I have a lot of days where I feel like I’m losing the battle. I don’t even know what the battle is, but it feels like not winning. I returned from a brief out of town trip last week to find that my bedroom was… no longer my room? Ninja had decided that mine and husbands room would be our entire ‘house”, and that he would occupy the rest of the home. He set up a “kitchen” area with dishes and food from our actual kitchen, and moved a bunch of stuff around to divide the room into different areas such as a relaxing area and a workout area. He even set up a mailbox outside the bedroom door, consisting of a Lincoln Log tin with small bin on top.
Now we have talked about his space being his space and my space being my space, and for-fucks-sake-that-doesn’t-belong-to-you-so-don’t-touch/move/play with/take-it. We always end up back to square one every single day, with him having no concept of anything and everything within his reach not being up for grabs. He definitely had some sense of what he was doing making us unhappy, because he was kind enough to leave a note in the mailbox he so kindly constructed. It read that if we do not want the house, he would just sell it to someone else. Apparently since he “built” the house it belonged to him, so he would either sell it off if we decided not to keep it, or I could buy it from him for $10. We would be permitted to visit him and and dog in the rest of what had been our house.
What even is this? Eminent domain? Extortion? This construction took place while husband was cooking dinner for Ninja and himself. When only one parent is home he gets into so many more things because you have to watch him every second. He will be playing quietly one minute, and the moment we turn around to cook or shower or do some work, BAM, he’s removed all of the family photos from a hall table and declared it his work area, or he has taken all of his clothes out of his closet to turn it into an office, or he has built a new state in front of the sliding door that’s blocking the hallway. The state was named Mountain State, since “I can’t call it Texas because of copyright law”. Are state names copyrighted? Not gonna lie, I didn’t have that on my bingo card.
He even divided the car into my car and his car. His car consisted of tape he put on the floor representing petals, a round stacking stool that folds up and hangs from the back of my headrest as a steering wheel, and a bungee chord that stretches between the two front seats and has a pack of wipes and his army hat hanging from it. Everywhere we have gone for the past few months he has told everyone he got a new car and then asks if they would like to see it. He gets upset and yells at me every time I have the audacity to move any components to make room for things I have to transport.
We are now at a point where we cannot go anywhere public at all without Ninja displaying a persona. He either has to wear his camo jacket and be military or SWAT or his police costume so that he can stop crime. On a rational level I know that these personas represent authority figures, and as such he feels in control and can refuse any perceived demand he might come across. He simply cannot go anywhere as just… Ninja. I’m always bracing for the akward encounter of writing a perfect stranger a ticket for any perceived infraction, or unhinged yelling at anyone who suggests he is “pretending” to be those things. For this reason I am always extremely nervous when going somewhere new or meeting new people. A neighbor threw a get-to-know-your-neighbors potluck recently, and I of course was hesitant because I have met almost none of these people (we live in a very rural area that’s not a neighborhood, and people mostly keep to themselves). After some back and forth, husband and I decided to make a go of it, a decision we regretted almost immediately upon arriving to the strangers back yard. We had not yet rounded the corner, when Ninja ran ahead (in his police uniform, brandishing an empty Super Soaker, naturally) and yelled “FBI, everybody freeze” and proceeds to yell to the confused strangers about looking for criminal activity and why people would be getting tickets. So…. yeeeah….. First impressions, amiright?
Many days have been hard lately. Every day things are a battle every day. He constantly wanders around with the remote control and forgets where he left it, or needs to be told 37 times not to jump off of the furniture into the glass door, or he runs away and hides when it’s time to brush his teeth. Some days I am just not in the fucking mood, you know? PDA kids gonna PDA and the best I can do is try like hell to not yell at him all the time. I mostly fail at that, but I’ll never stop trying.
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