Know My Pain

June 1, 2020: A letter to Blake

Sometimes, because you're so much like me, I forget that you might not be. like. me.
Maybe you'll read this and then take it in to your dad and whisper, "what the fuck is up with mom?"
And that's okay. It's okay if something doesn't resonate with you. It's okay if you don't believe in what I've said or if you can't understand it or if it isn't a true aspect of your life.
But it IS true. For me. And that's important. What is real for me might not be real for you but it IS real, and I demand the respect of that.
Equally, what is real for you may never be real for me. Sometimes I can't even fathom what the world will look like for you in 10 years. And your life will be different from mine anyway, because we will have grown up differently. Maybe I won't be able to relate to your world at all. But I promise to always respect your world. To believe in your world. To stand up for your life when someone in your life inevitably gently (or otherwise) mocks your world.
I will be a defender to you. Not just because I'm your mom and you're my child. Not just because I MADE YOU INSIDE OF ME (so mind blowing, still), but because you're a person. You deserve that. Everyone deserves that.

Right now I'm 32 weeks pregnant with Fiadh. You're asleep in your bed and I'm painting the baby room.
Sometimes if I let myself think of it too hard I become completely freaked out. For all that I love you, being a mom to a newborn is hard. It's exhausting and soul-wrenching work. It's joy, yes, but also terror. It's also frustration. It's also sadness.
Being your mom is the most soul-satisfying thing that I have ever done, but being your mom while having a baby sounds like a nightmare. It just does. I'd love to say that it sounds beautiful and wonderful, but what it sounds like is years late at night. It sounds like anxiety. It sounds like constantly biting my tongue so that i don't say something that I don't mean when it's been a long day.

People don't talk about this out loud. It's not something that I grew up knowing or understanding. Because you don't want to hear that your mom is exhausted by you. You don't want to hear that your mom isn't always happy. It's hard to not take it personally. To not feel responsible.
But the truth of this, and of life as a bigger picture, is that it's almost never about you. My life contains you, but it is not JUST you. My life is 31 years long already. It's full. It's complex. And while you're (usually) the best part of my life, nothing is beautiful all the time. Nothing is perfect forever.

I hope that you know that I'm not always perfect or happy or beautiful, but that I made these choices that brought me here at 7:29pm at night, pregnant and covered in paint, and I don't hate it.

As a teenager, I thought being an adult meant freedom. In all of its forms that I could imagine it, i thought I'd be free.
Being a child and being a teenager meant that I was in these constrained boxes of Not Old Enough. Not Wise Enough. But being an adult has meant that I've constantly been put in boxes, usually of my own making. It's a lot like being a teenager, except the responsibility is different. The consequences are different. The boxes are boxes that I made for myself and jumped into. Now I'm in a Married box, and a Mom box, and a Homeschooling box. And these, do not mistake me, are boxes that I have chosen. Boxes that I love. But boxes are not freedom.