The Momoir Project

By Karen Bannister

I am trapped inside an immense amount of guilt. It seeps into the consciousness of my everyday and stands like an ever-present apparition in the corner of my eye. It is an overpowering feeling and one I can not easily give myself over to. I am a guilty mother.

My guilt is tied primarily to the time I spend away from my son - the decision I have made to work outside the home and the tiny choices that go along with that. A yoga class after works sends me reeling with it. Coffee with a girlfriend on the weekend? Guilt is the third party.

I can rationalize my life situation and this helps to silence the screams of guilt, if only somewhat. I work so we have enough money to live. Although if I am truly honest - and I am brutally so with myself - we could probably live in a cheaper house and give up one car.

I take naps to care for my unborn child - but if I forgo television watching at night or the constant losing of myself in literature, I might need less of this. The truth is I do these things to feel better about myself. I do these things to bring the grace of balance to my life.

A book I am reading suggests “mother guilt” is a product of all that mommy-hating going on out there in the world. It is celebrity moms who boast of the joys of parenthood who make us feel inadequate when we bark at our kids. It is the playground talk of peaceful nights spent entwined in the embrace of our offspring that makes us feel monstrous when we can’t wait for our children to go to bed.

But I can’t entirely blame society and those other moms. I am sure I would be this neurotically obsessed with my own shortcomings even without their sugar-coated fantasies. Because motherhood to me is a rubber-band-ball of messy emotions that sends me reeling to extremes - euphoric bliss when I glance into his eyes to downright disgust as he claws at me, his face crimson and twisted in a tantrum. I miss each moment I am away from him but sometimes pray for the end of a moment when he is near. And in all this - the admittance of this terrible truth - there is that obsessive guilt that may never loosen its hold on my heart

Writing Start: Guilt