As I write a lot of these daddy brog posts, I try to weed out through a lot of the irrational and hope to ultimately be able to sift out important knowledge and bullet points that I’d hope to be able to impart and share with other like-minded fathers in the future. Nobody’s ever come to me for advice or opinions, and I’m not about to just willy-nilly give them out unsolicited, but in the event anyone ever does, I’d want to actually be able to have some useful suggestions and opinions to share.
Anyway, for this particular post, this is actually kind of funny: obviously at this current juncture, I rarely have the luxury to be able to write at the very moment the words are formulating in my head. But I’m so determined to write about particular things that I’ll take down notes or jot down a blurb of what it is I’m intending on writing about when I do have the time, ignoring the very important factor that my emotional state might not even be in the same stratosphere when that time actually comes.
Like this post, where I’m as calm as a hindu cow now, as opposed to the mental state I was in when the idea for this post came to be. I mean, look at the blurb I wrote:
8/22 – dad brog – it’s okay to be pissed off and upset with a difficult baby. it doesn’t mean i love my children any less, but holy fucking shit do i get sick and tired of their bullshit when they’re screaming all the fucking time. i know this is the time to be savoring and enjoying all the moments of their rapidly moving newborn stage, but i’d be lying if i couldn’t wait for the colic, the fussing, shit sleep habits and the endless screaming to be grown out of. i get absolutely dick done on a daily basis because while my wife is on maternity leave, i work my ass off doing double duty parenting while not pissing people off at work by being afk so much, and when i’m on paternity leave, i’ll just be doing double duty parenting work then too. i get no fucking time off ever, and it’s hard to keep my mental state above water sometimes.
As the kids would say, he mad. But as I often believe, things said in the heat of frustration are often the most honest, and even looking back at that wall of text rambling, I don’t disagree with any of it. And that’s one of the things that I would probably impart onto other future dads, and even moms because frustration doesn’t really have a gender associated to it.
That being said, what I would definitely tell all new parents, is that it’s okay to get pissed off, occasionally. Because raising kids is hard, often frustrating, and sometimes, all the mantras to remind ourselves to be patient just won’t cut it, and we just need to let ourselves get pissed off and blow off some steam in order to bring ourselves back to level. I imagine we all want to believe that our children are nothing short of perfection and they do nothing wrong, but that’s all bullshit, they’re going to do things that annoy us and piss us off and that it’s okay to acknowledge such behavior as bullshit and it’s okay to be tired of it, because we get tired of the bullshit of adults, why shouldn’t the same apply to babies?
I believe it’s important to not bottle things in, because little good can come from holding our emotions in for too long, lest we eventually blow up, and then have a word vomit like the blurb above, worse off if it were something in the physical world. Obviously, little is done in front of my kids as far as my frustrations go, often times I just walk out of the room or tag out to mythical wife, and then I go throw a tantrum in another room or outside of the view of my kids.
As far as my lack of time goes, hopefully that is something that eventually rectifies itself as my newborn grows and settles into a routine, most importantly a structure sleeping schedule. Because it does get frustrating and does get mentally challenging, when I don’t have the capabilities to turn dad mode off, even for just an hour or so.
But until then, I just want to tell myself and all other new parents, that it’s okay to occasionally get pissed off. It’s going to happen to the best of us, whether or not we want to admit to it, but it’s human nature, and it’s completely okay.
