Thursday, Mar. 14, 2019 - 7:43 p.m.

It was a good day. Till the evening. I took a nap; it was good till after that.

U has a thing: only J can download new apps onto the iPad he uses. I mean, I CAN, but because of this “rule” he made up, I can’t. So J goes in to have his nap and U and E go in there to pester him and wake him to get a new app that I could get him if he would just let me.

I drag them out, place myself bodily in front of the door. Both of them come at me, U with his growling and rage, E giggling like it’s a game. I explain and explain and order and block the door and push them away and sometimes they fall in their butts and cry or I accidentally scratch them and they are mad but they don’t stop. E grabs my hands, my arms, they squeeze between me and the door, pull at me, hit, kick. I yell at them to stop. It goes on for like 20 minutes and I am having intrusive thoughts like, I want to suggest to Uly that he get a knife and stab me in the stomach to go in so I will at a minimum go to the hospital and at best will die. I don’t say it, but I see the events. I yell at them to go wake daddy then and see how happy he is about it, and I flee upstairs to calm the fuck down.

I am torn between my daily burning hatred for them, my daily burning love for them, disgust for all of us, and the fact that I am responsible for them and do not want to fuck them up, even as I appear to be doing so.

Parents can’t talk about these feelings. If you admit you have any trouble you get a barrage of “you’re the adult, it’s YOUR job to” yadda yadda yadda. As if adults don’t have limits. As if you don’t try your best and your best isn’t good enough sometimes. And people give this advice and they do not have a fucking clue about my kids.

And people with their fucking “teach with love and reason and explain why there are the rules” have not had 2 children physically laying siege to them until they feel they could do horrible things just to make it stop. Every. Goddamn. Day.

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