Dale's Doll

Dale's Doll - Part Three

Day by day, I have been feeling like my beautiful little girl is being taken away from me.

All she wants, is her tatty old doll.

All her time and her affection, is spent with that tatty old doll.

Maybe I have failed Delilah as a mother?

Maybe I shouldn't have returned to work so soon?

Maybe she's attached herself to a plastic doll, because she feels like I have unattached part of my motherly role to her?

Vince thinks I'm overreacting, while I'm thinking he's not listening to my justified worries—and it's causing a lot of marital friction between us.

I feel angry with him.

Angry at myself.

This is our doing.

Delilah has become more dependent on a stupid doll, because she no longer feels like she can depend on us.

Vince leaves the house at 6:00 AM and gets back just after 6:00 PM, while I drop Delilah at nursery for 8:30 AM and collect her at 5:00 PM—no wonder her separation anxiety has manifested itself into an unhealthy attachment to that old doll of hers.

I had always planned on reducing my hours once Delilah had started school, because I felt it important that I could do the school runs in the mornings and the afternoons, but when I suggested to Vince that maybe I should reduce my hours now, he went off on one about me 'not sticking to the plan'.

The plan, means nothing to me now.

The plan, actually makes me furious.

Vince, makes me even more furious.

We should be putting Delilah first, not the stupid bloody plan!

I'm losing my little girl.

And it hurts.

It hurts, that all of her time and her affection, now belongs to that damn doll.

That needs to change.

I need to change.

I want my precious little girl, to want her mummy again.

I want her to need me again.

I want her to chatter and to giggle, with me.

Since we bought her that stupid doll, I feel like too many things are changing—my marriage, my motherhood, my home life—it's all slipping through my fearful fingers.