I’ve been feeling some type of way about having kids that I can’t accurately explain. Frustrated? Unfulfilled? Overwhelmed? Regretful? None of these are really it. I can’t go as far as to say I regret my kids. That’s a dark place to go and I just don’t believe that’s it. I love them in a way that’s impossible to put into words and I believe that they’re so much better than me and that the world needs and deserves them. But I also feel like they deserve better than this world and this life. I feel like...if I had fully grasped what depression was and known that I wasn’t ever going to grow out of it, I might have reconsidered my position on having them. It was never really given a word, my depression. Any time I had feelings growing up I was told to stop being weepy, to let things roll off of me. I was called angsty, and I believed that’s what it was. Teen angst that would someday get better. Even now, I regularly convince myself that I don’t actually have full-scale depression because I’ve learned to be so high-functioning. I am not the mother I dreamed I would be when I have depression. Which has been rampant this year.
I also didn’t think we’d be seeing the fallout of ignoring global warming and systemic racism in my lifetime. Quick aside, I’m glad that there’s a reckoning about race happening and more people are realizing that the system was never designed to benefit BIPOC in this country, but everything also feels really scary and uncertain and a lot of true colors are showing and relationships are crumbling and it’s beyond anything I ever imagined I’d see. Mostly because...I was blind to the fact that there was/is still a very real problem. I thought the increasing level of representation of BIPOC in Disney movies meant the playing field was leveling out and certainly by 2020 everything would be okay.
But the planet...oh the planet. I thought we had a lot more time and I thought it was still possible to reverse the damage we’ve done if we all just recycle enough and buy more green cleaning products. Now we’re saying that much of the US will likely be unlivable in 50 years? I realize by that time I’ll be close enough to death, if I’m even still alive, and my kids will have had enough time to live pretty full lives and even have kids of their own (if they want to...I never, ever plan to push that). But it’s still terrifying to think of what that will look like and how it will play out. I can’t imagine we’ll all just be rolling merrily along living our normal lives as the planet becomes uninhabitable.
And then there’s just the day to day...the messes, the sticky floors, the fighting, the butt-wiping, the amount of food they go through, the amount of food they waste, the wearing my new shoes that I’m trying to keep nice out in the dirt, the tearing apart my personal notebooks and unmaking my bed and leaving toys and crumbs in it, the struggle to adhere to routines, the refusal to put away their shoes and jackets and backpacks when they come home, the mad dash to find a matching pair of shoes when we’re trying to leave the house, the way things disappear into some alternate dimension and no matter how much we clean, we can never find them again, the impossible-to-find balance between having a life of my own and being enough for my kids. The mental load. Is this just the pandemic? Is this just seven straight months of being with them, all of them, at all times with no break? Is this because we had a really bad week in the middle of a particularly awful month?
And the regret. It’s not about the kids, really. It’s about not valuing myself beyond being a vessel for children. It’s about the fact that I never considered a life for myself beyond that. It’s that I didn’t take the time to live, to know myself, to grieve, to love, to travel before rushing into this life of existing only for other people. And for what? To heal the wounds of my own childhood and prove I could do a better job of loving unconditionally than my own mother? I guess...but it probably could have waited. I was in such a hurry to replace the life I thought I lost with my divorce, too. All of my decisions have been motivated by fear, by loss, by a lack of self-worth. I grew up hearing all about my potential and how smart I was from my teachers but I was too afraid to really go out and use it and now I’m Just A Mom™️
Now I’m 10 years into a thing that has never not been hard. And we want things that we should’ve had a long time ago; a nice wedding, to own a home, a car that isn’t on the brink of death. But we’re still struggling just to keep the lights on and the rented roof over our heads. Everything we own is broken, dirty, tired, secondhand. I feel broken, dirty, tired, secondhand. I have nothing left for anyone, least of all myself. Sometimes I think my being gone would be better for everyone and sometimes I’m afraid it would be too damaging and the emotional damage is what I’m trying hardest to avoid.
I don’t really know what the point of all of this is. I’ve tapped into some dark, ugly place inside me and I’m trying to figure a way out.
And not for nothing, but a second Trump presidency will be my undoing. My kids will be 8, 9, 11, 13, and 17 at the end of this next term. Trump’s America will be all they’ve ever known. And I realize our problems don’t start and end with him. The President, the government, won’t save us no matter who sits in the Oval Office. I just don’t think we stand a chance of ever getting any better with another four years of madness.
Hopelessness is a scary place from which to parent.
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