Someone better tell me what to do soon because I swear to all that is holy that I will put both these children up for adoption if something in this child or me does not break soon.

Hi, I’m the 25-week pregnant mother of a 2.5 year old. Let me explain that I feel constantly as if there is a knife inserted below my right shoulder blade, and that said knife has already carved a hole from my hip to knee on the back of my left leg before coming to rest on the right side. Perhaps then, you can imagine how it may be difficult for me to run at a full gallop after a child who runs from me. Who refuses to hold my hand? Who, when a stranger might stop her and mention that mommy is behind her and needs her to wait, looks back at me with glee and takes off again. Thanks, stranger! I’m 200 yards behind you. It would have been SO NICE if you’d grabbed the child who is, after all, much smaller than you and WITHIN YOUR EASY REACH. I hate this ‘not getting involved’ American bullshit. I need my fucking village.

There is no place I can take her alone. There is no way to reason with her, to negotiate sitting in a seat at a lunch table or staying near me on a playground. There are no scary places or people. There is just running. From me. No threat will deter her. No leash (I’m sorry, HARNESS) will contain her, as the mere sight of such a contraption brings out the Screaming Banshee child, the one who knows about passive resistance, and hello, I can’t FUCKING PICK HER UP AND CARRY HER ANYMORE.

Hi. Can we also talk about the nap? The one that isn’t happening? On the only day of HER WHOLE LIFE that a nap was vitally important to our (very expensive) plans this evening? Goodbye Disney princess and pirate party. Goodbye memories of our first and last trip somewhere fun with just one small child.

“Oh, she’ll be all right” my husband says flippantly, unaware that at this moment, 5 minutes in the door from a conference he attended ALONE, with ADULTS, ALL DAY LONG, after sitting up in bed with this DEMON until 1:30 in the FUCKING MORNING WATCHING SEINFELD, thereby sealing my already tenuous fate this morning, he is as close to divorce/murder as he as ever been.

She will not be all right. More importantly. I will not be all right. I dislike the child right now, at 4 p.m., having slept 4 fewer hours last night than her usual, and having missed 3 hours of sleep this afternoon. She will most certainly not be all right at a party in a theme park with fireworks and 4 thousand children and candy and princesses until midnight. There’s only so far I’m willing to push a 2 year old to satisfy my own need for memories, and only so much hatred for my own children I’m willing to invite into my heart.

“Go get our money back” I command, my tone as final as I can convey without throwing anything. There is a very brief period of argument, in which I hopefully convey that this is NOT OK, that this is NOT HAPPENING, and that, NO YOU DO NOT HAVE ANY IDEA what it’s like for me just because last night he was the one chasing after her in the World of Disney. “Honey? Strap Bram to your chest sideways. And then put Finley in a fanny pack around your waist. And then have someone cut your left leg from hip to knee and then put the knife under your right shoulder blade. And then take the World of Disney, remove the walls and put a fucking lake on one side and a pool on the other side. And spend three days alone with the baby there. And then let’s talk after that. Make sure you bring a stroller that doesn’t work, too.”

“Oh, I’ll ask them but I don’t think they’ll do it”, says he who decides before ever making a customer service phone call that xyz company does not care about the likes of us and what’s the point. I know this game, and I’m not taking any chances.

“No. I’LL go get our money back” says she who does not take no for an answer, and who has the added advantage of a homicidal glint in her eye plus a bulging belly which by itself usually says ‘don’t fuck with me and my hormones‘

This is what my life is now? I will spend how long trapped in my house? How long trapped, unable to leave with this child who does not come to me, or stop when I scream stop in a parking lot, and who thinks it’s fun to hide in the racks at a store? How long before I can take the child to a playground? To a friend’s house to play and who doesn’t have a fence? WE don’t even have a fence. We literally cannot go outside our house during the day.

This is my life. And it’s ending one child at a time.