My failures

I'm really struggling with being enough right now. Enough mom, enough adult, enough wife... I feel like I'm in a tug of war for my own identity.  Am I any good at any of these?  What is that saying, jack of all trades, master of none?  But have I even begun to scratch the surface of enough?

I'm told by "experts" and magazine articles that I'm not supposed to tell my daughter how smart and capable she is, but to point out how she is smart and capable.  Have I been doing it wrong this whole time?  She is smart, though now she's behind in school because she simply didn't pay attention in school and didn't care.  I bet she still scores in the high range of proficient on the TCAP in almost everything like she has in years past.  I feel like she needs to hear that we believe in her intelligence, that it exists within her.  Finding examples to illustrate her intelligence right now is a struggle because she's done so poorly for so long.  I don't want to create a little monster, but I can't have her believing the worst of herself either.  Sigh...  parenting can be a setup for failure, or that's how it feels.
  
Anyway, I guess telling a kid they are smart is considered detrimental now - it creates self esteem with nothing but air to back it up.  When I was a kid we were just expected to do well, to get good grades, to perform, and I was rarely congratulated for good grades.  I didn't know I was even allowed to fail; it was just my job to do well and when I didn't for whatever reason, I felt as though I had become a disappointment to those around me.  I couldn't have cared less about getting good grades, I just wanted to pass.  Never having anyone tell me they believed in me, that they thought I was smart, left me believing that I wasn't capable of much.  Add to that getting pregnant as a teen, and well, I believed every stereotype about stupid teen girls.  

I am also the enemy to my daughter now.  I was stupid before, now I'm stupid, clueless, heartless, and an iron beast with no sense of justice.  Try that one on for size.  I can hardly function because of the tears in my eyes and lump in my throat.  I have told her for a few years now that I'm not her friend, I'm her mother but I never felt like I was a horrible mother.  I know I need to grow thicker skin, but it's painful and I don't like it.  Imagine me stomping my feet and throwing a little temper tantrum there.

And that's where I start to feel as though I'm not enough of an adult.  Do adults throw temper tantrums?  Do they cry at the drop of a hat?  Do they struggle to keep the bathroom and kitchen clean?  Is laundry their nemesis?  Geeze, this adult stuff is a load of BS; I want off the ride.  Twelve years old sounds great - middle school, washing dishes and keeping my bedroom clean, playing with friends, having sleepovers, birthday parties, learning to cook and playing with dolls.  I was on the verge of adulthood without a lot of the adult concerns.  But I'm an adult with adult responsibilities.  I can't call in sick to work because I can't afford to lose any pay, I can't cancel all of my clients because I'm struggling with being a mom, I can't go on a shopping "spree" to buy all of the things we need because I wouldn't be able to pay the bills when I was done.  So I just suck it up and go to work, but I daydream about a vacation, about zero responsibilities, of having all my children grown because I don't know how to handle the here and now.