on motherhood

9 1 2
                                    

as a daughter, one of the last duties you must perform is give birth yourself. after that, you’re free. free as a daughter. ovulation makes you think about children, about motherhood. i was reading sharp objects and i realized how unsure i am of surviving my daughter’s teenage years. i say child, i think daughter because it seems to me biologically impossible that my body could create someone who is interested in, say cars. are cultivated habits inheritable? google is divided. will my (craziness is a crazy strong word) discomfort at life be passed on to my child? im pretty sure my discomfort was acquired. its foreign. so will it be passed on to my child?  and how will she navigate a more cruel world with this discomfort? is there anything pure for her to experience? will all of her joy be through online purchases? there is no moral reason for me to have a child except that it falls into my duties of being a child myself. but i don’t feel queasy about being a mother. infact i think i would make an excellent mother. will having a good mother compensate for the horrors the child will witness in its lifetime? existence is suffering. why then are we compulsively having children? the earth doesn’t need us. im diverting from the point. i couldn’t give a damn about what the earth wants if existence was not suffering. if existence was not suffering, i would make a hundred babies. i would be a mrs. weasley. a mrs. ramsey. motherhood is so final, there’s no coming back from it. this is what makes it so scary. after you become a mother, anything that happens to anyone is something that could've easily happened to your child. you cannot, for example, watch Manjummel Boys.
there are prerequisites : selflessness, courage, the ability to know from right to wrong, blind faith in the ways of almighty. you must also promise to not care about your birthday. you must not want the last slice of cake. you must be almost obsessive in your love. you must be willing to sexualize your daughter before someone else does. you must point out to her that her legs are not just legs anymore and do it at 12 to be early enough. you must open her eyes to the ways of the world and startle her by your cold acceptance of them. you must never bring up the mutilation of the body, lest she refuses to give birth herself.  most importantly, she must never know you knew existence was suffering before you gave birth to her. she must never know everything you did for her was some kind of an apology.

Trash PoetryWhere stories live. Discover now