Call of Duty Oneshots (Mostly Ghost)

deluge.

How can resentment and adoration cohabitate so naturally?

You love the sleeping newborn cradled in your husband's arms; you adore both of them. The overwhelming fondness radiates off of you as Simon gingerly handles this bundle of joy you've created together, knowing his blood-written ledger is dripping, and yet he's just so gentle with her.

A little girl.

You imagine a life full of this manly, tattoo-decorated soldier dressed up in a tiara while having a tea party at a tiny table lined with stuffed animals. Him pushing her on the swings, teaching her how to ride a bike and kissing the subsequent boo-boos, and staring so stone-cold when she brings home her first boyfriend.

It's a future that feels so far out of reach as you're crumbling within the woes of the newborn stage.

The resentment becomes your new flatmate, an unwanted one that you never invited in the first place. Terribly timed and terribly demanding.

Whoever everyone sees outside the walls of your home is not the same person your husband endures. You're able to feign a persona who thrives as a new mother, who finds no qualms in the sleep deprivation and the lack of sex you're able to have. Or the half-eaten meals that you squeeze into your schedule with a sleeping baby on your chest. Or how drinking room-temperature coffee is now your new favorite way to intake caffeine, involuntarily so.

There are better days when it seems as if you reach the top of an invisible mountain, but there are also days that feel as if you'd gotten nowhere at all still lying in a puddle of your own messy bodily fluids at the bottom of said treacherous climb.

The crippling days get to the point where simply looking at your daughter makes you irrationally angry, and a trip to the garden or your mother's house can't even drag you out of the deep hole you've chiseled out of the side of the steep summit you're constantly in the middle of climbing.

Those are the moments where you find yourself spending longer periods of time to yourself whether it be taking care of your stinking body which hasn't showered in God knows how long. You smell of spoiled milk and body odor, and yet your husband looks at you as if you're a goddess.

Like you're not crumbling before him, becoming someone you can't even recognize.

As if he won't love anyone else despite the branches running through your once-perfect skin, a burdening reminder of your difficult pregnancy. Despite the constant bags under your eyes or how you don't smile as often as you used to.

You have to keep reminding yourself that it's not your fault.

You pour so much into your child, that you're starting to lose pieces of yourself.

You try nourishing your child from your own bosom, a feat that you're proud of for a while, but you grow to detest the bond. It tires you out more, sapping up all the energy needed to stay awake and aware.

So, your husband suggests giving formula.

"You've done beautifully, love, but I'm worried about you. Maybe try it for a while, and we'll see how you feel afterward?"

You try it, and something unlocks within you as soon as you gain body autonomy again.

Happiness.

Until you have to switch formulas. Again. And again. Just to have a semblance of normalcy - of how life was like before having a baby - there is a cost. You have your body back, but now you're having to deal with colic on top of everything else.

With your daughter constantly screaming, it seems as if she drowns out your own. Your cries fall into deafened ears, and nothing can save you.

It's not your fault.