Parenting P.T.S.D.

Through the car's Bluetooth speaker, I could hear my friend's two-year-old son screaming in that inconsolable high-pitched, piercing tone that sends my shoulders up towards my ears as if they could cover them and make the sound go away. Not because I was annoyed by them. But because the sound thrust me back six years in time like a nasty flashback to the trenches of early parenting. To a similar scene and a similar shrill scream from my own two-year-old son who would not stop shrieking on the same stretch of the 91 freeway as we drove away from Disneyland, the unhappiest place on Earth as far as he and me were concerned due to our mutual resentment that the other person had ruined their experience.

On my part, it was because I hadn't let him run freely through the park wherever the whim and mania led him but instead pushed through glaring throngs of people throwing apologies over my shoulder as I finally caught up to his surprisingly fast chubby legs before he threw himself onto the Dumbo ride. And I resented him for the stress and sweat pouring out of my exhausted and bent body as I held onto his squirming form and strapped him into the Ergo so I could make sure my five-year-old son was still standing in line with my friend and his two calm, angelic daughters.
Finally, physically and mentally done I pushed the double stroller on the long hike to the parking garage not wanting to deal with folding and dragging the stroller and two kids onto the tram as people watched, rolled their eyes, and commented under their breath instead of offering assistance. I ignored the aching pains in my shoulders, forearms, quads, and feet and just pushed on towards the freedom of the car.
Of course, in my irrational desire to leave, I hadn't figured on Orange and Riverside County traffic at four in the afternoon. Naturally, as soon as I was gridlocked on the freeway between a red river of brake lights going five miles an hour on a 100 mile journey back to the Coachella Valley, my two-year-old started howling for his life. He thrashed against his car seat restraints and knocked the peace offerings of juice and cookies and every other sugar and starch-laden goodies I could find in the snack bag. I tried playing a Wiggles DVD, sang songs to him, I think I even offered him a pony, a private jet, and a small island nation. Anything to quiet that angry squall smashing its way out of his cute little rosebud mouth. My body shook, my mind dashed for cover, only the automated lessons from driver's ed held fast as I cried with him. My five year old even joined in, first with complaints and later with his own frustrated tears as I finally pulled over at Tyler Mall in Riverside still an hour from home.
My little one calmed down, and we ate some dinner. I even let him run down the mall as his brother and I chased him hoping against hoping that he'd wear himself into a stupor. Finally, after an hour and a half with the realization that I could not live here and that my oldest and I really needed to get home and rest our frayed nerves, I got back in the car hoping the traffic had gone and that my little one would sleep. It was a futile hope because even at 8 o'clock at night, the traffic was still bad though maybe everyone was up to fifteen miles an hour and also because my youngest had only ever fallen asleep maybe three times in the car in his entire small life. In fact, he hated the car with a passion some religious zealots feel about the United States. He wanted to burn it to the ground and stomp on its image. He wanted to erase its existence from the Earth or his reality if possible. Even short trips to the grocery could be ordeals of torture for the both of us.
So as he began his now familiar scream, I steeled my nerves and locked my eyes dead ahead willing myself to drive from Point A to Point B but not before recording his unholy shriek on my phone so I could throw the evidence instead of my fist in the smug faces of the people who told me how much babies loved being in the car. Somehow, this one didn't. Fortunately, we made it home alive. He even fell asleep five miles before I entered my garage. I collapsed into a silent stream of tears against the steering wheel as my husband came out of the house and put both boys to bed.
As much as I would love to, I can never erase this memory and the dozens more like it from my youngest son's childhood. It reappears whenever I hear another child like my friend's toddler shrieking with a volume that belies their small lungs. I feel both empathy for the mother and a need to crawl into a small space and hide. My shoulders creep up, my spine tightens, even my abs brace for a punch. It reminds me of all the times I felt so helpless and worn out at the same time. Because I wanted to help my child and abandon it at the same time.
I want to the selfless mother, the one who is supposed to comfort and ease my child's problems, but I'm also the human woman unable to cope with yet another jarring and mentally exhausting experience. I can't bribe him, reason with him, nothing. I just have to accept it and go on. Because my efforts fall flat. Maybe that's the worst bit. I am powerless. This barrage of miserable, gut-wrenching noise and crying till he vomits will happen in spite of everything I try.
Even now, my youngest son still retains the power to reduce me to jelly. He was gifted or cursed with an all-encompassing, full-on emotive cry that embodies all the pain and helplessness of childhood. A few days ago at the waterpark, he began howling and holding his face as he screamed that it burned. I tried all my helpful mommy tricks in a quick succession as I felt myself retreating inwards away from the noise because I knew I wouldn't be able to solve his particular problem. Thankfully, the nice man at First Aid fixed it. Yet, there I was struggling to hold it together and not cry in front of my friends and strangers as once again my body reacted and retreated into a tightened and protective stance as I wished it all away. I love my son. More than anything in the world. But that scream, that terror will always shake me to my core and make me want to curl into a ball until it passes. His scream is my war memories, a time of helpless agony as a barrage of fear and pain rains down.

The Ramblings of an Insomniac

I'm yawning as I write this or attempting to complete a yawn as I can't even seem to accomplish the basic reflex necessary for channeling more oxygen into my body. So this may be a half-fueled ramble. Half-lacking oxygen, sleep, and a linear train of thought.

I am an insomniac. Have been since puberty struck me at 14 forgetting to give me my moms big boobs but over-compensating with acne, menstrual cramps, and an overwhelming sense of worry and an over-active mind. When I was younger and stupider, I used to think saying I had insomnia made me sound cool. Like I was a dark and brooding writer like Jack Kerouac and couldn't sleep for all the deep, angsty thoughts running with scissors in my head.

Nowadays, as a parent to two hyper boys, insomnia is just a pain in the butt. A thief. It robs me of energy and even the will to play. Plus, it runs even more rampant albeit with safety scissors as I've added a layer of mommy guilt on top of all my other anxieties like a rich layer cake. There are dark chocolate layers baked with my desire to write more or even better or even just something stuck between my vanilla concerns for my kids to have friends, healthy diets, good grades, and some semblance of a well-balanced life that doesn't resemble mine.

During summer, the insomnia I've managed to tame into a benign monster that allows me some precious sleep so I can wake up early and nag other people out of sleep returns to its fierce and fiendish self. It lays awake until past midnight with the excuse that it is claiming "me time". But more often than not the monster and I lay in bed flipping through Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Hulu for a half hour with the inability to find anything to watch or settling on some random comedy series or lesser known BBC adaptation of an obscure Dicken's novel and pretending to watch it while scanning Facebook for something to wake up the brain cells or give meaning to existence. Eyes heavy, brain slack-jawed, the monster cons me into thinking I am ready for sleep. But the instant I turn off the television and my side lamp and adjust my pillow, it gnaws on my thoughts. Not even deep thoughts. Sometimes just thoughts repetitively saying over and over, "why can't I sleep".

So I sleep in the next morning when I can but wake up with a drunken grogginess at 9 a.m. having achieved periods of unconsciousness in small bursts from 3 a.m. onwards when the room wasn't too stuffy or the pillow too lumpy or my neck too crooked. Sometimes I nap the next day stealing the time I had set aside for creativity or connecting with my kids which consequently forces me to stay up late again in a gambit to play a board game past bedtime or attempt to write something more than incoherent phrases that play out in a stream of consciousness so tumbled down and varied they are more ragging rapids than stream.

Sometimes with the help of my go-getter, energizer bunny friends, I can fake a vivacious personality. Even without their help I have moments of hyper focus and energy like a pinball thrust forward with the goal of hitting every light only to fall back into a place of waiting.

Pills do not help. I am immune to Melatonine and every prescription sleep aid. Nothing short of hitting myself over the head results in complete unconsciousness. And it's not all anxiety related. A lot of the time it is that the room is too hot, too cold, too stuffy, the sheet to scratchy, the wind too loud, my body too stiff, too sore, too soft, or too full. I once stayed up for over a day because I couldn't sleep sitting up on my flight from Phoenix to London and then was too overtired to sleep so took a tour of the city from the front window of a double decker bus that I can only remember as one long, jumble of postcard images.

And do not tell me to exercise myself into sleep. Any good insomniac knows that the body can be completely and physically exhausted but the mind still warbles on like that chatty girl on a long bus trip who can't read body language or the veiled hints that you'd like to close your eyes now and go to sleep.

Then adding more insult to injury, I find my best writing ideas come to be as I waver into REM sleep leaving me with the option to drag my tired body out of bed and hope the muse hasn't scampered away into the dark night with a cute vampire or lay there hoping I will remember the idea in the morning. Except with the latter, I only wake with the evaporating image of something wonderful but too far gone to know exactly what it resembled.

Even now I forced myself from a nap because the words were marching across my mind and demanding an audience. I just hope they reformed here in neat, orderly rows that make sense. A call of collective commiseration with my fellow insomniacs.