My Lunchbox Diary XVI

T refused to enter the kindergarten this morning. He exercised his right of civil disobedience right in front of the gate. A teacher came to fetch him, and he started crying. He did something similar last Wednesday. On both days, I was the one to deposit and collect him. Although I understood that it was just a childish tantrum, I cannot help imagining that he did it to upset me on purpose.

Living under the gazes of others is stressful. I have never stopped believing that my motherhood is under surveillance of others. Under the gazes of other mothers. Of course, such belief has no foundation at all but a kind of paranoid invention for the purpose of self-torment. Behind it, there was eagerness to be connected to others, which is somehow to achieve given that I am the kind of people who have difficulties reaching out. 

When the children arrived in the gathering point in the park after the kindergarten today. T again refused to come back. He continued to play arguing that the friends were still around. I noticed, however, he looked at others but could not join them. The eyes were wishful, but he just didn’t. When he rode on the rocking equipment in the park, all those who rocked on the equipment before him were gone. He looked lost and continued to look at others scattering in the playground. Perhaps, he was wondering why there was no one staying on to play with him. 

He ran back and forth in the park and continued to resisted the idea of going home even after we were left alone. He proposed to play a fight with stones and bark. I consented. But during the play, in which two objects were just used to hit against each other, I was so emotionally stressed. I started to scratch hard the back of my hand with a piece of bark. I did so in front of him. Over and over again. It was just bark and it did not cut. But I could not stop because I felt that the pain was needed for me to carry on. The pain was a reminder that yes I did not know what to do and felt lost and was left alone and nothing looked optimistic to me. 

T yelled that he did not want to go home.