On patient parenting and masculinity.

This is what I want to move away from. I yell a lot, but it isn’t to assert dominance or be punitive- and me saying this about myself is not an incrimination or accusation of you, I am speaking about me. This is just the perspective I’m working from, what I want to be.

I am, and have been, desperate to fix the broken mechanism in me that keeps my threshold so low that I snap and yell out of exhaustion and frustration. It’s why I went to the doctor the other day.

My threshold is dangerously low; my emotional balance is in the negatives, my mental energy is exhausted, and my family has high maintenance individuals who rely on me with no other avenues for meeting their own needs. My daughter doesn’t even try to have her emotional needs met here because she’s used to parents who shut her down or are volatile, unpredictable, dismissive, or unavailable. She’s in her room because there’s no reason for her to come out.

I am at burn out. I’m standing on that precipice holding the line because nothing in my life will survive if I collapse. Not my marriage, not my relationships with my children, not my business. Maybe not even me this time. 

I can move through my days with positivity because I am used to swinging from branch to branch, because I have faith in my strength and ability to survive. But the floor is lava and these branches are dry and brittle and what’s the point if I’m the only thing that survives? A Pyrrhic victory is a lost war. Y’all aren’t sacrifices I’m willing to make, and I am trying to get to therapy but no one is calling back and it costs money too.

This stupid shit with my hand couldn’t have happened at a worse time, and I’m about to just go back to work and deal with the long term fallout because work is work and you guys are End Game. You are everything. 

I’m not yelling because I want to have control, I’m yelling because I’m losing it. I’m going to fix it, but I want you to understand explicitly, even if I’m just repeating myself.