Honesty

I've been debating whether or not to post this as today's picture for project 365 or just find one from another day and pretend I took it on this day and that everything is totally fine. But the reality is, sometimes everything isn't totally fine. 

Everyone wants to look at the rose tinted, instagram filtered view of parenting; whereby all the children are playing happily and even if they're having a tantrum it's totally fine and funny because children are hilarious and look they're crying because the breadstick broke. 

But sometimes it's not fine and it's not funny and everything isn't okay. And that's not because of that one moment or one second or one day - it's because it's completely relentless and there is no break and no gap and no space and no stopping. No let up, no pause on the cycle of constantly balancing and walking on the knife edge. 

Sometimes your kids cry and scream so much they make themselves sick and you just don't know how to make it better. Sometimes you have literally no idea what you're doing or how to stop the situation and you just feel woefully unprepared and incapable. And when all 3 decide that it's the perfect time to start, sometimes you wonder how on earth you ever thought you were a good enough parent to manage this and surely the kids would be better off with someone better.

It's not that you don't love your children more than anything. It's that you have absolutely no idea what you are doing and you're trying your best but it's just in no way good enough and everyone has an opinion but no one can fix it for you and you have no idea whether or not you're doing a good job but you would literally move mountains for those children. 

So - some days are like today. Where you're sat in a bath so hot it makes you feel a bit sick in the hopes that when you get out everything will feel a bit better, and you'll have the mental and physical energy to wake up every hour and do it all again tomorrow and try to not fuck it up. And just cross your fingers and hope that you're doing anywhere near enough. Because you haven't got any more left to give.