Momancholy
People often ask me what it’s like being a mom. When I tell them it’s like living with a low level depression, those who don’t have kids are kindly worried. Those who have kids, solemnly nod their head. I don’t worry about it, though it surprises me sometimes (okay, so I guess we are crying when she stands up on her own for the first time). But it’s true. The sadness is deep and it’s there and I don’t imagine it leaving anytime soon. I’ve never felt so comfortable being so sad. And extremely, deeply, happy. The term, bittersweet, really is such a poignant one.
I get sad when we turn the lights out for bedtime because that’s the last time I’ll see my daughter’s face that day, and I’ll never have this exact day with her again. I’m happy when I walk downstairs to sit on the couch with my husband and feel a semblance of our old lives. I get sad when she grows out of her clothes. I’m happy finding sweet new little outfits. I go through pictures of her as a baby cherub blub and cry. I’m ecstatic over the fact that she loves fries and screams joyfully at dogs (“doggo!”) and her pink plushy bunny. It’s all so very tender. I’m tender.
Even right now I can feel that tenderness in my chest. She’s at daycare. My husband is in his office. I’m sitting with my cat writing on my iPad. The neighbor is having band practice. I wish she was here but I also need space. I want both and both is not possible. And it’s all so real and sad and beautiful and mundane.
It’s not depression, I promise. It’s more like melancholy. Momancholy. I can function. I go to work. I see friends. I listen to the Taylor Swift theories on her past relationship and her albums and her re-records. But it’s all colored differently now. The filter that I see the world through has changed. Things matter less, and they matter more. I’ve never thought so much about if the grass is soft, or is the food hot, or is the room cool enough. I’ve never thought less about if the person likes me, what I’m doing on a Friday night, or the latest political scandal.
Everything is more simple. I’m more simple. I want simple. And it’s sad. There’s a grief in accepting that I’m a different person now. This version of me is new and unfamiliar. I’m still getting to know her. She’s softer and stronger. She’s limited. She’s emotional in a way that would have embarrassed old me. Old me would have resisted Momancholy. Old me would have said “how sad that you let yourself be sad.” Old me was judgmental of the friend who told me that it took her a year to recover from her first child.
I get it now. I’m the weepy mom in the Target aisle getting size 4 diaper when the past few months have been size 3. I’m the sad mom putting her pumping stuff in storage and buying plates that suction to a plastic high chair. I’m also the mom that had a meltdown when she realized how many diapers she would be changing for YEARS. It all feels really extreme. It’s the most beautiful extreme I’ve ever lived.
Momancholy cuts deep and it cuts hard. It’s also the softness of my arms that my daughter rests in. It’s the welcomed bruises that she leaves when she grinds her kneecaps crawling over me, chirping and babbling at her toys. It’s the sweetness of picking her stuffed bunny out of my bed that we spent the morning snuggling in. It’s the completeness of her head resting on my collar bones when I rock her to sleep. It’s the bittersweetness of knowing each day is uniquely that day, and it will never happen again.
