpire, we hold the weight of their possibility every second. What mother doesn’t see the name of school on her caller ID and think: “I knew it. It’s finally happened. This thing I’ve been waiting for all along.” For the last two years, we’ve had that panic with every cough or sniffle, too.

Daisy has no boundaries. She holds her anxieties and everyone else’s. She absorbs and personalizes every hurt feeling—including those of her friends and extended family. She never offends anyone and she’s approved of by all. You’ll find her on her knees saying: “We don’t speak to each other that way,” while a child pulls back her hair and shrieks into her ear. The scream makes her organs shake, but Daisy doesn’t flinch. She does react, though. Of course she reacts. Where does that reaction go? Mine turns into sulphur bubbles. What about yours?

There’s a correlation between time apart and quality parenting. At a certain point, quantity makes my presence toxic because, it turns out, I’m not Daisy. Such a woman does not exist. This is where it would be helpful for me to miss my children. I want to want to hear one of Augie’s rambling stories; to watch Clyde dance like John Travolta; to listen as Max plays half of the Beverly Hills Cop theme song on the piano. How can I love these moments—even see these moments—when I’ve lost myself? I think of young Leda at the typewriter with headphones on, begging Martha and Bianca to stop pulling on her clothes while she tries to work, and then breaking a window by slamming a door. Thank God someone is showing me this. Thank God there’s a model of motherhood somewhere between Andrea Yates and Daisy. There is anger in there, but I don’t want to be afraid.

I sent Daisy on vacation. She’s on a Caribbean beach, worrying, I’m sure. In her absence, I asked another (actual, human) parent if Max could carpool to sports practice a couple of times this week, even though our most intimate conversations happen in the car. I outsourced the groceries, which I hate to do because there’s always a broken egg in the carton or a half-rotten clementine in the bag. In that little bit of found time I realized I’d been trading my work life—my creativity, my sense of who I am—for hand-selected, spotless fruit. Making quaint order in the chaos is classic Daisy.

We want the security of our families, but we also want to individuate. The last two years—absorbing everybody’s stress and despair and the schoolwork and the constant children’s voices—have put us out of sync we are with ourselves. I’m speaking as a mother, but I’m sure this is true of all overwhelmed parents. We need to get alone enough to feel our own desires, rising up like excited laughter in our throats. We need to listen to the envy, as Whitney always says—it shows us our deepest, personal dreams. It feels radical to admit that our hopes for ourselves continue to exist, even in a pandemic. My Monday night Artist’s Way group has been a lifeline: two other writer/ mothers and I get together to talk about what shows up in our morning pages. It’s a weekly revolution.

Here are two insights I got from the pages last week: Natalie sees my mother and husbands’ professional successes and wants some for herself. Daisy remembers the pain of an absent parent, so she smothers her kids. Both of them make perfect sense. And so does the anger, which is not a problem, but a call to action.

Instead of pushing her down to the bottom of the pond, I’ve invited Natalie to sit with me at the edge of the water. Funny, but I’ve discovered she’s not angry at all: she’s just so, so sad about how long she’s been drowning. She knows exactly how I’ve compromised myself, acting out someone else’s model of how to be a mother, a woman, a person in the world. She won’t let me pretend otherwise.

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Also, some housekeeping: I have a few other projects happening, so these essays may come at half-speed. I’m very excited and will share more soon.

As always, thank you for reading— if you know another angry parent, please pass this along. Too many of us are afraid of and embarrassed by our anger, but the easiest way to stop the shame is to talk about it.

I also love talking about The Artist’s Way, either done individually or in community, so please reach out if you’re curious about the workbook and the morning pages. We can speak in the comments or here.

Rage on.