Baby stuff is always so smiley.
I sat in a fog that was mixed with exhaustion, self pity, and hanger.
The smiley stuff was mocking me, laughing at my failures as a mother and a human being.
Everything is smiling, but why aren’t I?
At that moment I realized I was in a scary place I didn’t want to admit, because admitting it would mean that I wasn’t strong, that I hadn’t learned anything over the last 31 years, and I wasn’t the kind of person I’ve always admired.
I wondered how anyone ever made it. I wondered how women took pictures.
“Pictures.” I thought “I can’t even manage to shower daily. How do women get glammed up for entire photo shoots? How are they smiling so much?”
I thought maybe it would be a good idea to blame someone for my misery and so I did. I blamed everyone there was to blame. My husband for sleeping, my friends and family for abandoning me, myself for being so weak and most importantly, all that stupid smiley baby stuff – for mocking me through it all.
It felt good to sit there hangry and exhausted, blaming everyone and everything that popped in my head. I let it burn me up until there was nothing left but tears and just like a newborn child I cried because it hurt, but I had no idea how or who could fix it.
In the rubble I wished I was someone else – someone better and more capable. Someone more . . . smiley. Alas I am not, I am only me and I can only give what is available for me to give.
Motherhood has been a humbling experience, mainly because it shows you who you are. It showed me that I am not a superhero. My hair isn’t combed, my boobs and postpartum gut are melting in my lap, my eyes red with a blur of sleepless nights, and my heart filled with senseless rage – all the things I feared most about becoming a mother, wrapped neatly in a package at my doorstep.
I mourned the person I was because I liked that person, but she didn’t belong to me. She was just another layer I wore to play this game called life. I told myself I would eventually get myself back, but now I’m not so sure. ‘Myself’ a year ago is gone, everything is different now. So instead of getting myself back maybe it’s better to take what I have and create a new, more specialized version of me – a ‘me’ I’m discovering more each day.
Layer by layer has been stripped by life’s challenges. There have been many challenges, because I have so much to learn and I won’t take such an opportunity for granted. I’ll bear my cross, no matter how painful, and I’ll bear it my way – kicking and screaming at the pain. I’ll fill my veins with every sensation because that seems to be how I like to live my life best, close to the beating pulse.
I thought “what if I’m suffering from postpartum depression?” and the thought made my stomach turn.
But then something told me “what if? This is just your story.”
And so I take my story, and turn the page anxious to see what happens next and grateful that I feel so alive.