There are good days and there are bad days. There are the not-too-bad days and the not-too-good days too. Today however, was a down-right-bad day for me.
I survived a bad-mom day today. I totally lost it this afternoon. Meimei’s senseless screaming in the ladies’ threw me off the scale and I was all ready to slam my head into the toilet bowl and flash myself away.
Don’t get me wrong. I love my kids. Will I die for them? You bet. Do I enjoy motherhood? Of course! But do I enjoy every moment of motherhood? Erm, no. Sorry, but no, and especially when they scream in the public toilet for absolutely no rhythm or reason.
Being a mom has made me realised that I can do a lot more than I thought. I learnt that although I cannot take a pin-prick, I could handle labour pain. And though I have no flair for cooking, I could whip up decent and nutritious baby food. I can wake up at wee hours to make milk or feed medicine. I can sing the silliest song in the middle of the street if that’s what it takes to sooth my baby back to sleep. I can run, faster than I thought, especially when I am after my kids. I can tell the darnest bedtime story and sleep with a toddler on my chest…
But I cannot take senseless screaming. It is something that I have not grown any immunity to. So when meimei melted down in the ladies toilet today over who got to use the toilet first(jiejie went first), I snapped. Yet even after I snapped, she did not stop, but continued to wail. I was convinced that if she were to continue any further, security would come and we would make headlines on Straits Times and broke some Guinness Record for the loudest crying kid in public toilet.
She was like a broken recorder, repeating the same set of meaningless words “I want to xu xu (urinate)!” when she is already on the toilet bowl. Everyone was staring at us. I wanted so badly to stop this insanity but it was beyond my control. I slammed the door behind me and smacked her as if trying to wake her to her senses. It worked. But I was broken. It was the very thing I promised her I would not do. “No one lift a hand on another in this house” that was my rule and I broke it.
I HATE myself. WHY WHY WHY? WHY did I do that? Trying to savage the situation, I apologized to my little girl. She was clearly disappointed with me. “Mommy, why are you behaving like that?”
Baby, I don’t know. But I am really sorry. Let’s work on this together. You, stop wailing for nothing and me, stop smacking and us, both happier.