You've always known yourself to be ridiculously sensitive. An introvert, mostly, and, though your husband does not believe it, you relish pleasing people. You prefer to think of it as respecting others' time and feelings, but, yeah, you love to be liked too.
You take daily medication to keep yourself from feeling too much. It works, to an extent. Once, when you were trying to get pregnant and had to quit the medicine, you spent a week crying over one-legged pigeons. You remember thinking this exact thought: The whole world is an open wound.
It seems a little melodramatic now, but, if a pigeon had to hop around without his second foot and people had to sleep in doorways covered with ratty blankets and cardboard, and babies had to die just as they were learning to take their first steps, then it also rang true.
Almost from the beginning, you've had a low tolerance for chaos. It puts you on edge instantly. It makes you want to claw and scramble your way Out. Even with your daily dose of an SSRI, it is hard to maintain your sense of self when you're surrounded by seemingly random noise.
But there are some things from which you can't get Out. Parenting being one.
You chose it. You wanted it. You went off your little, white pill to get it.
And now you have to be in it. You have to live with the very thing you spent the majority of your adult life avoiding: Loud insistence. Demanding love.
It kills you. You suppose it sustains you, in some ways too. It is warmth and its own kind of acceptance. Your thoughts, though, are only sometimes your own. Your body is rarely yours alone.
You wonder when you'll stop mourning the girl in the apartment with the cat. The girl who was you and who you can't, somehow, let go of.
Beautifully put. Sometimes I find myself wanting to go home - although I'm not sure where that is. Both the apartment and the cat are long gone.
Posted by: Susan | April 13, 2009 at 05:42 AM
Reading this I bet many, many women are saying, yes that's it.
Posted by: Nora | April 13, 2009 at 10:31 PM
Exactly.
Posted by: Holly | April 13, 2009 at 10:43 PM
I never knew I craved silence and peace until about 5 years ago. At that point, I was already 13 years into parenthood. I tried to solve it by staying up late at night, but that only made me a grouchy parent. It's a thin line we walk, isn't it?
I've been on meds for the past 8 years. It's helped a lot. I wish my own mother medicated, then and now. Alas!
Posted by: kcinnova | April 14, 2009 at 04:02 AM
oh gosh yes.
I feel like some atrocity....i can't wait for mine to hush and grow up so we can sit at the table and have a cup of tea, or go out to dinner and the girl can go back to her cozy little apartment. The mess, the noise...leaves me so unhinged at times. And i love it, but know i'll love it more when we can all be friends and no one is pulling hair or crying over socks with seams.
Im sorry for this.
Posted by: Ashlea | April 14, 2009 at 09:11 AM
but it is so all worth it. They grow up and are so grateful and filled with love and wonder at the job you did. yeah, right.
Posted by: ardith tate | September 24, 2009 at 07:34 AM