Quick TW for medical intervention and a bit of birth trauma stuff
When I turn thirty, I will have been A Mother for almost exactly two thirds of my ‘adult life’. The future stretches like a long shadow from those four, tiny pre-procreative years, they look smaller with each hour that the sun lowers in the sky and my life as A Mother becomes a great beast that stretches across the pavement at my feet. My kid is in my shade and they are playing a game of never-stand-on-the-sunlight. They show me how to cheat, running down the sidewalk.
’The shadow is always at your shoes, it doesn’t even matter where you stand!’
They spin, arms outstretched, dark spots greet each footfall, they’re right.
I think of my body as a separate force from my mind, my parenthood a second mind and body. The fragmentation takes a toll, and I wonder often how many people I can be at once. I suppose the shadow is always attached to my feet. When I was twenty-one and pregnant, the dog days, dog tired. Sick as a dog, vomiting in my bed, pissing myself, my child biting at me from the inside, dog-eat-dog- I had ceded the physical to them and there was nothing I could do to slow the process. The child creates itself, and keeps creating, with and without the mother.
Now, I work at untangling my body from the space of their need. Breastfeeding becomes distant, intimacy optional. Still, the kid reaffirms their claim on me, they write ‘I heart mum naked’ in the steam on the bathroom mirror with a supreme innocence and I tell them I prefer a little more privacy. Later, other hands run down my chest with the soap and water, a different face at my nipple, I don’t know how to be the same person. Still, my body reaffirms reproduction’s claim on me, blood in the water all marbling at my feet and a red stripe down my leg.
When R was born, the placenta stayed inside me, ragged pieces of their life reclaimed by a doctor, elbow deep in my torso. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry’ she said it again and again like a mantra as I hemmoraged, her hand against my womb. In the car seat, an hour old, it’s one of the first things my child ever saw. New eyes and their mother getting fisted on a hospital bed, that’s life kid! The first photo of us together is of me taking a selfie with them on my couch, legs splashed with blood, blood pooling at my feet, I’m sending it to family in America.
It’s so funny, like ha ha funny, like I read these things I write in a sombre voice and I’m like ha ha what a funny weird insane thing to have happened to me ha ha why didn’t I like my kid? Why did my body get so fucked up ha ha it could only happen to me ha ha my friends dealing with the same shit what are we like? Why was I taking a selfie I could probably have died ha ha ha! In hospital with sepsis, on the floor with the slipped disk, on new brain meds that make the pain worse, on pain meds that make the brain worse my friends and I ha ha ha what a crew.
My kid tells me that I’m a really good mum now, they say ‘you didn’t used to be that good but you’re really good now.’ They lay on my body and they’re so huge, they still want me to put their clothes on for them even though they can do it themselves. I lock myself in the bathroom to send a nude. At some point here I’ll have to find out how to osmose back into myself again. We do origami on the bus and it’s like a show. I can see old folks looking at me like ‘that is a Good Mum’ and I’m like ‘no phone for now little buddy let’s get the paper out wow what a good little heart you made here’s how to make your folds more crisp!’
I’m at a performance with my friends and they are Mothers too, we aren’t even women but the mother thing stuck. The performer gargles into a contact mic, they say they want to steal my baby. The baby transforms into a red ball. We all play with it, the audience, arms outstretched until it rises and doubles in size, triples, exponentially until it is a new planet, they sing ‘don’t ask me to explain myself.’ Afterwards we talk about how much we loved it and also whether or not we are MILFs and if we want to be. L says ‘I don’t like being called a mother but I like being called a MILF’ and I’m like yeah I get that. R is a new planet and I orbit them. I want to be the sun.
My friends take turns letting me stroke their hair, I call people baby in lots of different ways. I think I have been a Mother since my own teen mother screamed with me all day in the postpartum psychosis of our empty house, or since my brother was born, or my sister was born, or my sibling was born. Or maybe since my youngest brother was born and I cut the umbilical cord and maybe I started being a mother when I was fifteen on the phone to a friend changing nappies. Or maybe I only became a mother when I started telling my friends I loved them and kissing their soft heads like they are the most precious things in the world to me. (They are.)
R gets so much more confident each day, they are swimming and sewing and they are still somehow a cat all the time especially when they are anxious. I think they are trying to model their chubby belly after mine, they’re exceptionally proud of it. I’m exceptionally proud of them and I’m like how do they do it and I’m like maybe I am a Good Mum now. I go to the gym and I can feel the tattoos curl and uncurl with the loose skin at my underarm, when they hold my hand it still weighs down my whole body.
What I’m getting at, what I mean is, god what I’m trying to say. It’s something like god, oh no, aw crap, I maybe have to be just one guy after all who’s idea was this anyway? Like I’m writing this stupid essay and I miss my therapy appointment ha ha ha my therapy where I was gonna talk about how insane I feel on the school holidays ha ha just writing an essay about feeling insane about how I feel all the time ha ha, that’s life kid!
I really did miss my therapy appointment to write this! The show I reference was ‘An Evening With’ by Alex Franz Zehetbauer as a part of Buzzcut Festival which still has events running through the month. It was so wonderful, I highly recommend it if you ever get a chance to see it.
Love From Lydia
The photo of you with your kid is both the sweetest and most metal thing I've seen all week. Loved this essay, but I hope you make your next therapy appointment ha ha ha