Agitated....

First of all, I want to say thank you to everyone that spent the time to put a comment on my blog. It means more than you all know and I appreciate you.

On another note, I cannot believe how agitated and frustrated I am tonight. I feel like I will just spring out of my body and scream until my throat is raw and bloody. I don't know what my problem is and just the fact that I am agitated makes me more frustrated.

I love my daughter dearly. She is 14 years old and in the ninth grade. Lately she is driving me nuts with her lack of wanting to do anything around the house or anything period. She just wants to do what she wants and doesn't appear to care. She is also going through an arguing stage and even when I tell her to stop arguing she tells me that she isn't! I realize that all of this is completely normal for her age, but it is driving me crazy.

When she started the ninth grade, I wanted her to start disciplining herself more and so I didn't give her a bedtime. I was hoping that she would be able to discipline herself to get the rest that she needed. We had a family talk about it and the condition of not having a bedtime was that she had to get herself up in the morning, ready for school and to the bus on time. She also had to get her responsibilities done in the morning, which was to feed the cats and dog and give them fresh water.

From the very start she didn't do a very good job of it all. It even got to the point that she wasn't doing her responsibilities and was so tired in the morning that she wasn't able to even get up. She would turn her alarm off and go back to sleep. I kept giving her chances and kept discussing with her how she can discipline herself. Nothing worked. So, I had to give her a bedtime of 10:00pm on school nights. I was actually quite disappointed because I really want her to start taking responsibility for herself. She only has four years left and then she starts college.

At times I feel like I am trying to cram everything I think she needs to know and do in these last four years.

With that background, I hope that it is understandable that I was exasperated with her tonight because it was 10:00pm and she had not taken a shower or done the things she was supposed to do and was still watching television at 10:02pm! I asked her what the problem was and she said that she didn't have a problem. I asked her if she realized the time and she said that she did, but wanted to watch television. That really got me. I told her that in the future if she wants to stay up later, instead of blatantly ignoring the rules, to talk with me about it. I said that sometimes I will let her stay up later and sometimes I won't, but that the important thing is to communicate. She said, "OK" and we'll see.

That isn't the only thing frustrating me at this point. My husband is frustrating me because I feel like he doesn't appreciate me and he yells any time he wants to blow off his frustration. It hurts my feelings when he does this. It also makes me angry and resentful because it seems to be not allowed if I am frustrated, but it's fine if he is frustrated. He is also too rough at times and when he's playing he physically hurts me sometimes. Not majorly, but it does hurt. When I tell him to stop sometimes he doesn't and that makes me feel like he completely disrespects me. Sometimes he does stop, but he never apologizes. Sometimes, like tonight, he just gets mad. I asked him to come back and he gave me the finger and walked out of the room. That was 15 minutes ago and now the TV is blaring.

I'm not trying to make him out to be a monster. He isn't. He is actually a very passionate person and cares a lot. Just sometimes it doesn't show and I am just frustrated by the constant drama.

Even if my daughter and husband weren't driving me crazy tonight I would still feel frustrated. It's something inside of me that I can't figure out the source and can't fix.

Wow, I just realized that I used some form of the word “frustrated” eight times. I hope tomorrow is better.