What Do you Do with Mom-Hazing?

Mom's can be mean.

I learned that before the ink on my mom-card had dried, before I could walk straight or get a cup of water on my own. I reached out with a question and was still exhausted. Of course I was exhausted. I'd just given birth.

Their diagnosis on me was visibly wrong, so I didn't rush to a hospital like they said.

And then I couldn't take every advice- because there was one of EVERY advice. When in doubt, trust your own mom, right?

And then I didn't update fast enough. I didn't realize they wanted an hourly play by play of a life I was just trying to live.

And then suddenly

Ow. Owwwwww.

Caring about a person enough to reach out when you're worried is a kind of caring. Caring enough to be vicious because they couldn't explain something proficiently while recovering from a mild hemorrhage is not caring. You don't get to keep using the "care" card when your care is stabbing them when they're at their weakest and making sure they never ask for help again.

You don't get to say you care when you don't care whether your advice is right, you just want it obeyed when it will hurt everyone.

I wrote down later that week that the only thing I regretted about our birth was asking for advice afterwards. That's not true, though. I regretted letting people far away from me speak into my life and tell me I was too stupid to be a mom, when the people close to me said I was smart enough. I regretted letting people be aware of my weakness and my struggle, when they could use that to shake their heads and say I was inadequate and immature. I regretted trusting people in aggregate instead of holding to the tiny circle of people I knew in person, when in aggregate, people couldn't be satisfied and all I could do was hurt them.

I regretted letting people in.

Now every time someone tells me I should join a group of moms, I shrink. I stop. My smile freezes, and I say, "That sounds great," or"Good for you!" But what I'm thinking is, "I'm not right for them. I'm right for a cave alone."

Because maybe there will always be someone who takes offense instead of holding space, who attacks first instead of reading twice. Maybe the response to, "Do you know anything about this? Because I'm scared and hurting," will always be "Don't come back; you bother people."

I've learned to find my own information. I've learned to trust my own gut and keep my own counsel and be fearless in my decisions. I've learned not to need them.

Maybe I'm ready to make more friends, with the part of my heart that was so hurt cauterized closed. I don't know.

"Are you in love yet?"

My first day holding Sam, when the full difficulty of getting back my strength hadn't been realized, and it was just a daze and I felt like we'd found a free baby in our hotel, a friend asked me, "Aren't you in love?"

I avoided the question, because, no. I wasn't in love. I was dedicated to this little creature with my life. I would die for him, as a matter of course. But I wasn't in love. That bizarre disconnect that hit the moment he tore out of me and the world when numb, when I picked up the little body and he screamed and my brain that had held it together through all the hours quit like a switch, that was still there. I couldn't even connect the angry little creature in my arms with the one who'd bumped around during D&D games and kicked at Collin's voice. Nothing seemed real.

And then everything was hellish.  I was alone and the infant didn't know how to feed.

He shoved me away and screamed. He punched and bit and kicked and I wasn't strong enough to hold back his tiny limbs from hurting me. He glared into my eyes with a desperation I understood and demanded things I didn't know how to give him. The first bonding moment we shared was when I let myself cry like a deserted thing with him, when I clutched him and sobbed for both of us. We were trapped in Hades together.

Then, we learned. We adapted. We fought. I fought for him.

Pain was our life. There were hot needles in my chest, and sitting up was horrible because the world perched on blades. But I fought to get tiny jaws clamping down while I yelled in agony, left him and staggered across the house falling against walls to get a clean eye-dropper and cup to bruise myself till I could make him scream just a little less. And moment by moment, you felt real, Sam. Nothing about you, nothing about us, felt free anymore.

You weren't pushing me away and screaming because you were mad at me. Little arms don't work like that. You pushed and then screamed because I was away, and you didn't understand.

There was that moment, holding you, when I finally understood that you were the one who twisted inside me before you entered the world. There was that moment when you woke yourself up with a scream that immediately cut off when you looked at up me, and your face went calm. And there was that moment, leaning on the couch with you cradled close, your tiny mouth finally eating, when your eyes looked sideways at me, and you finally smiled.

That's when I fell in love. That's when we won us, Sam.

It's somewhat like they said it was. I don't know about my heart being bigger than I imagined, but when you cuddle someone for hours to help them poop and you cheer when they fart, it's a bond you don't get anywhere else. And I bet it's going to be that cliche, where I'm softer on you than other people are and I ask you a million questions when you're out and grown because I still really care. When Collin was avoiding saying he liked me, what seems like a million years ago, he told me he'd invested a lot in me.

All of me is invested in you. So grow strong, Sam. Feel safe. I'll be here.

And I'm so proud of you for farting.

Last Shift

February 9^th, 2017.

I wasn't ready to share this before. And then I wasn't able to type much for a long time. But here.

I just worked my last ever shift as a cashier. I laughed with people, I ran for people, I circled things on receipts for them. When the people were gone, and I wiped down the surfaces again, I kept hearing myself whisper, “Goodbye.”

Goodbye, metal counter. Goodbye, ray-gun. Goodbye, red laser well. Goodbye, ugly phone.

My Collin told me, when I cried quitting our first teaching job, that you can lose a place, but you never lose the person you became for it. I can lose my store, but I can’t lose me.

I was never cut out for this.

I never got “mentally tough.” 

I never learned to read 100% which people wanted me to not be a person that day. I never stopped being a person.

I never got where I didn’t make mistakes. My speed and efficacy were directly dependent on how much caffeine was in my system, and I wondered frequently if I’d handed back a check or a coupon or someone’s $20 and whether I’d have a job in two weeks.

I was never good enough, but that was okay. Because every interaction, every glob of change, I was reaching out for help. I was thanking Him for every chance I had to be here, praying for the things I couldn’t fix, asking for help fixing what I had. It got to be where every moment became worship, and every hour fed my battered soul.

I was never cut out for this job, but I gave my all, and it was good enough.

It matters, because I know what’s next, and I'm not cut out for it either. I get scared. I’ve watched me fall like a house of cards.

The thing is, maybe I'm never going to be enough. And maybe that's okay.

Maybe I can go on without being enough.