I set out to write this blog as a tribute to my vivacious, precocious, energetic, talkative, thoughtful, caring, fearless, lover of bugs, and all things pink and artistic daughter.
I found myself wanting to give back story. My childhood. My marriage. My pregnancy experience. My childbirth experience.
Quickly, I lost focus. This isn't the road I had intended to travel tonight, but I am now just a little too open not to write. If I don't, I will lay in bed thinking of everything I want to say until I get up and get it all out.
Everyone has a story about the emotional journey they've taken in their lives. For me, most of that journey centers around the women in my life. While there isn't a real beginning, for me, there was definitely a moment when I became myself for the first time in my life. For me, finding my inner strength, and confidence and the ability to love myself was something that eluded me for most of my life.
There was one moment. One night. One person woke me up and shook me and made me live.
All my life, I was afraid. As a child, I was scared of everything. I didn't like strangers. I was paralyzingly scared of insects, particularly spiders. I was scared of the dark. I was terrified of and hated being alone. Even as an adult, I would run from the doorway of my bedroom and jump into my bed and pull my feet up because I was sure that something was going to jump out from under my bed, or from a shadowy corner and the end of my life would be something worthy of a horror movie.
As a young woman, I wasn't very mature, I was blindingly angry, I was devastatingly sad, I was bitterly disappointed. And I had no idea how to feel those things, or why I had to feel them so intensely and constantly. There was and sometimes still isn't a middle.
I feel lucky now, to be able to feel something so deeply; because I understand that it's a gift, this intense passion. When you're young, it is more of a curse. It's all consuming, terrifying and hopeless.
I remember, in middle school, I had written something and showed it to a friend. She told me that it was scary. She didn't like it, understand it; and I felt different. When you're in the 7th grade, the last thing you want to feel is different. So I wrote in secret, and it was dark. It was scary. It was angry. It was graphic. I don't know where it came from; because I wasn't angry then. But, when I'd sit and think of a story, it seemed to be pretty twisted when I was done writing and looked down at the paper.
If teenage angst was an art, I perfected it. While the purple bangs, and black nail polish, and combat boots didn't make it out of high school, the unfaltering knowledge that I wasn't like everyone else stayed with me. I was ashamed, and tried out so many different versions of myself to try to fit in with someone; but nothing seemed to stick.
I forged ahead with a career, then abruptly gave it up to get married and move across the country. Despite falling in love and getting married, not a lot changed inside. I discovered new depths to my disappointment and anger and added resentment to the list of reasons to
try. not. to feel anything.
Having my daughter wasn't planned. I was never the kid that wanted to babysit; I never had baby fever; I didn't enjoy being in public places with other people's children. When you are angry and resentful, you exist in a miserable place of judgement and disdain for others. Other people's happiness is a source of ridicule and disgust. The pure innocence and joy of a child was lost on me. It was an annoyance. It was an awful way to live. All I ever did was compare my life to other lives, and it never seemed to be as good. I never felt like I had control over my emotions, or my life at all. Being a military wife, where my life was never a priority by default, didn't do anything but exacerbate the feeling of worthlessness, especially when you add deployments and their effects to the mix.
When my daughter was born, I remember the feeling of sheer terror that I had the first night in the hospital. I just knew I would be charged with murder because they were leaving me alone with her in the hospital over night and I was supposed to keep her alive with nothing but myself. Literally, with just me, I had to feed her, and hold her, and comfort her. I have never been before or after that night, more scared of anything in my entire life than when my husband left that room.
That is the moment when my entire life changed. It was the worst and best night of my life. I didn't sleep. She cried constantly, and she would sleep for only fractions of an hour at a time. I was more exhausted than I'd ever been, even though I'd been able to stay awake for days on end just a few years before this. Never in my life did I have to think and act exclusively for someone else. I was silently frantic. Inside, I was screaming and gave up over and over and over. I just kept thinking, "I don't know what to do! How could anyone think I could do this? I CAN'T DO THIS!" I would sit, and when she wouldn't eat or need to be changed, I would rock her; hoping that it would quiet her. I cried the whole night. I'd never been so helpless and also so determined at the same time. Every piece of me was telling me that I had no idea what I was doing. Every thought I had was telling me how I'd be a horrible mother. I just knew I wasn't going to be able to make it through the night.
But, we made it. She lived through the night, and so did I.
I haven't been the same person since. She saved me that night. She saved me from a reckless and tragic and empty life.
Before I had my daughter I was hollow, unfulfilled, purposeless. Before I had my daughter, I was afraid of the dark. But, that first night in the hospital; we sat in the dark together. And I haven't been afraid of it since. I am strong: for her, because of her. I may have kept her alive, but it was my life that was saved that night.
No comments:
Post a Comment