After I had my daughter so many people asked me ‘doesn’t it make you feel closer to/understand better/relate more to your parents?’ And I never knew what to say because the answer was no, not at all, it actually did the opposite, I understood them even less. But I never said that because that would make almost everyone really uncomfortable. But that’s the way it’s been since becoming a parent. Since giving birth my brain has unleashed memories previously tucked so far away for so many years because they were…sad. And bad. And discomforting, to say the least.
I walk in to a room that my girl has totally trashed, paper everywhere, toys everywhere, the tiniest toys all over the place that seem impossible to gather up and she looks at me, an innocent moon face, bright, bright eyes containing so many mysteries that are thrillingly revealed to me over time, mysteries I have no control over, that get opened like a present for me when she says things like ‘this is a trapezoid!’ or ‘look at this heart I drew!’, the utter heart crushing joy at getting to know her. And I don’t give a fuck about the mess. (Later a memory trudges up through my muddy guts of my two sisters and I making paper snowflakes, sitting together watching tv while my parents are out to dinner or a party, then they come home to bits of paper everywhere, snowflakes everywhere, 3 innocent sisters; ‘oh what is the mess!!! Oh god why did y’all do this!’ Arms grabbed and punched, seething anger; small bodies shoved for trying to escape, because if it’s not a face it isn’t bad right? It’s just an adult fist punching a skinny adolescent arm or leg or hip for making a mess, for doing anything at all, and even then many of our faces were not spared over the years.)
Sometimes I’m tired and impatient and things take so long and my husband and I fought last night and sometimes parenting is boring and sometimes a tiny person needs more than you think you’re capable of in that moment and then they look at you with that innocent, shining moon face, those bright, magical eyes and they do a funny dance or say ‘lookit my trick mom!’ and hop on one leg for the first time in their incredible tiny lives and you hold those reigns on your impatience and tired body and you laugh at their cool ass trick because they love you and you love them more than you will ever or have ever loved anything in the fucking entirety of space and history. (And another memory bounces through your skull to the forefront from that deeply hidden place and you remember getting picked up three hours late from school by your mom who didn’t work, who just didn’t want to come get you yet, and you were scared that something happened, or that you’d never get picked up and everyone would leave the school and you’d be there all night by yourself, or you just felt again like you don’t matter, you don’t fucking matter and you finally get picked up and you don’t say anything, only pout because you’re a little kid and you are feeling things kids aren’t supposed to feel and you don’t know how to deal. And your mom turns around with narrowed eyes and calls you names like hateful and ungrateful and brat and tells you she deserves her time and you just think over and over, I don’t matter I don’t matter at all. The burden of controlling themselves nonexistent. And then another one lands in your gut and you remember playing in the basement with your sisters for hours, feeling glad that you can not bother them, that they will surely be happy for that, then one of them storms in and yells and yells about anything, about God knows what, picking you up by a small shoulder only to push you away, or even just comes in to stand in front of you and your sisters faces to scream. Just scream, then walk out, 3 sisters laughing at first until realizing that not even getting along and staying out of the way is ok, nothing is ok, you don’t matter, you don’t matter at all.)
I read an article recently, an interview with a psychiatrist who said ‘everyone-men and women- has mommy issues and daddy issues’ and I thought ‘truth, lady. Truth.’ Inevitably our children will be, at the very least, gently bruised peaches because we are inescapably flawed. But when people would ask me those questions after my entry in to parenthood, I wanted to scream (and still want to scream) ‘Fuck no! I will NEVER UNDERSTAND an adult who allows themselves such subjectivity while forcing their children to bear the brunt of their decision to indulge their every feeling of impatience and irritation and anger, to bear their parents unhappiness so intensely.’ But I don’t because it’s embarrassing to be an adult and a mother and still feel so ill equipped to deal with even the memories, embarrassing to realize that you’re so ingrained with garbage pathologies that every interaction in your day, that every relationship in your life can be controlled by these ghosts that aren’t even you but that live in your brain, your body.
I usually just say ‘yeah’, or ‘uhhh hahaha I don’t know!’ And then my mind spirals and spirals and I start to hear that voice again whispering you don’t matter you don’t matter at all, but I’m better now at turning that off. The best I can do is know that I will ultimately wind up not doing the best I can do by her, and that when she’s a teenager, or adult, or mother herself, and she comes to me with her own wounds I will owe her my humility, I will owe it to her sweet shining face to say ‘I’m so sorry and I love you, I’m so sorry and I love you’ and that’s all, that’s all.
jiujitsufeminist 