Angry M.O.M.S.

Never before having children did I feel the dire need to martyr myself like I do today as a mother. It comes in gushing spasms at the most chaotic moments, when I feel the only way to relieve my suffering would be to scream at my husband, best friend or next door neighbor because they could not possibly imagine in their wildest nightmares how hard I've got it. 

I've termed this phenomenon M.O.M.S. ~ Motherhood Onset Martyrdom Syndrome. It hits me at those circuit blowing moments when I cannot believe I am not only supposed to survive, but actually handle what my children are doling out to me.

Thank goodness I keep all my sinister thoughts to myself at these boiling points, because they'd acidicly melt through the skin of some non-mother's woe-is-me-I-can't-decide-whether-to-schedule-my-manicure-or-haircut-or-yoga training-or-hiking retreat-or exotic Indonesian vacation-this-week song and dance.

Not that my own self-righteous M.O.M.S.-driven rant would be worthy of anyone's ear. Hey, I chose this. I did it to myself. Fuck, if god had listened to me the first time around begging for twins just to get the whole procreation thing overwith, I'd have been a goner, an absolute goner.

But just when I'm really basking in my martyrdom - lying on my life raft of crucifixion, floating in my sea of suffering, soaking in my sun of agony, sipping my tall umbrella'd drink of self-sacrifice - a Reality Check comes smacking me upside the head. It is of such massive proportions that it takes the wind out of my billowing sails of complaint and steals my whining thunder right out from underneath me. 

Why does there always, always have to be someone who has it so much worse than me, dammit? 

Some starving, war-ravaged, orphaned, widowed mother of 8 dying children in a leaking grass roofed hut somewhere that disallows me to remain wallowing in my cesspool of martyrdom and makes me glad to be me again. So glad in fact that I spontaneously begin reciting how much I love my life and every single thing about it.

And then *poof*, for at least this quadrant of the day I so don't mind my affliction of motherhood that I'll gladly haul G's motorcycle up the hill because he's tired of riding it and breezily take the 19th clump of dirt and mulch out of N's mouth. But when this bubble of gladness wears off again, look out boys, mama's  M.O.M.S. will rage again!