I ran across this article today on Facebook. The Important Thing About Yelling, by Rachel Macy Stafford, otherwise known as Hands Free Mama. I've heard of her and haven't read much of her writing before, but I'm grateful this piece of her fell into my sphere today. I needed it. I needed a reminder that I'm doing some things wrong, and that I'm not alone.
I don't want to say I have confessions to make, because that sounds too dramatic. I know the world doesn't care about my problems near as much as I do. But I do have confessions. One: I'm a yeller, and Two: I'm an Internet addict. The Internet addiction isn't new because I've been an addict since we first got the Internet at home when I was 10 or 11 and I discovered I could talk to people and not have to speak; it was the shy, self-conscious kid's dream. But when you're little, you don't care that you spend too much time doing one thing. At least I didn't. Surfing websites and playing video games for hours was super awesome. But now that I'm grown up and a parent with all those associated responsibilities, too much time absorbed in a screen is a bad thing for me.
To be clear, I've known this for a while. Other than occasional bouts, I haven't settled in to a video game for a long time, and not with the same level of immersion as I did in high school. But I have an iPad. And I reach for it constantly, out of habit, when I'm uncomfortable, when I'm bored. Which is why I think it's an addiction. It's my numbing agent. Lately I've been reading and thinking a lot about how we numb, how we try and run or hide from discomfort instead of being still and sitting with it. I want to learn how to do the latter bit. I'm not interested in living a shallow, comfortable life. I want to live deep, and seek truth, and face fears and really look at things. I want to be present with my fellow humans, and especially with the ones I love, the ones I'm sharing my life with. I have this foreboding sense that my young son is growing up assuming we all have screens attached to us, that it's normal and good that we live this way. It fills me with guilt and sadness that his memories of me might be of me hunched over the iPad, face lit by the glow, instead of engaging with him. That thought breaks my heart. It's also a good wake-up call. So lately I've also been striving for a lifestyle not dependent on electronics.
I could write for days about that striving. About gardening, about my faith and the gospel, about joining the SCA, about all the things I want for my family and myself. Which is why I created this blog. That's all the stuff I want to fill this space with, and plan to write about in the future.
Today though, I want to talk about this. And yes, I see the contradiction in talking about less screen time while typing on an iPad with the intent to publish it to the blogosphere. So let me take this moment to say that I think this technology is amazing. I still love the ability to connect and communicate with people in a way that's much more comfortable to me. But it begs for limits. I need boundaries around it.
So my other confession is that I yell. And this is hard for me to admit. Because I never, ever, in a million years wanted to or thought I would be a yeller. I grew up in broken homes, with multiple step-parents and bad blood between my own parents for a very long time. There was a lot of yelling. Sometimes I forget what it was like because I've been removed from it for long enough now that I don't think about it as much. But it was awful. Only recently, in my "grown-up" stage of life, have I not felt scarred by it anymore. I can hear and even have arguments without much anxiety, and I know now that people can disagree and that it's okay. But as a kid, i didn't know that. I couldn't handle it. Someone yelling would absolutely wreck me internally, even when it happened in movies and tv shows. I was so traumatized by all the negative energy of my childhood - I don't even really know how to describe it now. Now it seems arbitrary, but kids see things differently than adults. I remember being so fragile, so sensitive, and so afraid. Everything seemed like such a big deal.
I would think how I would never be that way when I grew up.
And now I'm grown up. And I yell at children. At my own child, whom I love so fiercely it hurts deep down in my chest where words to describe it don't exist. How did this happen? How have I let myself be the embodiment of what hurt me so badly when I was young? I am so ashamed.
I don't yell all the time. But when I do it explodes. And in the very moment I can see the fear in my baby's eyes; at the very moment it happens, I can see and feel the severed connection, the pushing away. I immediately feel lonelier, wretched, anguished. My child I birthed from my own body, who is actually a part of me, is learning to fear me, bit by bit.
I'm trying very hard to overcome this. Love prevails, and when I calm down I immediately go to him and kneel down, I tell him I'm sorry, I try to give him words like frustrated, grumpy, and sorry, to explain what happened and for him to use when he feels the same way. I tell him I was wrong, and that I'm trying to be better and work harder. And sometimes I do do better; sometimes I do manage to stay calm and patient and loving and helpful. But, inevitably it seems, I still reach a point where it feels like the only way to release the pressure inside me is to just scream. To bark orders and stomp around like an ogre bully in a desperate attempt to reclaim control. In writing, it's painfully clear how ridiculous this tactic is.
So. If you've made it this far, you probably deserve a prize. I'll let you go ahead and take care of that yourself. I guess the point of this whole jumbled mess of a blog post is partly self-therapy, and partly getting it out there in case you, too, need to know you're not alone. I don't have answers, but I feel instinctively that, like the Hands Free Mama article claims, the two - distractions and yelling - go hand in hand. Not long ago I came to the realization that the magical internet is not actually necessary for my happiness, and in fact can detract from it; and so I made a rule for myself that my tablet would remain off during my son's waking hours, and used minimally, if at all, once he goes to bed. So far I've broken the rule a great many times, but I'm keeping it in place and trying again today. I'm guessing it's a slow, difficult process, like so many of the good ones seem to be. Does anyone reading this have the same problem? Is it truly fixable?
Thanks for listening. Be excellent to each other.
