Am I the asshole?

Yes, sometimes I am.

I never expected motherhood to turn me into an asshole. I expected it to turn me soft and fierce. I expected love and joy and exhaustion. I even expected boredom. I did not expect asshole. But here we are.

The first time I realised I was the asshole, was when my (yet to be diagnosed) autistic toddler hit another child and I did not think the reaction of that child’s mother was proportionate at all. I mean really, you’d have thought he had pulled a knife, so outraged was this mother that her chubby faced toddler got her face slapped for sticking it into my son’s space with no warning. I thought my reaction was appropriate (removed him to safe distance, reminded him firmly that we don’t hit etc etc) but I was immediately a pariah and so was my son. I had a lot of bad thoughts about that mother. I might not have said the words out loud but my thoughts were definitely asshole level.

Before I was a mother I was a good girl. I was liked. I got on well with everyone. I was a diplomat. I was nice. So it was a shock to me when I began to loose control over those traits when I became a mother.

Photo by Matt Hoffman on Unsplash

It’s really hard to smile and remain liked when you are told in not so many words, that your disabled child does not deserve what other children get. That it is just too hard to give him what he needs. That I am asking for too much, my expectations of equity too lofty. And it is also hard not to be an asshole when you are running on years of regularly starting your day at 2am. Sleep deprivation is an excellent short cut to the ‘asshole’ setting in your brain.

‘But that’s not being an asshole! That’s you advocating for him!’ I can already tell thats what’s running through your mind, leaping to my defence.

But sometimes, I really am just being an asshole.

We are sold a very narrow story about motherhood. It will make us better humans. Better women. The best kind of woman. It will make us selfless, more mature and more evolved. It will allow us to fully realise our womanly selves…. What a load of bullshit. Have they met mothers? We are as flawed as every other human on the planet.

It’s even worse if you’re a mother to a disabled child. God forbid you are not the perfect, angelic caregiver, ready to sacrifice herself at the alter of motherhood. Having thoughts, feelings and desires that aren’t all about your child - money, creative work, friendship, sex, philosophy, art. We are given the message that none of that applies to us anymore. Unless dabbling in it will make us better caregivers. No longer autonomous humans, there simply to serve the greater good with our unpaid work (something I wrote about in my first book Tender).

It took me a little while to realise, after many moments of asshole behaviour, that my son’s diagnosis when it came, though hugely illuminating, did not automatically make me a better mother. I remember crying myself to sleep over the impatient and unhelpful ways I met responded to him that day. I told myself I should be able to be endlessly patient because my son couldn’t help how he behaved. Getting upset over my son’s meltdowns was like getting upset over a baby needing to use a nappy instead of a toilet. Completely irrational. And yet here I was, getting angry and impatient, like a fucking asshole.

Where was my magical angelic caregiver personality? I felt cheated out of it. Wasn’t it supposed to arrive with the kid? No, I got a healthy dose of righteous anger and assholery instead.

Here is a short list of some of my asshole behaviour.

I have been short, rude and unsmiling with perfectly nice strangers in public, preoccupied keeping my son safe.

I have lectured (ok, shouted) at mean children in playgrounds.

I have given death stares to, and loudly called out, teenagers giggling behind hands as my son flaps and stims on public buses.

I have not properly thanked or sometimes even smiled at strangers who have saved my son from running in to the road (a bit too caught up in how close he came to death)

I’ve rolled my eyes at other parents complaining how hard it is to parent a non-disabled kid with a partner, a steady income and four living grandparents.

When carers call in sick, my first thoughts are usually entirely about me - ‘how the fuck am I going to cope?’ and ‘Why don’t I get sick days’.

What an asshole.

But lately, I have started to accept this side of me a little more. I don’t love it. I don’t aspire to it. But I’m starting to be a little less ashamed of it. I am coming to see that it is a part of my experience of motherhood. Being a mother to this kid, in this world, in these circumstances.

Instead of trying to squash it, repress it, I have tried to focus on looking after myself more, to reduce the chances of flaring into total asshole mode. But it’s hard to stay emotionally regulated all the time when so much of your energy is going into regulating another human who cannot do it without you. And I have come to accept that with the best intentions in the world, I won’t manage it all the time. Especially when my ability to look after myself relies on help from the outside world (the outside world being notoriously less reliable than me).

So sometimes I am just going to be an asshole. I have learned to apologise when I fall into asshole territory. And then I let it go.

So am I the asshole?

Yep, sometimes I really am. And I’m learning to live with it.