If Moms had Blogs

It feels so selfish of me to want a day without drama. I feel it's self-centered to think that I have this day off from work and I would like to just have a good day filled with things I have been wanting to do - read, sew, maybe just relax a little.

Instead I'm trapped, and that is exactly how it is. Because she is not getting exactly what she wants she is weepy, whiny, outraged, and a general bear to be around. There is screaming and pleading and slamming and storming.

On the outside I am a calm wall of firmness, not giving into demands. On the inside I'm a bundle of exposed nerve endings, and know when she slams out the door for the day, I will at once be relieved and then reduced to tears. She sucks the life out of me with her demanding nature and emotional outbursts. It's not normal and hasn't been for awhile. It's over the top, bigger than life, prone to make you feel at any moment she will take her life because she is in such despair.

Instead of a day off, it feels like a day in prison. My husband took the "good" car and is off for the day of games with his friends, which I never mind because it leaves me free to spend the day as a I please. But now, because something has been taken away from her until she fulfills an obligation, she will come back and forth and try to argue it out or wear me down or engage me in a war. It takes just as much energy to be strong and refrain from joining in the drama, but still witness it than it does to actually get involved in a knock down, drag out fight. It still leaves me feeling like a limp dishrag at the end of the day.