Being a parent is hard. It starts from the moment your child is born, though it really ramps up when you take that shiny, defenseless infant home. In the hospital, you have nurses and aides and lactation consultants to help you figure out how to care for your precious child. When you're home, though, it's all up to you.
It's like a 24-hour game of Keep the Freaking Baby Alive.
Sleep deprivation, the process of healing from having birthed the baby, the every-two-hour feeding/nursing/pumping cycle—it's all exhausting. Forget about trying to take a shower or feed yourself; your own needs become totally secondary and sometimes tertiary to those of your helpless little meat bag.
Eventually, though, you start to feel grounded again. You test your legs, unaccustomed to the feeling of your own feet beneath you, and find there's a moment or two of sanity and stability. Those moments slowly begin to come more frequently. Somehow, a few weeks later, you find yourself able to manage your child and yourself and all of the little details that go into keeping the freaking baby alive. You can even manage an occasional shower or nap. You might even get to watch half a movie before the baby squalls for food or a fresh diaper again.
"It's okay," you think to yourself smugly. "I've got this."
And then it all changes again.
The baby hits some developmental milestone—growth spurt or rolling over or crawling—and the feeling of control dissipates in an instant. You feel thrust back to the beginning of the most difficult time in your child's life, and it can be disorienting, beginning that process of regaining your ground again. It happens over and over and over as a parent, though eventually the milestones grow father and father apart, giving you more time to catch your breath.
That's kind of how I feel right now with the whole process of being single again, like I'm learning to parent myself in a new way.
When DH lived in the house, we were masterful at managing the logistics of our family life and co-parenting the children—at least on the surface. Our communication when it came to errands and bills and schedules was excellent; we almost always knew exactly when and where everyone would be at any given time. We were very successful at carrying out our daily grind.
As we've begun living our separate lives, I've had a lot of time to reexamine those roles and how they actually played out on our stage. I'm surprised by how much I feel I actually carried for both of us, for the entire family. For years there was a nagging sense of resentment toward him about that, though I wasn't able to vocalize my discontent for a very, very long time. By the time I realized I was unhappy, there was a substantial amount of damage, and it was months before I was able to be honest with him or with myself about the true source of that dissatisfaction.
Let me be clear that I don't think I carried the entire marriage or our relationship for that full twenty years. There were undoubtedly times when he was carrying me, taking care of me when I couldn't. On the surface, that's what committed couples do. I think there are times when we each effectively enabled unhealthy choices and damaging behavior in the other, finding deep satisfaction in the other's being so emotionally dependent on us that they were sometimes unable to stand on their own two feet.
That can feel like the truest depths of love, but it is ultimately selfish and dangerous to both partners. It creates a constant imbalance, like a wobble in a wheel. Most of the time it might look like it's rolling smoothly, but you can feel the jarring bumps as you move, especially when you're coasting too fast to stop suddenly or even to see what's going on around you.
Now I have to carry my own burdens. I have to feed myself and bathe myself and care for myself in ways I'd almost forgotten how to do. It's daunting sometimes. For a while, I felt like there was no safety net. Now I realize that I am my own safety net, which can scare the hell out of me if I think about it too much.
And every time I think I have a handle on it, that I know what to expect, it changes again. I'll be so sad, so deep in my grief that I'm fetal and snotting and tearing on the carpet, lamenting my crumbled marriage and altered life, when suddenly I get a call or a message from someone innocuous, reminding me that there is—and will be—more to me than this day or this week or this sadness.
"If it's ebbing," Hammer told me, "it will flow."
And with the flow sometimes comes flood. I'm afraid I'm unattractive or unlovable, that I'll never have the small intimacies of connection with another human being again, and then there's someone I've never seen before, looking at me. Maybe I look back, maybe I don't. Maybe I even choke down my apprehensions and silence the whispers of my lagging self-esteem and say hi. It's when they say hi back that I'm most surprised. Every single time, it makes me glance around and look to see who they're really talking to. It never fails to astonish me when I realize it's me who is the object of their attention, even for a moment.
This attention makes me giddy. I feel flattered and pretty. Really, it makes that 17-year-old Stephanie inside me feel important, and that is the most dangerous part of my new life. She's bawdy and fun and wonderful, but she can also be chaotic and moody and downright angry when she doesn't get her way, whether from me or someone else. She's flirty and petulant and manipulative when she wants something, but I know that behavior is reactionary. She's still an active part of my psyche because she remembers other times, other events when she felt dismissed or abandoned in her trauma and grief.
And this, the ending of my marriage and the moving forward in separate lives, sometimes smacks of abandonment and dismissal. I'm sure there are times when DH thinks the same thing, though he and I haven't really discussed it. I can only be sure of what I think and feel, and that's my only necessary concern in all of this. I am no longer required to make adjustments or compromises or to take his desires and feelings into account. When I do feel disregarded, that's when my 17-year-old self rears her naturally-strawberry-blond head and smirks, daring me to watch her take care of it.
"But, Stephanie," I tell her, "I am in charge now. I appreciate your feedback. I know you're coming at this from a valid place and that you have every reason to feel the fear and apprehension of recognition. I know you're trying to take care of me, but I'm the grown-up. Really. I can do this. I will do this, for you and for me."
"You have no idea—" she snarls.
"But I do," I interrupt. "I do have an idea. I know what you've seen. I'm you, remember? But you are not me. I lived your life, but you have not lived mine. You have watched and seen from afar, when you were awake from your nap. You have not lived this life, though, and you do not have the experience with it that I do. Your opinion and concern is appreciated. I know it's out of love, but I've got this. You are a ghost—a beautiful, fun, sparkling, shimmering specter—but ephemeral nonetheless. It will take my very real hands and heart and mind to carry this now. My support can't be made of glittery vapor."
She turns a lovely shade of scarlet and juts her chin at me, huffing and stomping her foot until I smile patiently at her and send her off to watch bad daytime TV and eat a Ding Dong.
Even at 40, it's a whole new game. Not so much to keep the freaking baby alive now, but to make sure she's cared for and loved in ways she maybe hasn't ever been. It's not so life and death as with a newborn, but it feels just as crucial. Thankfully, the critical moments are growing farther apart, and I'm learning how to breathe on my own again.
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