Letters to my Daughter: February 4, 2017
No one taught me how to be a mother. Your small cries tore me in half and I'll never be the same again. You smelled like sweet cream against my chest the first time I held you. Numb from the waist down, doctors and nurses calmly cleared the pool of blood you left behind. An older friend cut the cord and I was exhausted. It took me over 30 hours, two epidurals and a kind of pain I can't describe. Other women have told me they've forgotten labor pains. I don't believe them — I remember everything.
The darkness of postpartum depression swallowed me whole. I look into your perfect hazel eyes and know everyone I've ever loved never loved me back. The truth of it rings in my chest. I can't eat. I can't sleep. Days melt together and you are the center of my world. I'm convinced when you're old enough to realize how flawed and broken I am, you'll fade out of my life too. It's overwhelming how much you need me because I need you just as much. I change your diapers and anticipate when you'll be hungry or tired. I bathe you and treat each illness as it happens. Your life is carefully documented and curated. I send pictures of you to your grandparents and post my most cherished memories on social media for friends to see. Small insights that lack depth. You are either smiling or stern and I'm always behind the camera.
My hips are loose and my belly button is stretched and stained. Sitting straight is difficult. Your father massages my back and shoulders, he has a quiet smile I imagine you'll have one day. We visit him when he's free and drive back to Stafford where we're staying with a friend's family. Your first home is a small bedroom that used to be my friend's childhood room. Life is humbling and the friends you make along the way are sometimes the only family you have. I spend hours daydreaming what it would be like to start over in Portland, Maine. I look up pictures and facts about the city. Long rocky beaches with lighthouses and long winters. I want us to run away there. I'll reinvent myself into the kind of mother you deserve. We'll collect broken shells and polished stones together along the coast. I'll learn how to knit sweaters for you to wear. I'll buy you a Maine coon cat and he'll be your first friend.
During the months leading up to your birth, I was told everything would change and it has. I was stripped of my identity and reminded how fragile my body truly is. There are no quaint anecdotes to describe how traumatic this has been for both of us. I'm healing and you're growing. We take turns crying, my arms big enough to comfort you and your smile enough to remind me everything isn't as dismal as it feels. Time passes and neither of us feels it. The few people I interact with are friendly phantasms who come and go, memorable as a cluster of coffee stains on the kitchen counter. I move forward with all of my nerves on fire. You’re the reason I get out of bed most days and do everything I can to follow my dreams because one day you’ll do the same and hopefully take a gentler path than I have.
