This morning, I really did not wish to rise when the alarm clock beckoned me to do so.

I did anyway, as I do every time I have to answer to it in the morning. I mean, the seriousness in which I must awake to that alarm clock would blow your ability to believe in anything good ever again. A story that I cannot reveal in this post, the importance of that fucking alarm clock.

Once I actually get up in the morning, I’m on fire. I make coffee, send the puppy outside and feed the cats while I’m in the garage, come back in, begin picking out the boys’ clothes for school and calling his name gently to arouse him from his slumber. I swing by the TV in our bedroom, turn it on to help wake him up and go to pack his lunch.

Back to the kitchen to be sure the coffee is going as it is supposed to (sometimes it doesn’t and that’s fatal), then back to the boy. Rubbing his back, giving him kisses on his head to coax him into waking him up. I am careful to be gentle with him. Knowing, every morning the reason I am so gentle (maybe too gentle) is that as a child we were not aroused gently. We were screamed at, threatened, and terrified.

She couldn’t help it, she was so overwhelmed with three children and no husband to help out, or for that matter pay her child support. He left her without any money, while he went and bought new Harley Davidson motorcycles, boats, cars, alcohol and drugs. She had no other choice but to breed into us her hatred of him, and his selfishness. When you are scared, you do very unnecessary things.

You project your issues onto your children, without even realizing it. Sometimes not until they are adults do you see your anger, your resentments, your pride, your ego coming out of them. Rather than pass along that nice family trait of making mornings a living hell for those in my home, I try to be gentle. Not so much with myself.

Old habits are hard to let go of, after all we are made from our little crazy gremlins that we carry around in our heads. It took me years to realize what was happening to me in the mornings.
Before I even had children, I would berate myself for the minimum of an hour (the time it took me to get ready and out of the house to work). It wasn’t until I heard a man telling his story many years ago and he described the morning madness.

He described it like this; “it would wait for me all night on the bed frame”. as soon as I would awake it would say, “you’re awake! I’ve been waiting for you”. He goes on, “within five minutes my brain would have me broke, homeless, and jobless”.

I remember the moment my ears first heard this man speak, something in me said, “YES!” This is exactly what happens to me.

On this particular morning, as I was twittering around I realized that I had forgotten to do something. My heart started pumping so hard I could almost hear it and my brain was saying “OH NO! OH NO! OH NO!” over and over again. My son heard me say aloud, “OH MY GOD” so he asked what was the matter and I told him I’d forgotten to do something and it was due today.

It was “homework” from school to help out his teachers, just cutting out shapes to create a project or a book. I ran into the garage (thinking that if I do it while smoking I’ll get done faster) and began clippingout the seahorses and clams.

My brain starts to process what my physical body is doing. And it dawns on me why my son is so afraid of “getting into trouble” at school. So far, he’s not been a behavior problem and people have always mentioned what a good kid he is. This was his first year in a “real school” kindergarten and I’ve noticed that he strives to not get into trouble, so much that I wondered if it was healthy.

I can hear myself saying to other people, “I have no idea why he is so terrified to get into trouble. I almost wish he would get into trouble in order to understand it isn’t the end of the world.”

It wasn’t until this very moment, on this very morning that I realized he could have picked this up from me.

Here I was, in a panic that I’d forgotten to do this, my brain was having a field day with the insults. It was just in that tiny moment that I realized that I have an issue with getting into trouble.

It may sound like a small discovery, but I assure you it is not. I never cease to be amazed with how much we can hide from ourselves, how certain thinking habits and behaviors are justified for so many years solely on the fact they were “grandfathered in”.

Despite this story, I have put a lot of effort into recognizing when those tapes begin to tell me how badly I suck at everything. I speak above them, telling them they have no place anymore, they no longer serve me.

Those thoughts will never permanently leave, but I believe the more I bring them out into the light, the less power they have over me, and the unknown factor of passing them down to my children.