Le Miserables....

It may not be bigger than a "who" but with a mother's ear as big as Horton's, I heard, or rather I felt, a small murmur of discontent echoing around the walls of this small house. We are not happy. Let's be honest 3 teenagers, a preteen and a pre- menopausal mother is certainly the hormonal ingredients for grouchy soup. Let's not forget the 9 year old.

Of course there are moments of lightness, but they seem more like the small but brief moments of comic relief standard  in any tense white knuckle thriller. Underpinning everything that goes on, there's our quiet unspoken pain. The collective hurt is a heavy burden I bear, it's weighted down with the guilt I guess all single parents bear. The guilt of failure. Never really measuring up to our "still married" acquaintences.

With all this pain,  hurt and failure, my eldest son, is in the vortex of teenage angst, worthlessness and simmering anger, which he fires my way willy nilly as he challenges my authority like a caged tiger, too big for it's enclosure. This kind of unhappiness and discontent scares me a little. "Home is not one of my favourite places to be," he snipes at me from behind his laptop,"I just want to get out," some violent game still on the screen. There it is. I failed at being a wife, now here I am failing at  being a mom too. 

I feel myself buckle under the strain and weight of it all. I am not in a Walton's rerun, that's for sure. The smaller son comes crying down the passage down to me, the dogs have chewed his luminous shoelaces given to him by his sister when she came back from Germany. He is overcome with grief. He laments like a man who has lost his entire family. I feel so sad. I'm truly surrounded by misery, there isn't a ray of light or comfort.

Who Scrooged my life? Someone came and rained "Bah Humbug" all over the place and we are sinking in a deluge of misery. I'm looking for answers. Can I turn this around? Do I perceive things worse than what they really are?  I don't know. I was comparing notes with an acquaintance the other day.She has been divorced for three years too. She says her kids are falling apart at the seams too. Hello? Is there a 3 year falling apart rule that I have not been aware of?    

This I know, I am not as strong as I was emotionally 3 years ago when the Roger left. Single parenthood has eroded my very soul. I am spent. I have little to give and the children need so much. I have obviously been doing it all wrong. Time to roll up my sleeves and get to work. Get the saws out and the plywood, the chipboard and the wood glue and build me a happy family. I can't possibly give up.3 year falling apart clauses or not.  I do need to give up some of the things that are not working though. 

They say wisdom is the application of principles you know to be true. There are many of these principles I know, and yet do not apply. Perhaps this family is like a Phoenix, crumbling into ashes, at three years only to be reborn again, feathers of fire and happiness? Perhaps somewhere they say, it takes 3 years for the old family to die completely, so that the new one can be born again. I like the ring of that. Even if it isn't true, I'd like to believe it is.