heavy

I have this horrible drowning, tight feeling in my chest sometimes, when I want to just get in the car and drive far, far away from it all. Sometimes I think to myself "I will never be happy again."

Ruby is the light of my life, but also the cloud over my sun. I could never love anyone more than her, but that's why I feel so low. I've written several times about her challenging behaviour, which we have been investigating incase there is some kind of physical cause. Her sleep study results came back normal, her blood test results came back normal. And still this child that i adore behaves like someone possessed, flinging herself into screaming tantrums at the drop of a hat. But only for me.

Which makes me come to the only conclusion- that somewhere along the line, I have done something to her that makes her angry with me. Did I breastfeed her for too long and then wean too fast? Was it something i ate in pregnancy? Maybe I should have done controlled crying? Maybe I should never have tried it when she was a toddler and waking 8 times a night. Maybe I am too impatient, too thoughtless, not fun enough. I read to her every night and she snuggles against me like a warm little pillow, and for 15 minutes it's all fine. But it's like living on a knife edge. On Monday I took her with me into town to go to Medicare, where she threw an enormous tantrum because i wouldn't put a huge brochure on aged care into my bag (it wouldn't fit!) She then spent 15 minutes running away from me through the shopping centre. I had to herd her back up the street to the car like a sheep dog getting behind a flock of sheep. At the car she darted away again, hiding behind the wall of a church. At this point I lost the tiny thread of patience and good will I had left and i gave her one smack on her bottom- right as a police car drove past. And my first though was, "maybe if they arrest me I will get a rest from this child."

The thing I'm saddest about is that i want to do mother/daughter things with her and have nice memories of these years. But so much is negative and surrounded by feelings of exhaustion and disappointment. I have made an appointment with the child psychologist who helped so much with declan, but even doing that made me feel like an abject failure.