The fact that I have to check our toilets more than once a day for a pungent, clogged slurry of old toilet paper is disconcerting. When I thought about what parenthood would entail nearly two decades ago, that scenario simply wasn’t something I could conceive of (nor should anyone have to conceive, unless it’s your job, and if it is, I’m sorry). Sometimes parenting is the worst thing ever.

I’ll be frank: parenting sucks. Clearly not always, at least not in the grand scheme of life and why we’re on this planet and what it means to be alive. But parenting literally sucks. It sucks the “self” out of you. It sucks the hardness and ego and myopic views of who you believe you are and the importance of your existence to the world, right out of you. It sucks. It’s 100% of everything all the time. It requires a certain amount of insanity and disjointed psychosis to be a parent. A bit of doctor and teacher, accountant and philosopher, policeman and judge.

It sucks because when you’re not checking the toilets and reminding your child that their used toilet paper doesn’t go in the waste basket, you’ll be repeatedly begging another child to stop playing the same damn piano song while you’re talking on the phone.

It sucks because while you’re attempting to pay some nearly overdue bills your child is pulling your shirt and saying your name 873 times in a row, which you inform them does not make you want to help them wipe their butt any more quickly.

Then all at once, after so much of your self has been sucked way, you’ll be filled with enough rage to rip a house to it’s foundation, while at the same time grit your teeth and swallow your words and give a hug you didn’t know would magically squelch the flames of your anger.

You’ll be as confused as a cat in a yoga class as there’s shit on your hands while you attempt to clean out the tub after yet another bath-time disaster that’s equally hilarious and horrifying as you try to find something to pick up the floating menace of baby waste.

You’ll feel so protective and worried that it etches a hole through you heart as you see another child say something so exceedingly cruel that you contemplate ways in which you can make that 8 year old “disappear”.

You’ll endure physical harm as your hands get calloused and dry washing the yet another plate of a half-eaten, complaint-riddled meal that you made because there needed to be a food on the table.

You’ll find your composure eroded so thin that you say words you can never take back and use a bit more force than you thought you possessed and find yourself on your knees from weakness, begging this being you love so illogically for mercy and forgiveness.

You’ll sink low into the depths of anguish, as your child helplessly cries with pain and blood and snot and sweat and shaking, and you will beg God and the universe and everything of power to take away this suffering from your child for ever and always, and then you break into ten thousand pieces and brush them away to find the strength you need to show your little child just a glimmer of hope.

And then you’ll know this is parenting and this is sacrifice and this is selflessness and this is what your parents felt for you: everything all the time.

Because that’s what parenting is: everything all the time. It’s every job, every emotion, every element that makes a human as horrible and wonderful as they can potentially be, every failure, every victory, every moment all the time. And you’re stuck with it. Oh sure, there are times (and I won’t say how many or how often because why would I do that) when you wish that maybe you had a different family; that family you were duped into believing was real from all those Facebook posts, the family that has kids who never scream or hit or throw or whine or disobey or test or push you to the very brink of your limitations. But you’re stuck, and so are they, with their imperfect selves that somehow are exactly perfect for each other.

Parenting isn’t a job, it’s a duty. People quit jobs — often — but you can’t quit being a parent. Ever. Even if your kids disavow you, disown you, never speak to you, even when you die, you are a parent and you will always be a parent. And it’s best if you just accept this duty and stop looking for validation and rewards and praise and acknowledgements and just do your damn duty. Then, when you least expect it, you’ll find yourself with a belly full of laughter and eyes full of tears and a heart as full as a galaxy and think about how blessed are you to have been given such a thing as this, a thing that sucks all the best who you can be and your family.