The past few days have seen my moods getting the better of me. I don’t mean to aggravate myself but sometimes I just do. A sense of helplessness overcomes me and like a baby, I find myself saying things I don’t mean and giving in to venting my anger unproductively. Finding a more creative way of releasing pent up emotions is now a top priority.
I don’t know what it is but I feel as if there continues to be something screaming inside of me. (Hormones?) I hate the way I’ve been adding to Alan’s worries. I know that he doesn’t deserve the aggravation, but sometimes I just can’t help it. Is it a mid-life crisis of sorts? Post post partum blues? (9 months late.. I doubt..) I am trying to rationalize all the mixed feelings I have in my heart. I am so lucky to have a very understanding and loving husband. I know there are times when he probably wants to lock me up in the closet or just bop me in the head but instead he just tries to work things out with me.
There are so many things going on in my life right now but I know the good outweigh the bad. I have Alan and I have Angelo. My mom is here to help me learn the ropes of motherhood.. I still have a good paying job and all of us are healthy. We have a home we’re still trying to fashion to bring out our personality. We are even busy planning Angelo’s first birthday in May.
Yet in the midst of all these, we have our family challenges to face. The 14-year-old has successfully moved to the high school in our zone sealing his move to us with finality. (That seems to be such a heavy statement.) The past few weeks have been more than just a challenge — they have been an upheaval. Am I being too much of a pessimist thinking we need to gird for more of the same? Perhaps I am taking on too much hoping to make things better and just prevent a take two of what he had put us through. I keep telling Alan to make our expectations of him clear — so that there is no second guessing, there is nothing left to figure out. I feel as though my hands are tied because he is not my son. Try as I might to wield any sense of influence, there is nothing much I can do. He lives in the same house and is treated as one of the family, even if he continues to try and differentiate himself as not one of us.
Stepmothering is something that I am still trying to grapple with despite the fact that Alan and I have been married for almost 5 years now. It was never as easy as I thought it would be. It is a challenge to do a three-way balancing act between being a wife and a stepmom and mother to my newborn son. Maybe that’s where the trouble lies. It is difficult enough to be a wife and a mother, but to add the role of stepmom to a stepson in his rebellious teen years is more than someone like me can take. I am still trying. If I were to rate myself at this point I’d be a poor 2. Not for lack of trying, but more for lack of success in it. I suppose much of my frustration stems from the fact that I would hope that almost 5 years at it would see me reaping some rewards. Then again, in the next breath I realize that I have to take into consideration the fact that father and son have their own issues which make mine secondary.
And so the struggle continues. I have resolved to make a definite effort to try not to let it overtake me like it has. If only for the man who holds me in his arms and watches me and Angelo so lovingly — the one who means the world to me.
Pinay New Yorker 