I have absolutely no title for this

I'm feeling very selfish. And like I'm an awful mom.

All I do is yell. I tell him to stop doing things when he's misbehaving, to do things he's supposed to but isn't, and it's just this constant nononononononoononononononononononono.

And he won't play by himself. I don't want to hear anyone's crap about only-child syndrome because the last thing anyone in our house needs is another human. But he must be doing something, with someone, every single solitary second of the day. If he's not, he's whining about it. Which makes me yell. Which ends up with his butt in the time-out seat and my head just that much closer to a migraine.

We can't even have normal adult conversations, Tim and I, with each other or with other people, because the kid insists on being the center of attention. He can't just sit there and color or play with his hand-held games or read (which he's doing at a 3rd grade level, his preschool teacher tells us). No, he has to act like he's mentally deficient. He jumps around like a monkey and talks in a baby voice and makes strange noises and asks 4 million and 3 questions about things he either already knows the answer to or that are really unanswerable (why do dragons breathe fire, for instance).

I don't want to be one of those parents who centers their entire life around their kid. I love him. But he's not the only thing in my universe. I've been in therapy enough to know that if I don't get time for myself, the walls start crashing in. How do identify myself? I refuse to become the person who has no life of her own, simply the person who is the chauffeur and wait staff for the kid as he goes to playdates and gymnastics and demands dinner and snacks and drinks and so on.

He's whining. He's crying. "I really want you to play with me." So it's time to run the bath.

And now he's screaming, "No one wants to be nice to me!"

I could scream it right back.