Exhausted

In a normal day I have to wake up at 645 to prep breakfast at around 745 will have to clean dishes, dining table, prep for Ken’s online school. at 8 will clean the whole house that will take about an hour. In maybe 1-2 a week I have to give the dog a bath and brush-clean outside around the house; this is very exhausting due to the humidity outside and the amount of dirt, mostly by Maxx, that needs to be clean. I have to brush the tiles outside with soap and water. It is exhausting and I have to wait for it to dry or mop-dry it or else it will be muddy again . After doing this outside chore I will be very exhausted, and thirsty. My body will be drenched with sweat and my sweat, BO and max smell mixed all together. It is a tiring THANKLESS job but I have to do it.

Now the big question is, imagine upon entering the house, naturally you will be expecting an already clean house because you just finished cleaning it 40minutes ago, you saw the kids made a choco drink, ate crackers and toys and notebooks all strewn all over. There were crumbs, chocolate milk spill, water marks, a new notebook thrown on the floor and some toys. Will you still have the energy to take it in stride and quietly clean everything again or to shout at your kids for making a mess? I chose to shout ” stop eating! we just had breakfast! eating time is over.” ” who threw the notebook here?! is that where you keep your notebooks?! dont be fucking stupid guys!”

Those words and name calling are tough and has a psychological effect on the kids, their self concept and confidence will go down; why will it not? their own parent dont believe in them and called them stupid. As we all know, kids will believe in anything parents will tell them, it is an evolutionary-survival trait. Even we tell them about illogical concept like Santa Claus and Tooth Fairy they will believe it. Because Kids are wired to listen to their parents, imagine if young kids will not listen if their parents when they tell them there is a crocodile in the river or snakes are dangerous etc.. in order to survive kids are wired to listen and believe to their parents even though it is as irrational as a myth.

Saying stupid, lazy… will stick to the kids and will form as the foundation of their self concept… sadly I am a negative contributor to it.

I am more of a hurt than a help.

Stay-at-home

Parents (like me) who stay at home are often underappreciated and unfairly tagged as lazy and unambitious. But staying at home is hard emotionally and physically. It is mostly physical labor and rountinary. We sometimes get injured from broken glass, splinters or just repetitive movements like sweeping and moping.

I think I am battling, a sort of, a tennis elbow from thousands of backhand-like action from sweeping. There is a muscle on my elbow that is painful and that I have to massage it every night. Sometimes when I am picking a cup of coffee a pain will shoot up. My right palm also is painful; muscles around my thumb is hurting from grasping and holding. Back pains are also normal.

The problem is, we are not allowed to call time outs that no matter how painful it is in the morning, you just have to soldier on because the chores need to be done—no one will stop being hungry or the mess will fix itself just because I cant move my shoulders. We dont have medical insurance, no sick leaves—we are not allowed to rest. That 8 hours in bed at night is the only rest we get, hoping that the pain is gone when you wake up the next morning.

It is also different when someone from “real’ work (the employees) complained about being sick from that someone who worked at home. It feels like our pain is not real and that we are just making excuses so we can have more time watching Netflix.

“I cant move, my back hurts.”

“too bad. what happened? ok, can you still cook? “

Our contributions are ignored and our work are considered as lazy. I remembered someone said to me, “Pinag-pahinga ko na asawa ko, housewife na lang.” it is as if housework is rest—but of course it depends when she has a battalion of maid/slaves to do her chores but if it is like my situation it is far from being called a pahinga.

It is also psychologically exhausting because the work are menial and we dont get a sense of pride and accomplishment from it. It is not like being a corporate auditor, operations manager, supervisor, an AVP etc… that you can consider an achivement and be proud of it. It feels like we are doing our time, getting over one week to another week; it is like we are in prison and doing the same thing over and over. Some called it as “Groundhog Day” life.

It is tough and unhappy. but what can I do, I created all this mess.

Parental Love

We are all humans and we have limited tolerance, though one’s limit differs that can be higher or lower than others. When there is a mixture (but not limited to) of bad marriage, poor finances, bleak future and a kid with bad grades, does not fix his bed, spend time wasting money and his life on video games etc. it can be a cocktail of explosive things that can ignite hate and borderline child abuse.

I read a topic on the internet about the worst things said by parents to their children. Many of those are my(our) spiels and reading it now and seeing how it may affected the kids made me feel guilty and sad.

“I wish you’d never been born”

“you are a disappointment”

“I was more responsible when I was your age.”

“You are stupid and dumb”

“dont be a baby”

“I wish to leave this family.”

“I wish you would just leave.”

“you are so dramatic”

“you are slow.”

“you are useless”

and other things we (and I) shouted when our dissapointments go over my (our) saturation point.

No parents will admit, because they will be judged, that there is no such thing, in my opinion, as unconditional parental love. Yes, we do love our kids and they mean a lot to us but we can only juggle a limited number of frustration. Yes, I (we) should not say those things but most times anger is a powerful emotion. When we are barely surviving and hobbled with life’s failures and mistakes–one little push from 2 fighting kids can set us (me) off to hateful vitriol.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I onced complained about hateful judgements towards me when I was a kid. As a kid I thought that “parental love was unconditional” and I unrealistically expected that ,being their kid, I should be understood, given leeway from being hated on; that inspite of my shortcomings as a son I should be given a free pass. I thought parents should not be swayed by their emotions and should always love me inspite of everything. Now that I am on the giving end of it I understood that parents can be frustrated and disappointed, yes, ideally they should not.

I once lived near a poor area. Our village perimeter fence and the back of our house is a creek away from them. I can hear how poor parents verbally abused their kids. I can hear their shouting etc. At that time, life was still easy and I have not fallen trap to the emotional abuse that I dished out now. At that time we only have Kenzo and all are fairly easy and chill. When I heard those loud fights, I felt bad for the kids receiving those evil words from their guardians and parents. I am sure I had pass judgment on the parents and called it “stupid parenting’. I never thought that I will be in the same boat as them; I was so dead wrong.

I am writing this post not to justify my vileness to my kids but to put things in perspective that parents have a emotional limits and it is not realistic to expect them to be nice at all times. They can lose control of their emotions, if they are already carrying heavy loads, it will be easy to tip them over the edge.

To the my kids and every kids out there, your parents love you but sadly they are weak as any human. Dont expect that if you fail your grades, stop attending classes etc…, to still get high fives from your mom and pop. Lucky are the kids with parents that has everything going great, those are the parents that can possibly handle additional frustrations and still carry a big smile on their faces.

In the end of it, I still decided to do that bad things that I aint supposed to do. I let my all my emotional baggages to weigh me down. Rather than reaching out to help, I decided to ignore and hate.

I am not a dad my kid’s deserve; they are nice kids and I am more of a hurt than a help to them. I am Sorry.

UPDATE: about more than 24 hours after, we started to talk to each other and we talked. I explained that I have to do what I did. We silently said our sorry by giving a short hug. All is normal again.