Mother Undone — Part Eleven
A Psychological Thriller About The Dark Side Of Motherhood
The story so far…
Johanna, a woman haunted by guilt, decides to make a fresh start in a new city in a house inherited from her grandmother. Later, she discovers that one of Australia’s most famous poisoners, Martha Needle, used to live there.
While researching a book on Martha and her crimes, Johanna is taken back in time to her own troubled past where she recalls the early days of her courtship and marriage to her husband, Stuart.
Ten years have passed. Johanna is a mother with three children.
THE INCOMPLETE SENTENCE: BLOG BY A DISENCHANTED MOTHER
(Disclaimer: This blog is written by a disillusioned mother who, for personal reasons, wishes to remain anonymous. You can call me J.F.)
Blog Post: The Guilt of Motherhood
2 May, 2.00am
I’ve been to-ing and fro-ing for the past few weeks and finally I’ve reached the point where I feel able to start this blog. Firstly, thank you from the bottom of my heart to all the brave mothers on the other blogs and chat sites I’ve been reading over the past year. I’m incredibly grateful to you all because I thought I was the only one who felt like this!
First, some ‘me’ background.
I’m in my late thirties and have been married to a handsome, successful man (S) for just over ten years. I live in a beautiful, spacious home in a lovely, safe city with three adorable children: A, J and T. From the outside, it looks like I have the perfect life.
But ever since my children were born, I’ve wondered why I’m not like other mothers. They all seem so happy — euphoric even (according to their Facebook pages and Instagram accounts anyway).
One night, after a particularly horrendous day spent running around shopping, dropping kids off at school, then to three different sports’ practices, then supervising three separate lots of homework then cooking a dinner that nobody wanted to eat, I sat down and Googled I hate being a mother, wondering what would come up.
One-third of a second later came my answer… no, wait. Make that thousands of answers. Thousands of returns to I hate being a mother… I couldn’t believe it! Thousands — maybe millions — of other mothers from all over the world who felt just like me. Millions of embarrassed, ashamed and anonymous mothers, petrified of the abuse they’d receive if they ever went public with their true feelings about motherhood actually had a voice! And they were speaking to me!
Over the next year, I waited until my husband and children were asleep. Then I powered up the laptop and indulged my dirty little secret. Like a sex addict craving porn, I devoured hundreds of posts every night until the early hours of the morning. Strangely enough, the lack of sleep didn’t worry me because, for the first time ever, I felt like I’d stumbled into the warm embrace of a million kindred spirits. These people got me. They actually understood!
So, I thought it was time that I provided a forum to help other mothers, just like those beautiful anonymous souls who helped me when I was at my most desperate.
I’ll never forget a sentence from one of those early posts I read. It was so profound and so epitomised what I felt, I wrote it down: “Worst of all is the guilt. My children are innocent. They didn’t ask to be born. Sometimes the shame and guilt is so overwhelming, I can’t breathe…”
So, let’s talk about Guilt.
Don’t you agree it’s the absolute worst?
And I don’t mean the guilt you feel when you forget a friend’s birthday or hurt someone’s feelings with a throwaway comment. I mean the sort of guilt that makes your heart pound in your chest loud enough to wake you in the middle of night (if you’re lucky to be asleep). It’s the kind of guilt that makes your heart ache like it’s been pierced with a thousand double-edged swords.
That’s the guilt I feel about my kids. I love them so much… like when I watch them sleeping at night, their rosy cheeks on the pillow, their little bodies rising and falling under the quilt. At moments like this, I’d take a hundred cuts so they don’t feel even a pin-prick.
But why do I still want to drive away in a convertible like Thelma and Louise and head towards the nearest cliff? That’s when the guilt makes me hate myself with a passion. I mean, what sort of Mother even contemplates running away from her children?
I’ve been crying buckets while I’ve been typing this. Lucky I’m not using paper otherwise my writing would be a soggy, smudged, illegible mess!
Love and Hugs to you all,
JF
COMMENTS:
MarisaB, 3:30am
Thanks for sharing J.F.
For the past three years since the birth of my first and only child, I’ve been constantly depressed. I love my son but I hate being a mom. I hate that I can’t have a shower when I want to. I hate it that I can’t take a crap without two little fists hammering on the toilet door. I hate it that I don’t see my friends anymore because I’m either too tired or covered in vomit and regurgitated food. I hate it that even thinking about a trip to the grocery store exhausts me. I hate it that I was once skinny and beautiful and bursting with energy. Every day is miserable. Everything I once loved and enjoyed about life is gone.
MIMI, 4:53am
I hear u JF and MarisaB.
Every day I wake up wanting to scream.
Take care of five-year-old… work for eight hours… come home and put her to bed… I have no me time. I’d rather put pins in my eyes than watch Finding Nemo for the ninety-ninth time. All I want is time for myself. I used to be able to relax, to read, to bingewatch Netflix and go out and have fun…
Not anymore.
THE INCOMPLETE SENTENCE: BLOG BY A DISENCHANTED MOTHER
(Disclaimer: This blog is written by a disillusioned mother who, for personal reasons, wishes to remain anonymous. You can call me J.F.)
Blog Post: A Life Sentence
7 May, 2:24am
Thank you so much for joining the conversation, dear friends! Do you have any idea what it means to me that you hear me and that you understand? Nobody else does! I know I could never have admitted these feelings to my own mother if she was still alive.
I had a revelation today — not one of those St Paul-on-the road-to-Damacus-type experiences — but still, an eye-opener.
The twins, J and T, were at a friend’s house and A was competing in a netball carnival. I had to be there, of course, but managed to sit away from the other clamorous, netball-mad parents and began to fantasise.
I went back in time to BK (before kids) and was daydreaming about what it used to be like when I could wake up after nine o’clock on a Saturday morning and read for an hour in bed, when there was no sport to attend, no breakfasts to prepare, no piles of washing to do from the week before. And then it struck me.
I’m in prison.
I feel like I’ve been sent to prison for the next eighteen (at least) years with no time off for good behaviour and no possibility of parole. I cannot leave. I have no freedom to do what I want with my time and am expected to do this dutifully and uncomplainingly.
My husband, S, is no help whatsoever. His life has barely changed. He leaves for work at eight o’clock in the morning and returns home twelve hours later after the children have been bathed and fed. If there’s nothing he wants to watch on television, he might read to A before she goes to sleep. “Being a parent has changed my life,” I overheard him tell a single woman at one of his work functions. “It’s the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done.”
It’s easy for him to say that when he only sees them for an hour a day!
He never had to clean up projectile vomit or change nappies after a triple bout of gastro! And he still goes to the football and plays a round of golf every second Sunday. I’m sure he’s having an affair too. I’ve never caught him out, mind you. His mobile telephone’s clean and working late comes with his job. But occasionally I catch a whiff of an unfamiliar perfume… or hear the shower late at night. I’ve confronted him but he always denies it.
If only he knew what I really think of him.
I hate him. He pretends to the rest of the world he has the perfect family so everybody will envy him. I bet he tells everyone what a great father he is too.
What a load of horseshit! Never once did he get up during the night when the kids were babies and crying their eyes out. I’d beg him to help but he always said he had to work the next day because he was the only breadwinner in the family. (I know it sounds terrible but I was so sleep-deprived, so depressed, so angry, so resentful back then, I used to lie awake wishing they were all dead… just so I could get a few minutes of peace and quiet!)
Damn, I can hear T calling me. I swear that kid’s got a sixth sense. Whenever I’m on the laptop or on the toilet, he suddenly develops a toothache or a pain in his tummy. I’d better go. Thanks again for being here and reading.
Love and Hugs to You All,
JF
COMMENTS:
IAMWOMAN, 9:15am
Thanks for sharing so eloquently and honestly, JF.
I’m currently writing a doctoral thesis on the changing role of motherhood in the twenty-first century and am fascinated by the insights offered by you and the other brave mothers on similar sites. Despite not being a mother myself, I’d like to offer some of my own.
You talk about motherhood being riddled with guilt; you think you aren’t doing enough… or you’re doing it wrong. Put those worries out of your head! But the fact you do worry about it raises lots of questions that need answering. Why are women made to feel guilty if they don’t breastfeed for long enough? Why are mothers made to feel somehow ‘less’ for delivering their babies via caesarean rather than a so-called natural birth? If your child is not involved in countless extra-curricular activities, are you reneging on your parental duties? When you are a stay-at-home-mum, you’re lauded but ignored; when you’re a working mum you’re chastised for not putting your children’s needs first. And, let’s face it, the world we live in today is no longer the village that once offered numerous outstretched arms to an exhausted worn-out mum.
CJ, 5:23pm
You women make me sick. You are so lucky to even have children! What about those women who can never be mommys? Children are a gift from God. You people obviously can’t appreciate the fact that being a mommy is what women were meant to do!
CHARLIEGIRL, 11:41am
I feel the pain of you mothers, but at least you don’t have to worry about being old and lonely.
LIBBY, 3:02pm
I wouldn’t worry too much about the fear of dying alone, Charliegirl. I’m a nurse in an aged care home and, as I write this, there are so many old people who are never visited by family. These people will die alone, but with the pain of knowing that they have family who rejected them at their greatest time of need.
THE INCOMPLETE SENTENCE: BLOG BY A DISENCHANTED MOTHER
(Disclaimer: This blog is written by a disillusioned mother who, for personal reasons, wishes to remain anonymous. You can call me J.F.)
Blog Post: Farewell from a Disillusioned Mother
15 June, 5.00pm
I’m sorry that nearly six weeks has elapsed without a post. So much has happened since. My head’s still a mess.
To all my online Friends, you’ve been my lifeline… my refuge… my link with a saner, more compassionate world during the lonely, dark hours when my fears, guilt and shame seem magnified to an almost unbearable degree.
A few days after my last post — I think it was about the ninth May — I woke early. I’m not sure what woke me. I thought one of the kids must have called out so I got up and checked their rooms. They were fast asleep. It was then I noticed the door to our home office was shut. Funny, I was sure I’d left it open after logging off from posting a couple of hours earlier. Then a horrible thought struck me: had I actually logged off? I was so tired, I couldn’t remember if I’d turned off my laptop before staggering back to bed.
I opened the office door. My husband, S, was sitting at the desk, reading my open laptop.
S turned around, pale as a ghost, the look in his eyes a mixture of anger, anguish and contempt. “I’ve heard you getting up and coming in here at nights,” he said to me. “I thought you might be having an affair… but I never dreamed — ” He shook his head from side to side. His mouth went slack then quivered as tears rolled down his cheeks.
S had been reading my blog where I said I hated being a mother… that I hated my life… that I wanted to leave my family… that, once upon a time, I wished them all dead.
I dropped to my knees, grabbed S’s hands and tried to take it all back. I said I’d been having bad dreams… that I didn’t know what I was saying, that there was no way I would have written that in the cold light of day. I told him that I didn’t hate him, that I’d never wished him and children dead for real. It was the tiredness, the desperation talking. I begged him to believe me.
But the way he sat there, not looking at me while I begged and pleaded. It was terrifying. He looked withered and shrunken… like I’d just kicked all the insides out of him… like he was dying from the inside out.
When I finished, he finally met my eyes but I could see he was gone forever. I tried to touch him but he pulled away like I was a poisonous snake. He stood, and in a calm, quiet voice, told me I was evil and that he and the children were better off without me. Then he turned and left the house without another word.
Now, our only contact is through lawyers. Our divorce will be final within the year. I’m getting the house and custody of the children. At the moment, they’re staying with S for five days in every fortnight.
It’s ironic that, for all these years, I’ve longed for time on my own. Well, I’ve finally got it… at the cost of my marriage and a massive disruption to my children’s lives. I won’t deny that life is more peaceful now… and the kids seem happy enough. They come back full of stories about time spent with their Dad.
But however much I tell myself it’s for the best, a nagging doubt hovers at the back of my mind: Did I do the right thing?
I guess I’ll never really know. Anyway… it’s goodbye forever from me, dear Friends. It was short but sweet. Thank you for being here for me… for listening… for understanding.
Hugs and Love to You All,
JF
COMMENTS:
GEMMA, 10.00pm
Nice to hear from you again JF. I’m sure I speak for all the posters when I wish you and your children the very best for your new life and for a shiny future filled with hope and joy and love!
God bless.
To be continued…
