The Unbalancing Act

  The Unbalancing Act

  By Kristen Lynn

  “For my boys and my husband…

  Who I love and who drive me crazy.”

  Contents

  The Breaking Point

  March 2nd

  March 3rd

  My First Group

  March 4th

  A Session about my Internal Dialogue...well...kind of...

  Sabrina the Bestie

  The Smudge

  Room 109

  March 5th

  Suicide Risk

  An Idea

  Blood and Charts

  Janitorial Services

  Assorted Nuts

  A Plan for Katelyn

  March 6th

  Ducks and Quacks

  Hypnosis

  Mission for Cake

  My Gang

  Katelyn’s relief

  March 7th

  Let’s Just Move...with Dr. Lipton

  Cheating Ames

  Busting Out

  Girl’s Night Out

  March 8th

  March 9th

  Rita

  Waking up is hard to do

  Two months later

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The Breaking Point

  It was the day from hell. The kind of day where you question whether you should even go to sleep, because you know that you are going to have to get right back up the next morning and start all over again. It was the kind of day where you want to start breaking dishes and cussing out little old ladies. May sound familiar, but for me, this day changed my life.

  As a stay-at-home mother of three I followed my normal routine. I got up, fed my kids the most healthful breakfast they would eat, which happened to be frozen waffles and chocolate milk.

  By the way, if you are one of those mothers who get up and make spinach and mango smoothies for your children and they suck it right down and then beg you for a broccoli dessert, well, you can pretty much piss off. No offense. I’m happy for you, but maybe a little bitter. I feed my kids what they will eat so they will survive. Don’t call the cops on me yet; I do give them a gummy vitamin. Realistically, it is probably way more time and cost efficient and just as healthy as the smoothie bullshit, so don’t judge me.

  Anyway, I fed my kids, got their teeth brushed, got them dressed, and out the door as we normally do. Only on this particular day, there was no school, some in-service crap or something like that. I have a first grader. I have a kindergartner. I have an eighteen- month-old. Their names are Ben, Max, and Jordan, in that order. All of them are boys. I repeat: all of them are boys. I was so excited we would all get to spend the day together. I had come up with a plan of “Mommy and her little buddies” time. We were going to make memories that would last a lifetime. Well, maybe it wasn’t that dramatic, but at least it was something to get us out of the house for a while so they wouldn’t destroy it.

  It was a Friday. I was cruising down suburbia in a gray mini-van with not just one, but two DVD players, because that’s what’s up. The boys didn’t know where we were going, but they were eager to find out. It was a little chilly outside, chilly enough that our fun was going to have to be an indoor activity. I had discovered this hidden gem of a children’s museum and thought the kids would love it. What a good mom I was trying to be. We were going to do something educational and fun on a non-school day. That’s me though, I always strive for perfection and most often come up short. However, I always try my damndest.

  We live in a suburb of Kansas City, on the Kansas side. A town of mini-vans, SUV’s (which are necessary for the flat lands of Kansas’ bumpy terrain, yeah right) and show cars. You know, the ones that have the same engines under the hoods as all the rest, but you pay twenty thousand more for the luxury name. You know what I’m talking about. I’m not judging. I’m just speaking the truth. As far as motherhood goes, it’s the best thing that has ever happened to me. I am, however, on antidepressants, and I am a total fucked up mess. My internal dialogue and what actually comes out of my mouth are two totally different things. It’s almost like leading a double life. But we’ll get into that later. Let me get back to this particular day.

  We pulled into the museum parking lot. “Here we are!” I turned and told the kids.

  Ben immediately started bawling. Max growled, “Aww...great. This place?”

  “You don’t even know where we are! Why are you complaining?” I asked.

  “Because we didn’t want to go to a stupid school! There is no school today, Mom! You are the meanest Mom I ever had!” cried Ben.

  They had a point. This museum was in a brick building with small windows and it looked just like a school. I did my best to explain to them that it was a fun place. It’s not like a “school” it’s more like place to explore things and do activities, no homework. They would have been fine if I’d have taken them to a Pantera concert. My kids are so crazy. They literally love 80’s hair bands and metal, especially power ballads. They have big futures waiting for them in the music industry. I just hope they remember to thank their mommy in all of their award speeches.

  After convincing them to at least come in and try it or we can all just “go home and go straight to bed for the rest of the night” at ten o’clock in the morning, I used my automatic hatch opener to get my stroller out of the back. Let me tell you, at that moment I almost ran out in front of a car. I wanted to. Not to die, just to have an ambulance put me on a stretcher and take me away. I had forgotten the motherfucking stroller. This left me with some options, I could either go twenty minutes back home and get it, or take an eighteen-month-old maniac into a children’s museum with two other children on foot. I was not going back home. I could do this, right? I wasn’t going to let three little kids intimidate me. No way in hell. Looking back, I probably should have gone with my first instinct and got hit by a car.

  We walked in holding hands, and stopped at the front desk to pay. For me and my three angels, the admission fee was forty-eight dollars. I almost told the museum staff to take their “educational exploration” and stick it up their asses, but seeing as we had made it that far, I paid it. I really did at least expect a voucher for a free fingering from a hot firefighter while a background-checked nanny guided my children through the facility. Forty-eight dollars my ass! Anyways, moving on...

  I was holding Jordan. Max and Ben were holding hands and we went to the first exhibit. It was a room full of blocks. They stayed entertained and I was able to let Jordan down to play, so I figured this was a good room for us to be in. They built towers and castles and they cried every time Jordan knocked their buildings down. I finally got sick of holding back my little demolition man, and we decided to move on to the next room. We visited the dinosaur bones exhibit, and then explored the arts and crafts room where I was helping baby Jordan to color on construction paper. I looked over at the easel Max was working on, and he had beautifully painted a giant cock and balls with green paint. In fact, it was a pretty accurate painting. Even one ball was droopier than the other. The other mothers in the room looked at me in disgust and I told them to fuck off. Not really, but I wanted to. I simply said, “Oh my! Max, your mommy is not going to like you drawing things like that! What am I going to tell her when she picks you up today?” Max looked at me like I was crazy, but just moved on to his next project. He was catching on that I sometimes play it off like I am just the babysitter when they embarrass me in public.

  Moving down the hall of the museum from room to room, Jordan was getting squirmy and would no longer let me hold him. After feeling like I had wrestled an alligator and lost the match, I decided to let him walk. Big mistake! No, huge mistake! He took off running through the crowded hall as a toddler normally would; only it was like he had nitrous o
xide boosters on his teeny tiny shoes. Of course I ran after him yelling his name, but he just kept going. I would have caught up quicker if everyone had just gotten the hell out of my way. I finally caught him.

  “No! No! Jordan!” I said. “You do not run away from mommy!”

  It was then, that he smacked me in the face and yelled “No! No!” In other words, he simply told me “shut up bitch.” I picked him up and turned around to tell the other boys it was time to go and that I’d had enough. There was a big problem. They were nowhere in sight. I immediately panicked. My heart was racing and all I could do was run, searching and yelling, “I lost my boys! I lost my boys!” I must have looked in every room. A group of sympathetic mothers had joined my search team. We were all calling out their names and suddenly a light bulb went off— the bathroom! I ran as fast as I could into the bathroom and my panic turned into sobbing tears as I saw four little feet in the handicapped stall. They were giggling. I set Jordan down and went to hug them even though I was so angry. I was scared shitless and yet just elated they were safe.

  “Don’t you ever leave on your own like that again, do you hear me?” I said, still crying.

  The boys were completely unaware until they saw my tears that anything was even wrong. Their innocent faces looked at me with sincere remorse.

  “I’m sorry, Mommy,” said Ben, “Max had to poop.”

  Max apologized as well, and I felt so lucky that they were safe, at that point none of it really mattered. I stuck my head out the door and yelled down the hall that they had been found so that the search team could call off their efforts. I heard giggles behind me and a “Holy crap” from Ben’s mouth. I turned around to see what may have been the only thing worse than losing the boys that day. My baby Jordan was splashing around in the toilet in another stall...and it hadn’t been flushed.

  Let’s just say this was a breaking point for me. The thought of (I can’t even say the word) “fecal” eww...matter and urine on my child’s hands sent me into a personal hell that you cannot imagine. Having three boys, I’m used to gross things. However, I don’t do odors. I don’t do little hairs. I most certainly do not do bodily fluids. Of course, my own children’s poopy diapers and things like that don’t bother me, but someone else’s sure fucking does.

  After this horrific incident, I stripped Jordan naked and washed his whole body with soap in the bathroom sink. I made my big boys scrub their hands until the soap ran out and then we went straight home and everyone got a bath. I needed to regroup. I was so stressed out that every single muscle in my body hurt from being so tense. I called my husband Eric and told him what had happened. He responded like it was no big deal and that the kids were going to be fine. He told me that I needed to calm down. You know what I thought? That motherfucker wasn’t even there, so how can he tell me to calm down? I gently placed him on my shit list and put Jordan down for a nap. He’d been scrubbed so clean that his skin literally squeaked. I put on a movie for Max and Ben and went to get the mail.

  After jiggling the mail key, which is finicky like everything else in my life, and opening up the silver box, I grabbed the mail stack with two hands. There it was, on top of the pile of bills and junk mail, a brochure for the New Outlook Center for Mental and Behavioral Health that Eric had requested online. After a series of events that had happened over the last several months, he thought I should seek some counseling to deal with some stress and anxiety issues. I always brushed him off. I was already on antidepressants for heaven’s sake. The facility was only about thirty minutes south of our suburban paradise in a small town called Rivergate. I had to laugh because I really felt like I was going nuts and here was this brochure. Maybe it was a sign. As I looked through the pages, I saw happy-looking crazy women. They looked like ordinary soccer moms. Looking back now, I’m sure they used models for the photographs in the brochure. The place seemed quite lovely, like a retreat. There was a spa, recreational activities, walking trails, and medication. Oh my! If only I would have known...

  Jordan’s nap was short and the boys grew bored of movie time fairly quickly. It was barely enough time for me to get my floors mopped and the dishwasher unloaded. By three o’clock in the afternoon, I was already ready for bed. Eric called to say he’d be working late. Hooray for me! I took the three boys down to the playroom and told them to play a board game, Candyland. Who doesn’t like Candyland, right? The game began and I had to hold Jordan back because he had no interest in doing anything other than destroying their game board. It was almost like watching a freak show. Ben and Max kept blaming each other for cheating, when in reality, they were both cheating.

  “Play fair you guys, or we are not playing anything at all!” I warned in my scary mom voice.

  Once Max pulled the ice cream card out from under his leg (where he was hiding it) and got to move his green game piece all the way to the top of the board, Ben lost it and sucker punched him right in the lip. It bled. It bled like crazy. Everyone was crying, even Jordan. I put them all in the van, each one bawling their eyes out. My knuckles were white as I gripped the steering wheel. I was so tense that I probably looked like a giant praying mantis driving my mini-van down the street. I drove to the first place I could think of, our city’s juvenile detention center. I parked and turned off the engine. Things grew quieter, but I could still hear a few sniffles.

  “Where are we, Mommy?” asked Max.

  “Mommy, what are we doing?” cried Ben.

  I looked in the back seat and saw my three boys staring at me in horror. Actually, Jordan was chewing on his toes and couldn’t have cared less where we were, but my big boys were terrified.

  “Do you see this building right here?” I asked.

  They nodded.

  “This is called juvie, short for juvenile detention.” I said, “This is jail...for kids. This is where kids have to go when they break the law. When they punch people, or cheat, or steal, the police take them here!” I looked at Ben, “You gave your brother a bloody lip today, Ben. Do you think that’s okay?”

  “Noooooo!” he wailed.

  “Cheating is like stealing Max, do you think that’s okay?”

  “Stop it, Mommy....noooo....I’m sorry, Mommy, I’m sorry!” Max cried.

  I was starting to feel bad, but after the day I had, I wasn’t backing down yet. “Do you boys understand that if you don’t stop acting this way and hitting each other and fighting that you could have to be in here one day? In handcuffs? The only food they have in there is vegetables and meat and they make you drink tomato juice.” Threatening them with healthy food...I add that to my list of reasons I should be nominated for Mother of the Year.

  “Mommy!!! Pleeease take us home! We will never fight again. We will do whatever you say. Please don’t take us to jail. Jordan’s just a baby! How can you do this to a little baby?” cried Ben.

  “Well, get a good look boys because I never, ever want to have to drive into this parking lot again. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, Mommy!” they both replied. They looked so relieved.

  I turned the car back on and headed for home, which was, unfortunately, the last place I wanted to go. It felt like we’d been cooped up for so long. Kansas weather is so up and down. In the beginning of spring, one day it’s hot and sticky, the next day it’s cold and cloudy. The nice days were coming soon; they were still playing peek-a-boo at that point. The boys stopped crying as we pulled into the driveway. Max undid his seatbelt and came up and hugged me.

  “We forgive you, Mommy,” he said.

  I hoped that he was just confusing his words, but probably not. I think he thought I should really be sorry.

  My cell rang. It was my mother. After explaining my day, she offered to have them stay at her house for the night. I immediately and thankfully agreed. I love them so much, but I was so stressed out that I needed some quiet time and I know they loved staying with her. It was a win-win. She told me to bring them over whenever they were ready. I quickly packed their bags.


  Before we left, I kissed each of them and told them how sorry I was that we had a rough day. I explained to them that I wanted them to be good listeners so that they would have a better day tomorrow and the next day and each day after that. They must have “forgiven” me, because I got lots of hugs and cuddles. I threw their bags and overnight things in the back hatch of my mini-van, buckled Jordan into his car seat, climbed into the driver’s seat, and put the car in reverse.

  “Hey little buddies, are you guys excited about going to Grandma’s house?” I asked. “Make sure you...”

  SCREEEEEECHHHH!

  I heard this awful noise because I fucking hit the top of the garage door. I forgot to close the back hatch. I tried to pull forward and again heard the sound of grinding metal. I remember thinking to myself that this day was going to be the end of me. I think every single cuss word in every language in the world went through my mind at the same time. I stepped out to assess the damage.

  It didn’t look as bad as it had sounded and I managed to get the hatch to shut, but the garage door wouldn’t close. There were scratches all over the back of my mini-van, but I didn’t really care because it’s a mini-van. Enough said. I called my mother in tears and told her the situation.

  “I’ll be right there to get them!” she said.