My dear child,
We share such a deep love. Could it be because you hurt me so much sometimes? Could it be that we are more alike than it feels at the moment?
When you lie asleep in your bed in the evening, I sometimes go to your bed and realise again how deeply and intimately I love you. My child! You smell so good. You look so heartbreakingly cute. These moments are very important to me right now, because we’re not having an easy time together.
Never, ever in my life would I have thought that something like this could happen to me. Anger at my child. Really raging anger. Nobody knows how to press my anger buttons better than you, not your siblings, not your father, basically I’m not an angry person at all! On the contrary: I need harmony. But you’re dictating our family life right now, which makes me sad.
You often snap at us when we wake up: „Leave me alone! I’m not going to school!“
At breakfast, you’ll snap at your sister: „Go away, you have bad breath.“ When you come home from school, you continue to provoke. And of course your siblings get right on it. „You can’t even do THAT task? Haha, you’re so stupid!“ Zack, everyone jumps up and chases each other. And then when your brother’s head lands in the door handle, yes, that’s when I get really angry.
„CAN you give it a rest?“ „WHAT the hell are you doing that you have to cause such discord?“ „Do you just want to get us all down all the time?“ It’s like biting the edge of the table. And yet I try to calm myself down and explain it in a gentle way. „Listen, if you’re kind to your fellow human beings, you’ll get kindness back from them.“ „I don’t care“, you say. And laugh at me. And I have to pull myself together again and look at your two siblings, who are once again not getting the attention they deserve.
It’s all a phase, yeah. I know. You can be magical. The teacher says you’re a great pupil, always social, helping others, cheerful. So why do you have to let it all hang out at home?
I have good days and stressful days, I’m only human. If you catch me doing something like that on a stressful day when dad is away on business, I make sandwiches in the morning, take you all to school, rush to the office, stop at the school straight afterwards to pick you up again, we then plan something great to make you happy, even though I’ve long since needed a break, and then you do something like that, I could only cry. Why are you like this? What are you trying to tell me?
You know what? I think you’re a very special child. I know that. You have amazing energy. And when we find a way to channel that energy in the right direction, something wonderful will come out of it. But as long as you use this energy to divide us, I will be close to despair.
Then I’ll send you to the room and you won’t go, you’ll run away and want to chase me. But I’ll tell you what, I’m not going along with that. I don’t get involved in games like that. At some point, it has to end. And while you’re running away, you punch your brother in the back as you run past. And then I hold you tight so that you can’t run away, even though that goes against everything I believe in, and I get louder and cry so that you can see what you’re doing with your behaviour and carry you up to the room and then you kick the door and – suddenly I can’t hear anything anymore.
I go into your room and then you’re lying on the bed crying and saying: „It’s always my fault in this family“ and I don’t know what to say, because you’re actually the cause of almost every argument at the moment. And then you suddenly flipped the switch and are once again the son I know and love you as. And I gently stroke your back and at that very moment I can no longer say why things had to escalate like that again.
You then realise for yourself, oops, I think I’ve gone too far after all. Zack, you’re my old man again. You write me an apology letter, hug me, are soft again and offer to make pancakes for everyone. And I can finally take a deep breath again. And realise what a great person you are.
But the guilty conscience, because of my helplessness and the shouting and the anger, that remains. Often even overnight.
I’ve thought so much about why it always comes back to this. There are better and worse phases, but these phases have been coming back every now and then for the last two years or so. Are you overwhelmed? Underwhelmed? Unfortunately, I don’t recognise a pattern in your attacks, otherwise I would have known how I could help us long ago.
At the moment, the only thing I can do is to take all the love I feel for you out of your bed at night. Because it’s there, I’m telling you. How many times have I told you: „Even when mum is angry, the love is always there.“ And that’s the way it is, my darling. I wouldn’t worry so much if I didn’t love you so much. You’re a great guy, super sporty, super popular, super clever, just really great.
We just have to see how we can channel your energy in the right direction in the afternoon. Do you know what? I’m convinced you’ll get there. Maybe writing it down was the first step. I believe in you so much. After all, I’m your mum. And we’ll get through this.
Love, mum
