27.9.24
What is it really like, or what has it really been like, being on this sort of trip and travelling with our kids?
The reality is one of highs and lows. Of course it is. Life is what it is and real life cannot possibly be a continual bed of roses. I have to preface the following with gratitude. I am more than grateful to be where I am and to be living in a different continent that I’ve never spent any time in before. However, I know how easy it is to look from the outside and assume what is in the inside and have that assumption be the rosy type. The inside of this adventure is hard.
I started this blog or this story with the soundtrack of emotional needs and it hasn’t changed. We are coming to the end of our time in Chinchina. We have realised the original dream of living in one place, immersing and becoming part of the fabric of local life is not working out for the children in Chinchiná. Tali and I have a great thing going. We frequently bump into people we know when we leave the apartment. I’ve been going to a crossfit exercise class every morning for the past week and I love it. But Chinchina is not the right place for the kids. The school isn’t set up to contain them and whilst it is providing Tali and I time, it isn’t providing much more than childcare for the kids.
This year abroad has come from a deep need of my own. I’ve dressed it up in my head as something good for the kids and our family, which it is overall. But in practise, the kids don’t want the change or the travel. They want stability, to stay in one place and preferably not leave the house. The main thing they want to do, always, regardless of what is on offer and what new experiences are around the corner, is screen time. I don’t know why I’m surprised, but I am. One of them said to me the other day, why are we going to the Corcora Valley, we could just look it up on google and instead of all the effort of getting there, climbing, walking, travelling, we could just be relaxing and watching. I may have said this already. But honestly what the blistering barnacles? How is this what I’m bringing up? Also, the fighting. The never ending jibing and pushing and starting fights. It is so so so white-rage worthy annoying. And in the name of honesty and transparency, I am not handling it like Janet Landsbury, the queen of discipline without shame, anger to be eschewed. I am infrequently the cool, calm and collected best self of my fantasies. . We had a blow out this evening. I behaved in a way that I am now ashamed of. This is the reality. I am ashamed of my children and ashamed of what I have created. I cannot trust them in public not to kick off with each other. I cannot trust them to be polite. They will hit and kick each other in the back seat of the car, because someone’s leg has gone over the line of their personal space. This happened in my Spanish teacher’s car and another time in a taxi. It was so bad the driver suggested we get two cars in the future. I find it very embarrassing and I feel powerless, and ashamed and then angry – at them and myself – and so the cycle repeats itself.
Maybe now that they have had their last day at school, we are moving on and the next part of the year will look different, it will help them settle their moods, but I doubt it. I am finding it very hard not to see their behaviour as a reflection on my parenting. How can it not be? I have to be very careful not to fall down that familiar rabbit hole of beating myself up and self hate.
After this evening’s blow up, which was of a higher level than usual, I went out. Someone we met was singing/doing a gig in town, four minutes walk from where we live. So I went, drank a few beers and staggered home in the rain (before 11pm). It was good to get out. It was also good to hear someone singing and putting their heart on their sleeve, playing their own songs, sharing a little about the difficulties of life. Different difficulties from mine, but I guess it helped me to feel less alone or bad about myself. All the experiences in the world seem to pale into insignificance when the kids aren’t happy or are out of control. Unusually I’m writing this late at night, perhaps why it’s so maudlin, or perhaps it’s the four beers, but I prefer to show the real side. Someone from the kids’ school said to me that they have never met a family as amazing as ours. I guess we all see what we want to see, regardless of what we are shown. Our brains have an amazing ability to make up their own story from the stimuli they receive. Infrequently are those stories accurate.