Making choices..

I love bloghopping, especially blogs that have life stories. Real, everyday stories.

I found this post about taking charge of your own happiness while bloghopping sometime ago.
It certainly helped me keep my calm today. *edited to add: 'today' was 26/7, I didn't initially wanted to write this but I finally decided to write it anyway as a reminder to myself.

I had spent the entire day taking care of my family; waking up early preparing our pre-dawn meal, staying awake so that I wouldn't be late taking Shahrin to pre-school, came back home and crashed for a bit before Nazrin woke up and demanded my attention, followed by Khairin etc. Then, at noon, I went to pick Shahrin up, came home and did the dishes, the laundry, swept the floor..you know..household chores.

WHILE HE SLEPT.

This in itself isn't unusual. Even during normal days (pre-Ramadhan), he would sleep till noon. After 7 years of being married to him, I have learnt to take this 'condition' of his with patience.

Things went along as usual in this house till around 5pm when I got the boys ready for a trip to the nearest playground at the housing area. Shahrin has been badgering me to take him to the playground since forever. His pre-school teacher would sometimes take the entire school (of about 10 kids, heheh..) for a fun time at the playground which is just 5 minutes walking distance from the school (well, honestly, it is a residential house turned into a school/daycare, but ever since the second teacher was re-assigned, students have dropped from around 20'ish to only half of that). So, he would occasionally ask us to take him there too.

On that day, after promising him that I would take him and Nazrin there since 2 days before, we got ready for a day at the playground. I woke Ahmad up just to tell him that we were heading out. He got a little bit upset. I'm not sure whether he was upset over being woken up or the fact that we're going out. He did grumbled something about we shouldn't go out but since the boys were already in the car, I just told him that we'll be back soon.

The boys got to play with their brand new ball that day while I kept Khairin entertained. It was fun watching my 2 boys running around chasing the ball. They had fun on the slides too which were their favorite. Then, around 6pm, we all got back in the car to head on to our Pasar Ramadhan to buy food for breaking fast. As I drove along the road, I decided not to stop there as planned. There were too many people around plus I couldn't find a parking space close enough to the pasar. I didn't want to have to try and contain 2 boisterous boys while surveying the foods available there. The boys may not listen to me and run around in the crowd and got lost or hit by motorcycles. Plus, I would've had to carry Khairin too, so shopping for iftar had to wait.

So, I drove on back and got the boys inside. Ahmad was up and watching TV so I told him that I'm heading out again to buy food for iftar. My plan was to leave the boys with him and take the motorcycle to get back to the pasar. Nazrin saw me getting the keys and he immediately ran out as well. He's very alert when it comes to me or Ahmad getting ready to go out. Ahmad would always take him along whenever he goes out on his motorcycle so, Nazrin wanting to tag along is nothing new. Then, Shahrin also wanted to join us. He normally would ignore such trips as he prefers to watch cartoons but on that day, he wanted to come along to buy some curry puffs.

The problem was that Ahmad's motorcycle is kind of high and me being a petite person, often struggle when I'm handling it. My feet don't touch the ground when I'm on it and having Nazrin & Shahrin along is not an option. So, I casually asked Ahmad to take them instead and buy food for iftar.

He stormed off into our bedroom, put on a shirt and his jeans and stormed out. Before I could tell him what to buy for iftar, he'd already started the ignition and rode off with the boys. I was miffed at that time but I still have to cook the rice, so I headed back inside and decided to forget about Ahmad's moodiness.

About 20 minutes later, they came back with Shahrin crying, Ahmad sulking and Nazrin normal. Shahrin told me that Ayah just took them for a ride around the housing area and he didn't stop to buy anything. Shahrin kept on crying that he was hungry and he wanted the curry puffs. By this time, my annoyance had turned into anger but as iftar was only an hour away, I just had to improvised or we wouldn't be breaking our fast that day. All the while, I was steaming inside. I was tired, my son was unhappy with his father while he did nothing to help me. Instead, he had added on to my problems. While I was preparing our simple dish for iftar (luckily I had some minced chicken in the freezer, so I cooked it in some chili paste) I couldn't stop myself from thinking about the D-word.

It surfaces during times like these. Whenever Ahmad pushes my patience beyond the limit, the D-word would pop up. I mean, I kept thinking to myself, "Why do I put my kids and myself through this shit day after day? He's not gonna change, so why not ask him for a D?" During normal days, which can last for months, the D-word is pushed to the deepest place in my head but on days like this, it surfaces.

Then, I remembered the post I linked earlier. I told myself to calm down and not let him MAKE ME UNHAPPY. He is clueless. He is selfish but he does not have the power over MY EMOTIONS. Thinking about that made me calm down a bit. I was able to keep my cool about the whole incident and we were able to break our fast in relative calmness and normalcy. Had I not decided to not let him make me unhappy, I would've sulked at him or yelled at him and gave him the silent treatment. This would usually lead to him treating me the same which would result in a communication breakdown where he would just ignore me. I have learnt through experience that it is never good for me to have him that way since I totally depend on him to buy things from the store or look after the boys while I do my work or for other things as well.

I made it through the rest of the day by not showing him how angry I was at him for not buying food for iftar and for not buying those damned curry puffs for Shahrin (I managed to make him stop crying by promising to buy him some on the following day). If I had chosen to let him make me unhappy, I would've spent the rest of the day crying or stewing in anger which is not good since the D-word would come up.

Well, luckily today (27/7) was a bit better that that day. He woke up earlier than usual and he helped wash the dishes and helped with the boys. So, all in all, by making the decision to not put my emotions in his hands albeit him not knowing about it, has saved the day for all of us.

*sigh*