Nobody Tells You...

… you’re not the bitch mother from hell. But I will: you’re not the bitch mother from hell, you’re in the the bitch situation from hell

How it feels to fail at being a mother. Every. Single. Day.

Iwas sitting in the office of a psychologist recently. For my son, not me, unfortunately — I don’t really have time to go to my psychologist at the moment. She was doing the kinds of things that psychologists of this sort do and my sweet, wonderful son was doing the kinds of things that children in need of psychologists of this sort do.

“You’re so calm, you have incredible patience,” she told me.

“What??? This is an act,” I immediately wailed back.

It was kind of her to say this because parents of my sort rarely feel that we are calm or patient. Our nights are haunted with flashes of the many times our reserves have been depleted. Before I sleep each night, I file the day under ‘good’ or ‘bad’ depending on what percentage of the day I spent variously comforting, loving, laughing with, shouting at or hiding from my children.

I know that to a certain extent a lot of

parents do this, but for parents of my sort it’s surely more intense. Though as we approach a year of pandemic life, I have seen more and more parents of absolutely every single solitary sort caught in a silent scream of guilt, self-doubt, fear, worry, isolation, pain, sadness and guilt. Guilt, guilt, guilt. Did I mention that motherf***ing guilt? And I do apologise for the profanity, I really do, but I mean that in the most literal sense. The guilt is quite literally f**king mothers right now.

In the way of pandemic life, I must pause briefly to acknowledge that there are people worse off. My god, there are people worse off. And I think of them daily. As I’m sure we all do. We repeat daily the mantra of gratitude in these Mad Times™.

“At least today, we are not homeless

— unless maybe you are. Unemployed — unless maybe you are. Ill — unless maybe you are. Alone — unless maybe you are. Frontline worker — unless maybe you are. The families of the vulnerable — unless maybe you are. The mourners at the desolate pandemic funerals — unless maybe you are.” We think of the myriad ways the pandemic has taken people down, but this column is not about them, not just now. It’s about the Bitch Mothers From Hell.

Every day of the pandemic, I have been failing. If you’re a mother, you probably have been too. It’s all been said already. I can’t work and parent and homeschool. It’s untenable. So absolutely every single solitary day of the pandemic, I have been failing. And failing on a level that is so acutely painful. I have been failing my children.

Such sustained levels of failure for such a protracted length of time is really something. As a method of torture it is beyond anything the producers of the torture-porn horror franchise Saw could ever dream up. Torture of this magnitude is almost athletic; if I was a spectator instead of a participant I would be slow clapping in an awed fashion the sheer ingenuity of this stupid pandemic, its incredible aptitude for screwing absolutely everyone.

As this third and arguably hardest lockdown drags on, I’m finding I can finally articulate just how ground down I, and all the other Bitch Mothers From Hell (BMFH) are at this point. The torture triad of work, homeschool and parenting is eroding family life. If you think I’m being over the top, no need to seek me out and tell me. If you are a mother and you don’t fall into the camp of BMFH, please don’t feel compelled to get in touch.

Feel free to not DM me to tell me how much you’ve enjoyed this quality time with your children, and how well the five-year-old’s Latin studies are coming along and how you actually really like Reading Eggs. Just don’t. Or I may have to find you and borrow a thing or two from the Saw franchise playbook. Jokes! The pandemic hasn’t driven me that mad. Yet.

So, if you, like me, go to bed at night and feel like crying because you are convinced you are the worst, please know that you are not the worst — this situation is the worst. Even the war years weren’t this bad. They didn’t have Reading Eggs — seriously, what is with the jingles? I feel personally attacked by the app every time the music plays.

I know should be putting something useful here on record — some ‘helpful suggestions’ maybe? — but I’m struggling. Have you heard the one about how you must ‘make time for you’ (can you tell I’m snarl-typing that? Yes, snarl-typing is a thing). Sadly, all I’ve come up with is keeping a slab of Diet Coke in my house and replenishing it any time stocks drop below 40pc.