Darker Impulses

“No!” She screams in the mirror, “I won’t!”

The mirror has no sympathy. It simply reflects what it sees. Her wild, unkempt hair, her wide eyes, her snarling mouth, are shown back to her. She hates the look. It wasn’t to be this way.

He was planned. Most assume he wasn’t. Her own granny spoke for the majority when she said, “Babies having babies.” at finding out her granddaughter was expecting.

She was almost twenty -one, for goodness sakes! No baby. That is what she thought.

Her son was born on an early July night. She holds perfection in her arms when she holds him, after the initial scare.

His skin is tainted a bit blue and he is rushed out of the room at his birth. She lays, heart pounding, her own mom’s hand in hers, as they await news.

Her sister goes to find out what is going on. She returns, laughing.

“My nephew was kicking his feet around, giving the nurse fits as she tried to weigh him. Oh, he was just cold.”

They all laugh. He is brought to her a bit later, all rosy skinned. Her seven pound, eight ounce baby boy.

She learns to bath him, gently working soap through his dark locks, how to care for his navel, folding the cloth diaper carefully under it.

Young she may be but she is determined to do all she can to see to her son right.

He nurses well. Sleep, well he is a newborn, but she gets enough to be functional.

He is worn against her chest, safe and snug against mommy. She takes him mommy and me classes, where she can be with other young moms and he can play with other children.

It seems a son healed the monsters of her past. A son not a daughter that he can harm, that is what she tells herself.

He is a bit over a year old when she first breaks. She vowed never to lay a hand on him in anger. Never! She will not be him!

He was fussing. Kids fuss. Something in his tone hit a nerve. Whining! He was whining. She snaps.

Later, she won’t recall the sequence of events. Not until she relived in her nightmares.

Grabbing him, shaking him, hitting again and again his diaper clad bottom while screaming, “Shut up!”

Their screams fight the air. His getting louder as his mommy’s does.

She held him close after. Weeping she vows, “Never to do that again.”

Any older parent could have told her that she would. That losing your temper is part of raising kids. That she needs to learn to reign it in, control it.

All she sees is him coming out in her and it terrifies her.

She was three. It is her first memory. Him beating her butt for taking off her panties. To this day, she doesn’t know if it was her or him that took them off. 

Other memories are clearer. “I swear, I will never do that.” She promises her son, rocking him close. It is a vow she keeps.

Losing her religion with him though… He is a wild child. Walking at ten months, running soon after, he gives his mommy fits.

He has his own temper. By the time he is one, he has learned to head butt. His tiny skull hurts when it bangs into her face.

Her temper soon matches his own. “You little brat!” Cries out in frustration as he hits her face and slips away, running.

When she scoops him up, he bites her, hard.

“Time outs,” the parenting book suggests, “ giving the child time to think before coming back together with the parents where sorry can be expressed.

She knows that won’t work for her little boy but maybe for her. Placing him in his crib, she locks herself away from him, to get herself calmed down.

As he grows, he gets worse. She weeps with sadness and relief when he is old enough for preschool. He clings to her leg, weeping when she goes to leave him the first time.

“Don’t worry mom. The separation anxiety will fade.” She is told as the remove her barnacle like child off her leg.

He adjusts and she enjoys time to herself. Parenting is easier when there is some space for her to be herself too.

When he is five, she finds him banging his head against the wall in his room. Horrified, she runs to stop him.

“You will hurt yourself .”

His words still chill her. “I want to die mommy.”

Her five year old son is suicidal!

His pediatrician places him in an inpatient hospital. He is locked away from her and the rest of his family for a week. Her tears flow every night for him.

“He has ADHD.” She is informed. Young and scared, she trusts this diagnosis and gives him the meds everyday. The question of how an attention disorder would cause her baby to self harm doesn’t occur to her.

He loses weight, so much that Children Services comes out to make sure he is being feed.

Worse, his behavior gets worse. She is called home from work because he locked himself in his room. When his grandma tried to get to him, he throws shoes at her.

“He needs to know he is loved. Hold him when he is frantic. Tell him you love him.”

Through the head butts and bites, the ,‘ I hate you mommy,’ screams, she does.

Still, his behavior continues.

That day, he destroyed his room, tearing it to pieces. She locked herself in the bathroom so she doesn’t hurt him. They are renting and he knocked holes in the wall.

“I will not hurt him. I love him.” She repeats to the wild eyed woman staring back at her. She has pulled at her own hair and bite her own hand as not to throw her child out the window.

It takes another six years before they find a pediatrician who diagnosis him right. During this time, she sees her heart in lock down hospitals two other times, the last for suicidal and homicidal tendencies. He threatened to kill himself and his whole family.

School fights, IEP meetings, different medications, holding him until her arms feel like breaking, tears, frustration, thinking she has done something to bring out this monster in her child.

“He is bi-polar. The ADHD meds have made him worse.”

The sense of relief, of justification, she feels is enormous.

“I told them. His teachers, CS, his other doctors. They told me I couldn’t know. That diagnosing bi-polar in a child his age wasn’t possible. But, I saw him cycle doctor. I swear I did.”

“You did, I am sure. A parent knows. I never discount their observations.”

She weeps at herself and her child being seen. She weeps harder at learning his brain chemistry was changed by the wrong meds, that the right meds would help but not fully.

She never gives into her darker impulses. Knowing why her son was so out of control, helps her keep control. Hearing that her own grandpa also suffered with bi-polar helps her understand where it came from.

Put on the right meds at twelve, they never fully work. He spends time in and out of the hospital and in jail.

She tries but the last she heard from him, he was an un-medicated adult living on the streets.

She still weeps for him nightly.

For Joshua.