Mijn persoonlijke verhaal (3) | The Pit
Na de Call van gisteren vandaag het vervolg: The Pit. Ik ben blij en verwonderd over de mooie reacties, dank je wel💛
Het gaat een heel mooie einde krijgen, dus dat geeft vast hoop😁🥰
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I am now 34 and I have two small kids. I do everything by myself, I take care of everything. The weight of this family is on my shoulders. My income is the main one. I take care of the household. I take care of the kids. I go out of bed at night when they cry or need anything. It’s all my responsibility. I don’t ask for help, I am in this rut of not trusting anyone, wanting no help or support from anyone. I can do it all. I need no one. But I’m worn out. I hear myself talk to the kids in a way I don’t want to. I hear myself treat them in a way I don’t want to. I hear myself talk to friends on the phone in a way I don’t want to. Yet every time I think of it I get so mad. And there’s no one I talk to. I don’t tell anyone. I don’t share myself with anyone.
And the people around me think: all’s well. Marieke is strong. Marieke wears the pants I the house. Marieke has it together. They also think: Marieke is tough. She has her heart out on her sleeve. She has a mind of her own and she speaks it. I know some of them even think: I wish I was like Marieke, all confidence and brass.
Then, this day comes when my youngest doesn’t want to wear a diaper anymore. And all I can think is: oh no, more work. I feel I can’t even allow him to have his own process in becoming potty trained because of all the extra washing and cleaning involved and I’m barely making it as it is now.
But this dude has a strong will and out of the diaper he goes. It’s a summers day and I put up a tent in the backyard and he’s playing in it with some balls and blocks and at some point I realize it’s very very quiet.
So I look in and see him sitting in a puddle in the tent and I just go off at him. He looks at me with big eyes, trying to smile to ease me. That smile, it breaks my heart. Immediately I sense danger. I can’t go soft inside. Can’t allow myself to feel. If I give in to feelings I might open a well of pain and anger that will never end. And then who’s going to take care of it all? So instead I toughen up. My eyes harden and my voice snarls. And then I hear the neighbor on the other side of the fence whisper to her guests who are sitting outside with her: ‘Yes, poor kids, she’s like that. She’s hard.’ She says it like she’s glad she isn’t me.
And my heart just… falls. And falls and falls and falls. I’m so defeated. Me. Me, who is capable of intense and utter love. Me who is light. I am being everything I never ever wanted to be. I am completely lost in darkness and dread and I’m hurting my kids with it. I see in that instant how in my quest to be normal I got completely separated from myself, unable to feel any kind of ease from the constant drive to meet all the demands of this life I am living. I have in that moment such loathing for myself I can’t breathe. How can I even live? How could I have become this person I hate? How could I have let it come to this… horrible horrible reality I appear to live in? I can’t even cry because I can’t show what I truly feel.
Everything seems to stop. I see the sky, blue and white and clear. I see the birds, sitting on the branches of the tree in our backyard, too lazy to fly. I stand still. Can’t move. Can’t breathe. Can’t think. Can’t feel. I am completely silently drowning in this one moment of stretched foreverness. This endless realization of how to not live a life.
Then something opens up. It’s like air is rushing into a void. I can almost hear a whoosh while I feel the magnitude of what is happening. I feel my eyes open, and open more, and more. I actually stagger back a bit. And right there and then I make a choice. I choose to return back to myself, no matter what. If not for me then for my kids. I decide to live my true life and not this fake sub-reality where I hide from all that’s real, where I hide all that’s real inside of me. I decide that it’s going to be all or nothing, for me. I decide to unveil it all. I decide right there and then, that I am going to be free. No matter what may come of it. No matter what.