Let the wind and waves carry the pain

​I hosted a birthday party for Little O on Saturday. It took me a week to prepare everything and arrange logistics, and Saturday morning I had therapy with Monica at 9. After I finished my session, I came out of my bedroom seeing that Little had been crying for almost the entire session of my therapy because Angel couldn’t regulate him. He wasn’t well because he thought every birthday party in his life had to be identical in its routine, including the things he’d eat and do in the days leading up to the party. He had been very agitated lately and I was just so overwhelmed. I wish he could be grateful, or at least just happy for just one day. But he couldn’t. He kept screaming and crying and couldn’t be reasoned at all. The more I tried to reason with him the more agitated he got because he couldn’t understand my words. I did what I wished was done to me as a child—a tight hug, mommy telling me everything was ok, and he punched me twice. It got me so angry and depressed and I screamed back at him, but it obviously didn’t change his mood, only making him scared of me. Then I started crying, saying to Angel, “you have no idea how painful it is to offer so much care for someone and they don’t feel it. Maybe we don’t belong to this world and after tonight I’d die with him.”

My depression is almost non-existent now, but chronic depression seems to be still there. I said those things because being unable to regular Little O pains me. No one in this world can understand the level of pain I have endured if I don’t use such language. At his birthday party, I listen to other parents talk about their parenting and their kids’ fixation. Sure, other kids seem to have some limitations, but at least they could all communicate socially while Little O and I couldn’t. It feels almost like hitting a wall again and again, just like Angel.

Saturday morning I told Jinu that I wanted to go back to the bike trail, but he said he had a dinner plan Sunday evening so he wouldn’t be able to make it if he had joined me. I didn’t specifically invite him but he said he wanted to go but couldn’t. He also said that he forgot to tell me that my story was very well written in the writing club and I thanked him for telling me that and introducing to the club. However, prior to this conversation I cried in front of Monica again as I told her about that Jinu went on a date a week ago. The reason why I cried was more about that I wished I didn’t feel that way, because when I look at other people, I think most of them wouldn’t cry over a friend going on a date. This thought makes me very sad—like I don’t fit in, still am too sentimental and full of drama. Monica told me she’d be sad if she was in my position because she thinks the connection I had with Jinu was real, and we did a couple of day trips together alone, and there was a lot of laughter. She said many women would be sad if they were me.

On Sunday, I was gonna spend hours at a cafe going to the final divorce settlement and the translation of Little N’s various reports for school admission, but Little O was still dysregulated a lot and kept throwing tantrums and feeling anxious, so I asked him if he wanted to go biking with me on the coastline, and he did. We went back to the bike trail on the coastline and we had a tandem electric bike. He told me he liked the ocean, and I told him we can finally scream. As we were speeding through the wind and the sound of waves, I screamed and I asked him to scream like me, and he did.

Our time alone strengthened my attunement to his emotions and regulation, but a part of me still feels so much sadness that he can’t just converse normally like how I do it with his friends that came to our party and often with other children from Little N’s school, and I just feel tremendous pain and jealousy that other children understand so much in a language and are capable of empathizing. Both Little N and Little O have empathy, but it feels so different from other children who would just intuitively follow mommy’s instructions and tell mommy what happened at school today. Being understood by a child is an important nourishment for motherhood, but I don’t have that. I’d hold him tight like a baby whenever he’s upset but he’d do whatever to escape as if I was a monster. I gave him what I wished I could have from my parents but he was still not happy.