Mother Guilt:
It’s a 24/7 job that pays nothing but love and even that not all the time. There’s no feeling worse them when your child is not well, and you know there’s nothing major happening to them, and you know they will be ok, but the type of panic that sets in, the type of expectations that are put on you as „the mother” who’s supposed to „just deal with it” I mean, this week I was surrounded by family, by a support team of people being available to help whenever I needed a break, yet I still faced „the child only wants you, themother” dilemma and the guilt that comes from not being there or just simply wanting to hide, because, I sometimes just can’t help, I don’t have the Magic Wizard of Oz powers to makeall the pain and worry dissapear, and I hate that I can’t help yet I have to be there, present to watch the suffering, to witness it and carry it, and try to tell a joke to make it feel better. I’m not made for this, I just want to run away from this. Does this make me a horrible human being? I think the expectations of others when you become a mother are just that: you wanted a kid, now „just deal with it”
Thinking of „If I had legs I’d kick you”, loving it for showing that the mothers are just human, they’re not the saints, not Mary Magdalenes, who just carry all the shit with a gentle smile on their faces. It is the hardest fucking job in the world, and unpaid, and unappreciated, like having a boss who constantly needs you no matter their mood and you having to constantly show up perky and excited to help. What if it’s all just too fucking much?!? What if you just want to run away and hide but of course you can’t because then you’d be the bad mother who abandoned her child in a time of need?!? What about my fucking needs?!?
By the way I’m hiding in the toilet with a glass of wine while my inlaws and husband are putting the kids to bed. What about those single moms, those women or mums with husbands always working, who have nobody helping them when they just need a break?
Also just wanting to add a few lines about the final scenes in the movie, where the protagonist looses her marbles, goes for extreme measures towards “curing” her daughter herself, pulling out a tube from the childs stomach, and then her abusive husband suddenly shows up that evening, discovers it and screams: what did you do?!? As a reaction she freaks out, runs to the beach in the middle of the night and t starts throwing herself at the crashing waves, probably attempting to drown herself, unsuccessfully. I’m getting really emotional now thinking about this. In the end she falls flat on the sand and her daughter finds her lying there, alive. The last words of the film she wispers are: “I’m going to get better, I promise”
I feel this whole situation sums up perfectly the emotional burden mothers face when it comes to being responsible for her children, and being expected to always have a solution and do the right thing or at least to always be present, when the child needs her emotionally and physically. I wounder if fathers ever think about that.
Then the water/giant waves theme is something that really resonates, as I often have my water dreams, in which the waves are giant and overwhelming, like a tsunami, and they usually feel really dangerous, like they will probably kill me, but in the end I always end up diving down and breathing through them and surviving instead of dying. And these dreams are not neccesarily related to my children because I’ve been having them way before I had my kids.