Lost and Found

I think maybe I was lost before I was a mom.

Maybe I expected to find myself in motherhood.

Maybe I did find myself in motherhood.

Maybe I don’t like who I’ve found. 

Or maybe I just don’t know her well enough yet. 

So often I want things to slow down or stop or ease up or straighten out or smooth out. I want to shed some of these layers of motherhood and “get back” to my old self, my real self. I want to wipe away the constant worry. The aura of anxiety. The mind racing clutter trying to make sense out of the chaos. The hum of noise. The hypersensitive, edgy, jumpy over-reacting shield of defense I have developed by default. 

If I could be free of some of this I imagine it would feel good. (It is not possible. This is just a wild wild fantasy.) Just to imagine it for a second feels wrong.

Not because I would be forsaking and betraying the tiny humans who are dependent on me, who literally are my whole world. That is not the reason it feels wrong just to entertain delicious thoughts like these.

It is because I am afraid there would be nothing left. I don’t remember who I was before this phase of my life. And I wonder if I wasn’t really anything, at least not in comparison to the person that I am now.

(Please don’t take this as a declaration that “motherhood must complete and define every woman”. That is not what I mean at all.)

It is more that I think my depth and capacity for emotion and reflection and meaning-making are now a gaping chasm at this point in my life. Where they used to be a tiny crack with barely room to drive a wedge through.

This is a blessing and a curse, to feel so deeply. To hold so much complexity. Maybe it comes from giving life to something. Being the creator. It launches a love so strong, an emotional capability so palpable. There is no way to go back to that previous version. That is what has been shed like an old snake skin. And not the other way around.

I’d love to end this on a definitively positive note. To say that it is all so beautiful and humbling and enlightening and worth it. I think it is up to each of us individually to say that. I think it is true about motherhood as much as it is true about life. But that’s my own perspective. I cannot look in the mirror for anyone else.