Agony
Bigglest Boy has been going to therapy. You might remember that he has had major issues. He’s such a good student and all, but I know a lot of kids, growing up, who were good students but had terrible behavior. I’m trying to be understanding but the rage & destruction really scares me. I don’t know what to do with him sometimes; I send him to his room but lately he’s been so scary that I’m afraid to do that. I’m afraid… I’m afraid to even say what he might do when he’s full of that loathing.
Yesterday, after a bad day at school when he was separated from everyone else for the entire day. When we went home the Two Littlest Boys were allowed to paint and make designs and decorations and Bigglest Boy had to sit in the kitchen and read. Bigglest Boy had to bathe before dinner, which he hates doing, and an outburst at dinner meant he had to be separated from the table and he had to eat with his daddy in another room. I can’t control him and I think the only thing that keeps him in line when his daddy is around is a realization that there’s someone else in the house who is stronger than he is.
Bigglest Boy is now much, much stronger than I am. He is eight years old, he is almost five feet tall and weighs about 98 lbs. However, he can throw a large, solid oak glider rocker that looks like this all the way across a living room. When he did that, it missed me by maybe half a foot. It scared me. It caused me to think that the other kids aren’t safe from his anger. When he is away from other kids and he is sent to his room, I try to talk to him but all he could do was cry. And it wasn’t a child’s cry, it was the serious, self-loathing cry of someone ten years older.
“I wish I were dead.” “Why don’t you just put me in jail?” And finally he came out and said, “I really just hate you.”
“Why do you hate me?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I just wish you weren’t here, and I was in jail,” he sobbed.
“Why do you wish you were in jail?”
“I wish you were in jail, too,” he said, through his sniffles and tears.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because you’re bad. Because you make me angry. Because you killed my mother.”
I couldn’t even take a breath when he said that. Did he really think that?
“Why did you say that?” I asked. I tried to stop from crying but it just started pouring out. I was so furious at him, while I tried to remember that he’s just a little boy. He’s eight years old.
“Because you hated her,” he said, and he turned and pressed his face into his pillow, and punched the pillow as hard as he could.
“I never, ever hated your mother,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm. “I loved her more than any friend I ever had.”
He sat up, turning around slowly and looking at me like I was poison. “More than Daddy?”
I thought about it, and said finally. “Yes. Well… I don’t know. A lot. I don’t know. Well, about the same, if not more than your daddy.”
He looked away.
“A lot,” I repeated. “I loved your mama a lot.”
He lay face down again and cried. I asked him if he wanted anything, and he shrugged, not facing me. I tried to touch him gently on his shoulder, but he moved away quickly.
“I should take your shoes off, if you’re going to lay on the bed,” I said softly.
He didn’t argue, so I slipped his shoes and socks off. He flexed his feet, which made his toes creak and crack like an old man’s. I squeezed his feet, one in each hand, and he sighed. I took that sigh as an okay, and kept rubbing his feet, which felt like bags of rocks; they were so knotted and tense. I had been squeezing and rubbing his feet for about five minutes when Monsieur stuck his head in the door. I looked up and smiled at him, and kept rubbing Bigglest Boy’s feet. Monsieur smiled back, and closed the door.
Bigglest Boy had stopped sniffling. When my hands got tired, I stopped and I said gently, “Feel okay?”
He nodded into his pillow.
“Still hate me?” I asked softly.
“I don’t know,” he said.
I took that as a positive sign, and told him he could come back downstairs with us when he was ready.