Today is a sad day.
Today is a useless lump fat day.
Part of me doesn’t think writing about this for everyone to see and judge is a good idea.
Part of me thinks it would be good and in the interest of transparency about motherhood or being or existing. It would be a grand, noble gesture. An act of vulnerability.
Performative.
Part of me doesn’t care.
Sorry to SPLAT all over your internet timeline doomscrolling as you sit on the toilet.
Part of me thinks this is better than screaming (but if I’m honest, this piece is my scream).
This is my scream so loud and so long that I do not know when I first began screaming and when it will end — and if it ever will.
I scream because the alternative is to weep and if I start, I will surely become undone.
Is it a reason or is it an excuse and who cares because it doesn’t change anything and the house is still a mess
Not Yoongi was annoyed at me this morning because he cleaned the disaster that was my room and said my reasons of the kids dumping everything they don’t know what to do with here was just an excuse. That he was sick of cleaning up the place every four months. That someone should help him parent.
And just like that, all the brightness of the day was zapped. I was watching a new episode of “Suchwita” with Taehyung from BTS as a guest during my alone time this morning and now, I don’t want to taint it.
I don’t want to touch Min Yoongi or Kim Taehyung with my sadness. They deserve to shine bright, unsullied.
I get it
I don’t blame him.
The room was annoying and full of bags of clothes that needed to be sorted and boxed and (maybe) donated.
Not Yoongi’s mother was a hoarder and it must trigger so much to see our home surrounded in disarray and mess and toys and clothes and stuff.
I know he’s frustrated. I’m frustrated.
It is overwhelming.
After all, Not Yoongi works a full-time job and does an equal (and sometimes greater) share of the parenting and adulting. I know that is not what many women experience and still, because he is a man, this makes him a great father.
That is unfair. He would be a great father by any measurement, steeped in patriarchy or not.
I do not know if my mothering would fare as well. (Or is that still the echoes of our woman-hating culture? I don’t know.)
(Today, it does not matter.)
I should be more grateful
It probably doesn’t help that I’m still mad about a comment someone left on my previous post and said I was disrespectful to my husband by calling him Not Yoongi. That I was a child pursuing BTS concerts and buying merch. That I should be more grateful.
And normally, normally, I would respond that they should mind their fucking business. (I did.) I would unpack how problematic this commenter was and give them what for.
That the implication that I would be the type of person to publicly disrespect Not Yoongi sans his approval, that I’m a gold digger and living off of my husband, that Not Yoongi is some victim who is laboring unfairly on my behalf — that who I am and the decades of unseen labor I carried out to grow, birth, teach, and raise five fucking children (in Chinese, might I add) when Not Yoongi used to travel for work and I was alone by myself while pregnant with three children under five — that my contributions because it is woman’s work and expected and always judged wanting — that all of what I did and do meant and means nothing.
I am nothing.
Normally, I do not give air to negative commenters because why give them attention they clearly crave? I would tell that commenter that if they’re a woman, they’re jealous of my husband because Not Yoongi is awesome and most likely, their partner is unsupportive and the only way they can get through life is by gaslighting women who are doing what they want and enjoy.
If they’re a man (and I am more and more prone to think they are a man), they’re mad because my husband is secure in who he is and doesn’t have a fragile ego that will disintegrate from a little good-natured teasing. Also, that my husband isn’t a miserable, stingy, patriarchal, abusive giant red flag like this commenter.
Either way, the commenter is telling on themselves and their own misery.
Normally, I would say that I feel sorry for them. I feel sorry for their small, sad little world where when they’re confronted with the glory and wonder that is the internet, they choose such bland and generically bitter words to immortalize for all of posterity.
I would quote Namjoon and tell them to “stay healthy!”
Normally, I would do all that. (And I did. Dear reader, I did.)
(I don’t know why I keep emphasizing that I did, but it seems important somehow. That I, at least, did not sit and wallow, inert and pathetic. I did not allow this stranger to hurt me, to bully me, to make me feel small.)
(Today, though. Today it feels a little like I must remind myself that I, too, am capable of taking up space. Of reclaiming who I could be if I could only scrape myself off the floor to care.)
But today is a sad day
Today, all I hear are echoes of arguments with Not Yoongi from our worst moments. From when he called me an overglorified Uber driver and I told him that if he quit his job I would divorce him for someone who made more money. I hear him call me abusive when we argued about buying a bookshelf and I spiraled into three days of being suicidal and only pulling through because BTS canceled their Map of the Soul Tour and Not Yoongi was kind and said he was sorry about the tour being canceled.
Today, grief sits on my chest, heavy.
Heavy with longing.
Heavy with inadequacy.
Heavy with regret.
I wish my children had a better mother, my husband a better wife
I feel fully the weight of my inability to do things. I wonder how I ever graduated high school and matriculated into UCLA. I wonder that I did not fail out of UCLA spectacularly. (As it was, I barely graduated by the skin of my teeth.)
I wonder how I, who started off life so brilliantly, so smart, so capable, so full of potential — only to end up like this.
I feel sorry that my 6-year-old is incapable of listening to reason and full of the stubborn will and mulishness of a spoiled little boy who has never had to suffer a second in his life. (Part of me understands that this is perfectly normal behavior for a child. That perhaps my compliant older children were the true deviants.)
I am convinced that I am ruining my children — that homeschooling from someone such as I was the worst sort of idea. And then, I think that I am selfish — that my kids are so smart and bright and all I want to do is let them play, let them be coddled.
Why can’t they live and be young and be a child and not be burdened by the demands of school and the spectre of a future job?
(I hear Not Yoongi ask me why I want to condemn our children to unemployment, to living with us forever. )
(I wonder why a job is the thing we care so much about when ChatGPT and AI will render all humans meaningless.)
I think of school and how my daughter is now going to public middle school at her request and she is thriving and I am so relieved and joyful and yet a part of me mourns. I think that perhaps, I really should never have been a homeschooling mother, that I should slowly send all my children to school.
That it is no shame. No indictment. No failure.
And yet, I mourn. I mourn now and for the future. I feel selfish for clinging so desperately to a reality that does not exist, for letting memories of my childhood ruin the future of my children. Memories of being so driven, so competitive, so groomed for a bright future that I did not manifest like my peers.
I hear Not Yoongi say that we turned out just fine except I wonder, truly, did I?
It is not our fault and yet, it is
It is not our fault that late-stage capitalism has made us into this. It is not our fault that Not Yoongi feels the singular pressure of being the sole breadwinner of the family and of being an involved father in a society that does not reward those who choose a different path than fathers of previous generations.
It is not our fault that the true source of our fighting and major disagreements is rooted in patriarchy, misogyny, and capitalism. (Aw hell, let’s throw in white supremacy for good measure.) We are just people, bumbling along, trying to stay alive and provide a future for our children though we differ in our opinions on how to reach that future.
And yet, do we not live in the world as it is and not the world as it should? Isn’t Not Yoongi correct that to have a shot at a good life, our kids have to do well in school, get a good job, and find meaning in their work and friends? Am I not a person cut loose from reality, tethered and yet adrift because privilege allows me to stay home and yet misogyny allows me to hate myself for choosing what I want?
I see my friends who have killed off almost every part of themselves in order to be the perfect wife and mother that their religion and culture have brainwashed them into being. They say they are jealous of me. That they wish they could be strong like me. That they wish they could be real like me and do what I want when I want it.
But it’s all a lie.
They are better and more capable people than I could ever hope to be. Their children are smart and educationally gifted. They cook meals and chauffeur children and clean house and juggle a million things and I can’t even put some bags of clothes away.
I live this life because Not Yoongi makes a good living so I do not have to work. I do what I want because Not Yoongi is a good sport and wants me to be happy. I say what I want how I want it because who really cares what a middle-aged housewife says?
And yet even with almost everything in my life going my way, I have the audacity to complain on days like today.
To feel so worthless. To feel so small. To feel so nothing.
I am still so heavy.
I am still so lump.
