12.04.2008

i don't know what i am doing. i don't have any clue as to how to be a parent. i get these ideas now and then that feel right, or sound good, or something, but then i'm sitting here, lounging on the internet for hours on end, allowing the children to run amok by themselves, exploring and creating and otherwise trashing the house, but is that just laziness? should i be more involved? is that what makes a good mother? someone who is hypervigilant, always ready for a new activity, a kind word, a kiss for a boo-boo?

i am not that person. i am self-absorbed and introspective, i like my own activities, which often include doing things for the children, creating new tasks to involve them in. and yet i always feel lacking. they don't do what i ask, they seem to have almost no empathy. the words i speak fall flat and hollow unless i have reached the breaking point and it all comes out a bellow. then, and only then do i gain compliance and not every time and not without force and coersion beyond what should ever ever be reasonable or acceptable.

i know not what to do with these boys. the energy level in aleks alone could spin the planet a couple of times - how am i to keep up with that? how am i to contain it or harness it or even funnel it to some good use? and what defines what is worthy, what is valid, what is righteous and good? who gets the job to say what is so?

my only goal is that they become whole, confident adults with a sore spot for social justice, if i can be picky. i want to have a relationship with them that is a dialog, but so far our life seems composed solely of several ongoing monologues running in different directions, at times intersecting, but rarely, if ever, merging. what do i do? what do i do? i feel so very very bad at this. i feel so questioned, so undermined and i don't have absolute answers, i have no solutions. i feel empty-handed. i feel lost.