How easy it is to fall apart and break down. Even in my moments of strength I find a stray thought can rattle my mind like a tiny bullet fragment finding its way in silently and shattering any semblance of calm, happy, ok.
There is this little person sleeping in my bed. I don’t know who he is and despite certainly being there when he was born I have the sense that he was either adopted or dropped off by a stork in the middle of the night. He doesn’t look much like a baby but instead a miniature person complete with facial expressions one would expect from an old man more than a newborn child. But in the early morning hours when my husband sleeps and I hope this little creature I know deep down that he feels safe in my arms because he is my son. He is the creature that grew from nothing to a human in nine months in my now stretch marked, dangling-skinned stomach that recently was home to this grunting little being.
The night I found out my father passed away I felt as if I was going to vomit but never did. I was in the middle of what was supposed to be three hours of sleep but I couldn’t rest again once I heard the news, despite having two hours left on my shift. I grabbed my son, headed to the couch, and watched him sleep peacefully for the rest of the night.
That night before dawn was the first time I saw his smile. I know it was simply reflexes likely due to passing gas but his smiles cradled my broken heart. I tried to focus on him — on our future together — on this new family that we had just made. Scared as I was to be someone’s mother and exhausted as I was to be pumping every 2–3 hours around the clock to ensure my son has breast milk to drink despite being unable to latch, I felt like maybe I could figure this out. That this month I’ve started a new life — my old life feels more like a destination I’ve once visited that no longer exists. I’ve been clutching on to my childhood too afraid to admit it’s gone and I can never return to it. But at nearly 35 years old, it’s more than time to admit to myself that it’s gone. I wasn’t letting time naturally progress so god pushed me off the ledge to full-blown adulthood. And everyone else would say — it’s about time.
For the most part these days I feel numb. As someone who has battled depression her whole life, used to escaping to my car or restrooms or conference rooms to cry and then hope no one notices my reddened eyes, this feeling is new. It’s a mix of overwhelm and not wanting to process what’s going on. It’s my trying to jump to logistics and help my mother manage some issues with finances due to being a new widow and potential mistakes made by a man who was very ill over the last 13 years and who was too proud to ask for or accept help. I struggle to sleep despite being beyond exhausted. I must take short 3 hour naps and each time it takes me a good 30 minutes to shut my mind off. But, still, I feel empty, with moments of warmth in seeing my child’s smile, and moments of the deepest, most torturous sorrow coming in waves of sobs until I can no longer breathe. In between these highs and lows is this sense of nothingness — or, a sense of no longer wanting much of anything. Just wanting to go through the actions of being a good (or good enough) mother, to simplify my life, to stop being caught up in chasing what I can’t have — or who I can’t be.
I feel lost and exactly where I’m supposed to be at the same time. As the hours and days fly by, as I acknowledge that I’m somehow already on my forth week of maternity leave, I can’t understand how time works anymore. I can only try my best to cherish these moments with my son and try to feel connected to him — try to love him the best I can. I do try. I try when I sit connected to the pump so often and hope I produce enough milk to keep him well fed. I try when I hold him in the early morning hours when I force myself to not fall asleep and instead stare at his innocent face lost in a wordless dream. I try when I change yet another diaper and hold him tightly moments after since I know to him a diaper change is the most traumatic thing in the world other than not being fed immediately when his stomach starts to growl.
My eyes frequently and anxiously check his stomach to make sure it rises and falls. I flashback to him in the NICU hooked to IV and feeding tube and monitors and hope I never have to see him like that again. We listen to Alexa’s lullaby station and I hope the music calms him and accept that it calms me. That the sickeningly sweet melodies and voices of children’s songs are perhaps one of the ingredients of the recipe I need to survive right now and the minutes to come.
I’m sure many moments of happiness are around the corner. Everyone suffers losses in life of those they love. Many have complicated relationships with those they love as well. Death is rarely clean — it’s either unexpected and a sharp stabbing pain or a long, slow slice over many years. In our case it was a bit of both. As horrific as it is to die, in many ways it’s likely harder to be the ones left behind, with all the “what ifs” and “what nows.” One thing is for sure — life is damn short, and the best we can do is make the most of it everyday. Even if we alone live 100 years and a day, the chance those who we love will make it that long is slim.
So here I am, a complete disaster, and completely where I need to be. I’m afraid to let myself feel. My husband looks at me with such sweet, loving eyes when I hold my son — and when he holds him, I gaze back and see the father he was always meant to be. I try not to fast forward to the years ahead. I try not to panic and think about one day losing him. But death clouds my thoughts these days.
To attack each of these thoughts, I close my eyes, shake my head, take a breath, and try to start the moment over. For these moments are all that matter and I can’t get them back if they’re smeared with gasping for breath and being sucked into this black hole where I can either stay for eternity or fight my way out with fully experiencing every sleepy smile, every gaze of wonder, every warm cuddle and even each deep-bellied, shuddering cry. He is my everything and I can only hope I’ll be his, and together we’ll make the world make sense again.
life with interest 