Broken Down

The other day I cried in front of my daughter. And I don't just mean that there were tears running down my face. No I sat down on the ground, head in my hands and sobbed in front of her.

I've always been an easy crier. I cry at the drop of the hat. I cry during comercials. I cry during movies. I cry when I'm happy or sad, glad or angry. I just cry.

But I try to maintain control over my emotions when I deal with Bunny. I don't want her to see me to angry or upset. I am the adult, I need to show her how to deal with things calmly and rationally.

Everyone has a breaking point, however, and on Friday I met mine. Our house, our stupid Crapshack of a house, continues to break down. This time its the toilets. The upstairs one hadn't been working right for a while and we couldn't figure out what was wrong with it. We didn't call a plumber, figuring we could fix it ourselves. But we didn't. And on Friday the same problem happened with the downstairs toilet. We had no functional toilets.

I was mad, mad at myself, mad at my husband, mad at the stupid Crapshack, mad that I had to call a plumber. I was also exhausted. I had not been sleeping well due to all the things running through my head. I was worried about fixing the basement, fixing this stupid house, worried about our second adoption, worried about Bunny, worried about everything.

My emotions were rising to the surface when it came to nap time. Bunny looked at me and promised she would nap or play in her room quietly. I needed this one thing from her. I needed some time to compose myself before the plumber came.

But like so many times before and I am sure so many more times to come, what I wanted and what I needed did not matter. The only thing that mattered to her was what she wanted. And at that time, what she wanted to do ended up breaking me down. I could hear her running around, pulling every toy off the shelf, opening the door and running into my room. I could hear her calling for me "Momma, momma, momma. I'm not going to sleep. I don't want to play up here."

I went upstairs 4 times explaining to her that she needed to have some quiet time. "I don't wanna, momma." "Please." "No!" The fifth time finally did it. As I was walking up the stairs she was running back and forth between her room and mine. I asked her to listen to me and she refused.

Right at that moment all of the frustration and exhaustion broke through the little cracks in my resolve and came rushing out in a torrent of tears. I could not plug up the cracks any more. I had to let the tears flow or I would be swept away. I sat down at the top of the stairs and let the emotion overcome me, my body shuddering with the weight of everything I was feeling.

Finally I regained some measure of control and looked for Bunny. My display did not seem to affect her as I thought it would have. I thought her seeing me like this would have scared her, as it had scared me. But it did not. In fact, she continued to run from room to room, slamming and opening doors, laughing the entire time.

I knew that she could not possibly understand what it was like to have the weight of the world crushing in on you. No, I would protect her from that for as long as I could. I wanted her to stay that happy, carefree little girl. But I also wanted her to play quietly in her room.

Luckily for me and my sanity, we managed to come to an agreement. She played in her room the entire time the plumber was here, not fixing anything (but that is a story for another day).