I Am Yours
Day 1 at home. Photo by GBRLIFE LLC
Children were a dream of mine from the earliest of my memories. I would play with my dolls and pretend I was their mommy who loved them more than anything else in the world. It wasn’t just a game for me, because I felt true love towards my doll children because as a kid that was the closest, I could get to being a real mommy, I aged and felt excited about the future children I would have, thinking I would definitely be a young mom because this was clearly my destiny over everything else, I knew I would be a mom. It always felt like my soul was yearning to be a mother because it knew something I could never understand until I held my son. No, Not carried him, the day I held him. His birthday changed my life, but it also completed it, because the dream was here. And as quickly as it changed, I felt more lost than ever. How does a dream turn into confusion?
The confusion was valid too because a mother is often spoken about as an instant transition. It’s not. Even in the extreme need to be a mom, I had to get through the obstacles of learning to be one.
Getting to do Something as easy as sleeping as I used to without even thinking about it, was no longer an option until my son was able to sleep on his own. I had to put all of me to the side and be his lifeline because he needed me more than anyone else. At first, I resented that. I just wanted to breathe without worry but I loved him so much and I was willing to learn. I wasn’t a selfish woman. I was human and tired after going through labor, in a country that doesn’t care about mom after she delivers her baby with spinal migraines and a need for just some sleep. My human needs were in my face and yet I was a mom now. This meant survival was beginning to change from what my body needed to what my son needed.
It was about him, my human son. My doll came to life, my destiny arrived. Sleep needed to wait, and the pain was going to be pushed aside.
But I was scared and alone in that fear because I didn’t know how to express how trapped I felt in my new role. Because I was still me, I thought a switch would happen and all of a sudden, I would be a mom. I thought I would know exactly what to do and say but I didn’t. It was just me, completely unaware of how to take care of a child. Today, I know that I was already exhibiting signs of Post-Partum Depression but less than 24 hours after he was born, I had no idea what was going on with my brain or that it would be ok.
And it was ok!
Time, putting in the Work, and my Husband, all brought me to the other side to see my kids and my role in the way I had always imagined.
I wake up to chaos, and handle tantrums or boo-boos with my beautiful family with love so deep in me that I can finally understand what love actually is. My son was my introduction and my daughter solidified it but today, when I see them, I gladly say…I’m not mine and I don’t want to be mine. I will always be me, but I’m theirs.
To be a mother is the biggest blessing and beauty on this planet. It’s harder than any other job, hands down. But it’s with the tears and pain we feel that we know how much we would die for our children.
Without question or hesitation, I would accept a thousand deaths of torture if that would mean my children would be spared any pain.
Seems intense right? It is the love that is immediately there but it’s so intense it can absolutely cause anyone to want to run away from it. And I’m happy I never did and that childhood me got her wish.
Today, When I look at my children I proudly think, your mine but really…I am yours.
