I Am So Done

Last week, several little drips of annoyance turned into torrents and eroded my very last goddamn nerve.

You know how there’s small stuff you’re not supposed to sweat? Little slights, disappointments, slow walkers, people who dig their knives in the butter instead of scraping neatly from the top, that sort of thing?

Well it was about mid-last week when I hit breaking point on all of them.

After four and a half years of making my children food, and it very rarely being met with much acceptance, I put dinner on the table only to hear the 590238975th “but I don’t want that!” and tears. Normally I would reason them through it. Encourage. Suggest they eat the thing on the plate they do like. Perhaps take a bite of the new or just plain hated thing. Just keep swimming.

This time, though, I just stared at the children like I’d never seen them before. I felt weird. I think it was defeat. I just was SO DONE at doing all the right things at the right times and not making a fuss if they didn’t eat. I tried. I’ve tried SO HARD. From the minute they could eat, I was providing fresh, nourishing, delicious arrays of all sorts of things, like you’re supposed to. Buuuuuut it’s always a battle. Well at that moment I had about as much fight in me as a bath sponge, so the kids went upstairs without eating anything and were treated to some stern words from dad in lieu of dinner.

I’d like to say things have changed since then, but they haven’t. Still fussy, will still cry if presented with anything that resembles actual food. I don’t want to give them a dietary complex for life, so I’m in limbo at the moment. I have also started putting away a few dollars for their future therapist’s bills while crying into peanut butter sandwiches.

To make things even more interesting, I was also at the absolute end of my cliche when not one but both of the long-time lurkers who like to leave nothing but passive-aggressive comments on this here blog swooped on the same day. You know the type – the comment looks harmless to the untrained eye, but you know it has an undercurrent of snipe? They are the Regina George of comments. They make you feel uncomfortable but you sort of don’t know why, and when you try to explain it to someone, you look paranoid and over-reactive?

I was SO DONE with them too.

Just brush it off, you think. Just laugh! It’s not a problem if you don’t let it be one! Don’t let them get to you! Don’t give them the satisfaction!

Well, that’s fine for a while, but after years of taking their shit with a smile, I was just over it. For real, in three years there was only one comment that didn’t have a sneaky jab or a backhanded compliment in it and I was so surprised I nearly said something. Tolerance level for smarm: BELOW GODDAMN ZERO.

There’s only so many times you can brush something off before you realise you have no shoulder left.

Jay Z feels me! Just one of those 99 problems.

Torrent number three to knock me off balance was courtesy of the fines I incurred while driving 50km in a 40 zone recently. I didn’t know the area, didn’t know there was a different speed limit, and it wasn’t school time. When pulled over, I acknowledged my mistake, accepted my fines, apologised, and when the police officer asked me did I have any questions, I said no and prepared to be on my way.

Of course that’s when she decided leave a few accusatory parting shots, which called into question my parenting and basically left me feeling horrible. Suffice to say I went home, paid my fines and just tried to move on without replaying the incident more than 150 times in my head. But of course, fate has meant I’ve had to drive through the area again, which meant the drip, drip, drip of memory was never far away.

It even made me paranoid about how I drove, and I was just on edge every single time I got behind the wheel. This went on for a few weeks until it faded away with time.

You can imagine my surprise when I checked the mail last week to find a letter had arrived from the very same officer. I opened it curiously only to find the letter stated she had written my address down incorrectly on the original fine so she would be refunding my money and I would now be required to pay the new one.

IT’S LIKE IT WILL NOT GO AWAY!

The shit thing is she fined me twice that day, and she only refunded one ticket. I am expecting a second letter any day now….

*fails to brush dirt off shoulder*

So what do you do when you just are SO DONE that you can’t handle one single second more? Lose your shit? Eat chocolate? Cry into the letterbox?