No one warned me about the boxes.
I wasn’t going to have kids. I was never interested. How could I be, watching myself and my brothers sap the life force from my mother, who worked full-time and homeschooled me and was always aggravated by something we’d done (or not done)? It looked like a thankless, miserable job. Nah, I’m good.
Eventually I turned 27 (as some of us do), met a solid guy who gave me a taste of what security and safety might feel like (that was some heady shit), watched a close friend happily go through pregnancy. Became interested in birth and postpartum work. I was hooked. I wanted a baby. I never bought the biological clock story, but the urge was real. Who knows—was it hormones, was it the desire to do it right (ha) to break the generational cycle of traumatic childhoods, was it was it was it. Does it matter?
Had to get married, though. Mom told me how she and grandma got in a fight and grandma told her to take her bastard child and get out of the house. I wasn’t going to have an illegitimate child too, no ma’am. My face would get so hot when kids asked me if my parents were divorced and I had to tell them they’d never been married, I’d never met my dad. Why couldn’t I just have normal divorced parents like everyone else. Ugh.
Got married. Box number one. I remember looking in the mirror before we went to the courthouse, feeling like something was wrong but wasn’t sure what. I knew, though. Wildly anticlimactic. Changed my last name, was excited to do it. Didn’t like the way the one I’d been born into sounded. That last name was lonely, anyway. I didn’t share it with anyone except some estranged relatives. Went on a disaster of an impromptu honeymoon. My libido disappeared shortly after that.
It was the way people didn’t see me the same anymore, after I had that ring on my finger. That box, I felt it. It was the beginning of the end of my life. I was Taken. Wasn’t as visible anymore. In a different category. Married. Half of a whole. Whatever. Shut up.
Stopped listening to music. Stopped dancing.
God I wanted that baby. Finally got pregnant, thought it would be instant but it wasn’t. Nothing organic about it. Hated being pregnant. So sick and exhausted. Not glowing like a goddess, not connected to my creative force, not immersed in the most meaningful and sacred experience of my life. I wasn’t slender like a willow tree with a perfectly round but petite belly, craving mangoes and wearing white flowing dresses. I knew I was doing it wrong, because you all told me how excited you were for me and you were more excited than I was.
Instead I was waiting in the In-n-Out drive thru at 10:45 AM because all I could stomach in the morning were double-doubles and fries. Watching the numbers on the scale increase at a dramatic rate. Trying to talk myself into believing that if I ended up with stretch marks it would be okay because I’d have created a beautiful life with my body. Thinking about how nice it must be to believe that, because we all knew stretch marks would really mean I had used the wrong oils or not done enough yoga or had bad genes or not had enough money (the worst crime of all).
Crying all the time because I felt so much grief. Because I was in the expectant mother box, box two, and you couldn’t see me anymore. And I couldn’t see me anymore. And I could never be myself again. Worked really hard on my new persona of virginal mother, so into motherhood, number one interest: being a mother. Understood I was supposed to be getting off on how transcendent becoming a completely different person with a single interest was gonna be. Failed at that too. I wanted this baby so bad. And was so sad.
Gave birth to my giant son at home on my bed. God I loved him. What a fucking creature. Got why people do it. The final box, though. The mother box. The box of all boxes. It was so lonely in there. It was the loneliest place I’d ever been. Turned out I was supposed to go to mom groups, and since I wasn’t that’s why I was lonely. Simple. Why didn’t I get it, we would all be friends and bond and I’d be happy because these women had also procreated—we had so much in common. Everyone warned me I’d grow apart from my friends without kids, it was the opposite. The ones with kids didn’t have time for friendship anymore. My single friends came and listened and told me tales of Outside.
No one talked about the fading away. The loss of self. The unspoken expectation that my primary identity would be Mother, and I’d better be goddamn grateful for the opportunity to fulfill this noble calling. I had no idea, the years of numbness to come, trying to exist in this too-small oddly-shaped box, simultaneously frozen and thrashing, pushing pushing pushing. The tests and specialists and bodywork to figure out why I had no desire. My friends bought me an exorcism with Shari the shaman in her trailer in Topanga Canyon. Still nothing.
Liberation came in the form of separation, single parenthood, divorce, and the Magic Mike franchise. There was freedom in perceived chaos, who knew. Once again a wildcard. No particular box, could go a number of ways. I remember the first night I made a playlist and danced on the floor of my beautiful empty apartment in small town Oregon while my son slept in our room, and realized there was nothing wrong with me. I texted my best friend, the friend who wrote me a check to help me escape the boxes, and told her that it was so, so hard and I wouldn’t trade it for anything because I was free. I was fucking free.
I regret nothing. Thank you for the time in the boxes with the depression, the pain, the numbness. With the bullshit new-age self-help philosophies. With your projections. With the struggles. Thank you for all of the lessons. I’m free.
