Ok, maybe I don’t hate HER. She just turned two and is a wonderful child in many ways — funny, kind, clever, creative. She’s been ahead for every milestone, especially with speech; she speaks full conversational sentences and can even do voices and accents (sort of) for different toys or characters. But she’s also extremely quick to cry, weepy, clingy, prone to tantrums over the smallest thing, stubborn and can be sneaky. Nothing beyond the realms of normal for her age. In fact, most of my friends’ kids were significantly worse. She is basically a very nice little girl who is, unfortunately, two years old. But most of the time, I find being with her insufferable.
I’m stuck being a SAHM, something I know I should see as a privilege but which I actually feel is a massive burden. It was always the deal between me and my husband that I would stay at home, and it was what I thought I wanted. I’d worked in childcare previously (not with kids this young, but still), and I thought it would be a wonderful, magical, FUN experience to be at home all the time with my baby. My daughter was wanted and planned. I even thought we’d have another by now. No chance. I honestly don’t want the one I’ve got.
Motherhood is nothing like I thought it would be. The loneliness and the isolation and, oh my God, the BOREDOM. I am so unbearably, intolerably bored. It’s so monotonous.
I never get a break. My husband obviously has to work a lot to make up for my lack of income, but even when he is home, he doesn’t really want to play with her because he finds her endless toddler games as boring as I do. He’s forever sloping off to hide in some corner of the house, doing busywork and, I suspect, scrolling on his phone.
No grandparents. Mine are both dead and his are horrible and live far away.
I feel like I’m going to die of boredom. I’m so lonely and I’m so f-ing sick of playing Dollies. I cannot play Dollies anymore.
I’m so exhausted. And so disappointed with myself as a mother. I’m on the brink of losing it with her all day and she’s barely doing anything wrong — she’s just a normal kid. My own mother was a horrible woman and we didn’t have a good relationship. I didn’t even cry when she died — still haven’t. I thought I’d manage to be different from her and build a better, happier home and give my own kids a happy life and be a kind, warm, fun, loving mother. And I just can’t. It’s horrible. I hate being a mum. My life would’ve been so much better if I’d never had her.