You're Fine
It’s embarrassing but I have recently admitted to myself that I find motherhood very hard and it’s okay to say so. It isn’t just the baby. Any task assigned to me is overwhelming, no matter how big or small. My brain is struggling. I get distracted. I can’t hold dates and times or financial information in my head. I forget things: I left the changing bag in the art gallery. I left the baby’s cardigan and my boyfriend’s water bottle in the pub. You may recall from the last newsletter that I forgot to get my visa for India and nearly ruined the entire trip. I can’t finish tasks. On the other hand: I get wildly energised and act as if someone is setting fire to everything and the only way I can put it out is to clean it. I tell an anecdote at 99% volume in the coffee shop, wake up at 4am and write 1000 words, pass out on the sofa in the afternoon, so tired I can’t finish a sentence. I act crazy!
I hope that I will somehow manage to ‘un-crazy’ myself before the baby becomes a more fully developed being, one who can retain memories and ask questions, like “why is mummy crazy?” But I know that it is unlikely that, after 37 years, I will be able to ‘un-crazy’ myself in time. I will just have to continue to do my best:
meditation
yoga
no drugs
apologise when necessary
don’t abandon everything (but remember that I can if I want)
On that last note: I am reading The Baby On The Fire Escape. It is about artist mothers and HOW THEY ‘DO IT’!!! The key seems to be either to be wealthy or to abandon your children. I find it inspiring to read about mothers who just fucked off for a few years in order to write, because although I wouldn’t and won’t do that, it allows me to ask myself what else might be possible. I read about all the gals turning their backs on their babies, and I think ‘Oh!’. Not for me, but… ohhhh!
This week the whole family caught a bug: first a grandmother vomiting and bedridden on Mother’s Day, the next day me lying on the floor because the room was spinning, my partner running to the bathroom all night, the baby throwing up all over his cot and himself and emitting the strangest high-pitched whine at 3am. I have to admit that it was only when the baby was sick that I accepted that we all had the same thing. Before then, as is my wont, I had been explaining away all of the adults’ illnesses as a weird coincidence(?), a combination of unfortunate timing, dramatics, and food intolerance. “I don’t think we are ill,” I said to D as we lay in bed, his stomach making the most ungodly sounds, my own tightly cramping even as I tried to ignore it. “I see,” he replied, through gritted teeth.
I have a pathological inability to accept that anybody is unwell. If that sounds unsympathetic and mean, well, it is… BUT! I also turn this skeptical eye on myself. As I was being wheeled through the hospital during a medical emergency while pregnant with my son, through the blind panic, I managed to have one intelligible thought: that I was somehow faking it and had, against my own will, and simply because of the sort of person that I am, stopped my baby’s heart for attention.
It’s easy to explain, obviously, my aversion to illness. I don’t want it to happen, and so I simply refuse to believe in it. So WHAT? Is that so bad?
Oh, you’re ill? You’re not ill, because that isn’t nice! You’re fine :)