My Tower Collapsed

I lost my shit tonight. Completely. Lost. It. Over tater tots. I got my pan out, put foil on it and sprayed it with olive oil. Put the tots on the pan and into the oven they went. No big deal. Halfway through, at the time you’re supposed to flip them, I took them out and it hit me. Tots don’t flip on foil. They stick and when you try to move them, they break apart and turn to crap on the pan. I realized this fact a long time ago after many attempts. Then I saw Rachel Ray put them on parchment paper and it changed my world. I’ve cooked them that way ever since. But tonight, because my mind is fried, because I don’t seem to know what I’m doing half the time, I automatically grabbed the foil and thought nothing of it until these little shits wouldn’t flip. And then I flipped out.

The curses flew, which is really nothing new in my house, especially since March. My daughter hardly flinches anymore, which I’m not proud of, but it is the reality right now. It wasn’t necessarily what I said, but how I said it, or more to the point, how I yelled it. It was primitive and I haven’t done that in years.

Imagine a tea kettle on the stove. When your water boils the kettle lets out its little siren letting you know it’s ready. And the longer you take to get it the louder and higher pitched that siren gets. And if you take a really long time that kettle sounds as if it’s about to jump off the stove itself and explode. That was me tonight. And after I screamed at the tater tots the next thing in my line of view was my husband and so I screamed at him. Not the right thing to do of course but he was there and I needed to yell some more. I won’t get into what was said and, while my points were valid, it still wasn’t the right way, time or place to address things.

My daughter used to play with her blocks and stack them as high as she could to see how tall the tower could get before it came tumbling down, which was her favorite part. And who knows if it was the weight of the blocks, or the balance that made them fall. Whatever it was, it just got to be too much, and the tower collapsed. As women, we teach ourselves, or maybe we learn it from the women before us, to deal with it all. No questions asked, we just deal with it. And we take it all on, we add it to our lists, the lists that keep us up at night because they never seem to get done. We just keep taking everything on and by the time one thing gets done five more things have been added. And we tell ourselves that it’s our job as the wife and the mother. And we don’t ask for help because we don’t want to burden anyone else with what we feel is something we are supposed to do. And just like that tower of blocks, as we add more and more things to ourselves, maybe to see how much we can take, we lose our balance and we collapse. And instead of admitting that it’s just too much sometimes, and telling ourselves that we’re only human, we instead feel guilt and place blame and anger on ourselves. And the cycle continues, over and over. We rise, we weigh ourselves down, we collapse, we tell ourselves we should do better so we get up again. Isn’t insanity doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result? And we wonder why we feel like we’re losing our minds.

It’s only Wednesday but it’s already been a shitty week. Phase two for my daughter’s school was supposed to start on the 16^th. This meant that she could go back to school after being fully virtual all this time, our choice, and she was going to go four days a week. We were both excited, me more than her for many reasons, the top one being that she needs to be in school just so she can learn properly. But we got the call yesterday saying that date has been moved to the 30^th. And some moms are thinking that won’t even happen and we’re likely to stay virtual until the new year. And honestly, I don’t know if I will survive that, again for many reasons.

Then today during math her teacher was trying to teach a new lesson. And I could tell my daughter wasn’t completely understanding it, which upset her. And as I looked at the faces of the other students on screen, I saw the same puzzled look on most. And my heart just broke for them. And my daughter’s teacher is doing his best and you can hear the frustration, and almost sadness, in his voice because he knows this way of learning is hard for them and hard for him. And he knows that what he is teaching is something that should have been introduced to the kids last school year but it wasn’t because 2020 happened and they went remote in March and for the last three months of that school year they just did review work, not really learning anything new. And it hit me today how much it has affected these kids and no one can deny that their education has taken a huge step back.

And it’s so much more than that but these were the last two blocks to go on my tower before I collapsed. This was my last tea kettle warning before I exploded. I gathered myself together, I flipped the new batch of tater tots that were cooking properly on parchment paper, and I went upstairs to my bathroom and I cried. One of those really good cries into a towel so that I could let out some tiny screams too. It was the release I needed. We take everything in, we let it pile up within our heart and soul. And everything gets cramped up inside, all on top of each other, no room to move, no room to breathe. And our mind and our heart work on their own and they force us to let these things out. And it comes in the form of a scream, or a cry, or a string of curse words. It doesn’t matter what form it takes; the release is what matters most. It wasn’t the first time this happened, and it won’t be the last. Round and round we go.

When I went back downstairs the table was already set for dinner. My daughter said ‘me and Daddy wanted to help you’. My husband hugged me and apologized for not doing more, I apologized to him and my daughter for my outburst. I apologize when I’m wrong. I’m never too proud to say I’m sorry, especially to my daughter. She needs to know that grown-ups make mistakes too and her feelings are important. We had a family hug, which is my daughter’s favorite thing, and we moved on, because that’s what families do. Life is messy. It’s not all sunshine and roses. It’s laughter and tears, smiles and yelling, happiness and heartache. And this year has been extra crazy. More downs than ups but we make the best of every day and keep moving forward. It’s what we do; it’s how we deal. Tomorrow is a new day, and I’ll start at block one.