MOM Syndrome: How to treat a crazy that defies medicine and freudian stuff

I suffer from what I call MOM Syndrome. The crazy. Coping with that life long sentence of insanity you get the moment the pregnancy test comes out positive… I actually want a t-shirt for it, which is funny because I have these cafepress stores, and I have yet, at the time of writing this, made one. I will soon, and the reason? Not one of those, "I pooped out 3 kids and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" deal. No...  You know how they have those little cards you can print up, and some people do, that say something like, "Sorry my kid has autism" and you hand them to strangers when your kid starts acting autistic (meltdowns) in public? It's like that. When I start acting all MOM in public, like a person who probably needs a straight jacket and padded walls, it would be nice to direct people to a simple explanation for it, you know, before they start admitting me into the funny farm. Now you are thinking, "Who gives a fuck what people think?" I really don't when I'm at Walmart, but when I'm at a doctor's office or my kid's school, okay I do give a fuck, like they need to know that I'm crazy because I try to be a good mom, and the fact that they are not crazy is a sign they either don't have children or they have a lot of help with it. 

OLD BLOG ON WHAT MOM SYNDROME IS

But the coping with this crazy? How do we do it? It's not like we get a shrink for it, and most of us self medicate. Those of us who do get prescribed help, it usually only curbs the anxiety, which I'm sure makes a little dent into the insanity, you know, like washing a dish or two in a hot mess disaster kitchen. 

I know some moms like my grandmother and my mother in law, both of which are/were in environments where the women did ALL the work and their men were completely useless when it came to the household, they turned to alcohol. I should probably say ABUSE of self medicated drugs... My grandmother started drinking at noon. My mother in law usually waits until 3PM. I don't know how they did/do it because like I couldn't function if you took away my ability to drive. And for those who are curious why I keep referring to my grandmother in past tense, she passed away Christmas of 1998, liver failure. 

Mary Tyler Mom beatme to a little of this subject. She says it well. For her mother, it was valium. It was not something she abused like my grandmother did alcohol, but it was her coping strategy for those really crazy days. Moms today, many of us turn to Facebook. It's our valium. And we probably abuse it more than the 70's moms ever considered trying with valium.

I don't think it's just Facebook. I think a lot of us moms are looking for a healthy outlet for our crazy, and the internet becomes it.

It's convenient. You don't have to get everyone dressed and load up a car and fuck with sadistic car seats in order to go talk to someone. Even better, chat and messaging allows for the kids to be screaming in the background and the taking a break to run and change a diaper and scream "STOP FIGHTING" mid conversation, something that is a horrible distraction to communicating via the phone. 

It becomes therapy. I have learned that it truly helps to realize you are not alone with whatever crazy ails you. I have learned that with autism, PTSD, and now, MOM Syndrome.

It becomes your friend. When your friends who don't have kids or have kids who are more independent can't find time to come see you or you them because they don't want to deal with your kids, you find people online who are caged to their houses and families looking for someone to talk to just like you. I probably have about 50 Facebook friends of females I met online who are better friends than most of my relationships offline, especially when I need that moral support.

It becomes a place to vent about how your children just spent $150 on Kick the Buddy app for the iPad, or how they took all the clean clothes out of the drawers, piled them with the dirty clothes and sprinkled cheese and juice all over it putting you at square one with that room and laundry all in the matter of minutes. We need to vent this shit because nine times out of ten, our men don't give a shit. If they listen to you, IF, they have little sympathy because they just totally saved the world in Call of Duty, like your day wasn't shit compared to theirs. Plus you have to let it out somewhere. I have learned, don't do this on your normal Facebook profile. Save it for a secret group of friends somewhere confidential. Why? Your haters are also on your Facebook, and they like to see you down like that. Who else is on Facebook? People who actually do worry about you, people who might hire you someday, and most important, people who do not understand at all and take it as bitching. 

It becomes your guide. There are no parenting manuals. It's a lot like Adobe products, like Photoshop, in this aspect at least. No manual comes with the program, BUT there are various tutorials online to help you navigate the program. We as moms have that resource too. We have Pinterest with recipe and craft ideas. We have Facebook sharing the crap they put on Pinterest. We have blogs about sanity and deep subjects that are parenting related like school bullying and rape. We have medical information at our fingertips. Some people suck at that kind of research and could diagnose their kid's common cold with some rare infectious disease from the planet Mars courtesy of Web MD. But some of us find it very helpful for home remedies, disinfection advice, identifying a rash (don't image search that while eating)… We get cleaning advice, cooking advice, gardening advice… Motherhood covers such a wide range of subjects that only the internet could hold all that in one place.

It becomes your shopping. Yes we women need to shop, and the internet too has that convenience. We also get packages in the mail which adds to the excitement of it. You can even buy normal stuff online like diapers and shampoo, in addition to our girly stuff like clothes and accessories, but also hard to find stuff, which is great when your kid needs something like hypoallergenic diapers and emu oil, or they have to have a Mario Backpack for school or Dora on their shoes…

It becomes your entertainment. This is the best of the internet. The funniest moms are online, and Facebook and blogs are full of humorous memes (funny pictures). Laughter is the best medicine, and us moms need to laugh. We need to learn how to laugh at the crazy in our lives offline, and we need to laugh at other people's crazy online. Insane in the Mombrain often gets emails from people serving overseas or dying of cancer who thank her for making them laugh in the darkest of times. Mom bloggers like her are that scene in the Lord of the Rings where Frodo falls down and the witch elf appears out of nowhere like a hallucination and helps him up. Patti at Insane in the Mom-brain, Nikki at Moms who Drink and Swear, and Sheila at Mary Tyler Mom are my elf witches. They have been for years now. 

It becomes your drama. This can be the worst of the internet. Anytime you put a bunch of women together, online or offline, for long periods of time, there will be drama. There will be the PMSy bitch. There will be the overly sensitive butthurt. There will be arguments and cheap tactics like spying and gossip and straight girl world bullying. People will call you fat and ugly, even though they have no idea what you look like. It will always be over something stupid.  I guarantee you there is someone on your facebook friends list (if you Facebook) where you had a falling out and you have no idea what the fuck it was about. You knew then, but not so much now. I'll tell you what it was about. Drama. Stupid girl world drama. Don't be embarrassed you were part of that. You are a woman. This is part of the package. We know drama. We know it more than TNT. And for some strange sick reason, we enjoy it, no matter how much we play it off like we don't. 

It becomes your addiction. It's really okay to be on Facebook a lot. It's okay to get sucked into the internets to where you have no idea what the weather is like outside. What's not okay? What I'm doing now. I'm sitting here typing this blog surrounded by filth I call home. I'm procrastinating cleaning up my childrens' destruction because A, I don't want to clean it. I just did that. I should get at least 12 hours in between catastrophic messes to myself. B, I want to write this blog. It's been on the to do list for over a week. I need to finish what I start. C, I have a sprained ankle. Who in their right mind wants to clean on a sprained ankle? My foot and leg are still purple and the baseball sticking out of my ankle has turned into a golf ball. Great it's healing. It's still a golf ball hanging out the side of my ankle and it hurts like a bitch when I step on it wrong. And A, B, and C are my excuse to be online, to escape my reality. To forget my house is a mess for a minute, and that minute turns into hours.

It becomes your tool. Kids math homework? Google it. How many cups are in a gallon? Google it. There's a calculator somewhere. To Do List/email/calendar/horoscope reading/dream interpretation/school closings and delays/weather forecast/stock market... The internet is full of information and tools we moms use regularly. 

It contributes to your growth/development. That's the important part. When a toddler is learning to walk, he will use whatever resources are available to him as a tool to help him learn. Naturally we do this. If there's a table, he'll use that to help him stand. It can be a table, a chair, a pack n play, a house plant, a stool, a vacuum cleaner… If it has wheels, he'll use that to help him move. We as moms do that, and the internet becomes our vacuum cleaner table stool that holds us up for a second before we pitter patter across the room to another vacuum cleaner table stool. While finding our balance with parenting via online tools of humor, shopping, calculators, recipes, research, we also nurture whatever we are trying to learn with support, advice, wisdom, and feelings. We share more than just funny internet memes. We share each others lives, whether it be to our friends in a closed Facebook group, or to complete strangers on a comment on a blog post. Some of my best lessons I learned came from some random person's comment. A plant needs water, dirt, and sunshine to grow, and the internet provides all of that for us moms. The water is the advice and wisdom. The sunshine is the humor, and the dirt is the comfort of friendship (or being anonymous in many cases).

It becomes your fantasy. We human beings love characters. We read books, watch movies, soap operas, prime time soap operas, reality television... whatever. We like characters. We like getting to know someone or a personality who isn't real in our lives and letting our imaginations run with it. We like falling in love with them. We like hating them. We like learning from them. The blogs online provide that. Each blogger is a character who pours their life online and you get to love and hate them. ... My friend is obsessed with Grey's Anatomy and has been making me watch all the seasons with her on Netflix. I never quite understood the character love deal (human fanaticism) until this show. Izzie is my lesbian lover, McDreamy is my husband who I cheated on with Henry who just died in whatever season I'm on, Arizona is my best friend and mentor and I am Yang. None of these characters interact like that on the show, but they do in my head, much like I am Insane in the Mom Brain's wife who cheated on her with The Bloggess and Moms Who Drink and Swear is my mentor (who I argue with a lot, but she teaches me so much with it) and People I want to Punch in the Throat is one of my main personalities I've been repressing for years. Mary Tyler Mom, she is my best friend I want to hug every day. Bitches in the Burbs is the Army of Bad Asses I call on when I need back up in a fight, you know, my posse (in reality, they give great fashion advice). The Zookeepers Wife is my therapist (she really is an astrologist), and I am Counting Caballeros' crazy cousin (she's the practical wise grounded one, even though she has more children than I do, and we really are probably related even though I met her online). Holdin Holden is my career oriented friend that makes me feel like I'm in a scene of Sex in the City except it's about booze and motherhood more so than sex. I Want a Dumpster Baby is the woman in the rap video I'm trying to mimic the butt shaking in the mirror nekkid, and I am Honey Badger Press (I'm not really her, just in my mind I am, I really am Dribbles and Grits). 

Of all possible addictions one could have to cope with MOM Syndrome, I think the internet is the healthiest approach. I also turn to Diet Coke, energy drinks, chocolate cake batter, and other cheap methods that do nothing for me but hurt me in the long run, but the internet, it entails good and bad, and it's my choice how I use it.

One thing I want to say to you, the person reading this, sometimes we have bad days as moms. I don't care if you forgot your mommy childhood (the early years of the motherhood struggle), you can at least admit you had bad days. You had crazy days where the shit you said made no sense and sometimes you were hurtful only because you hurt. Remember that other moms do that too. If you see them doing that anywhere, online or offline, don't be an ass about it. Ignore it and move on, or reach out and touch someone with some love. Some of us need tough love, real talk, yes, but when we are emotionally ready for it. A stranger trying to give the tough love talk, or the mocking (I tend to mock), that might just send them into a downward spiral and that shit is not cool for their kids. When you mock a mom losing her mind on Facebook, you are fucking with her kids indirectly. I'm not saying she's going to beat them to an oblivion or abuse or neglect them, but she is NOT going to handle her kids in her best mindframe if you provoke her, especially if she's on the brink of completely losing her shit to begin with. Don't be the flying monkey that pushes people over the edge. Reach out and reel them back to a safer ground.