The some and all of Motherhood
Real motherhood is often what’s behind the social media feeds, the small talk at coffee groups and the closed doors of the four walls.
It’s wanting them to go to sleep at night, because you’re completely spent. Too spent to put the toys away, or the dishes away or the wash on at night. And that annoys you.
It’s seeing your other half go to work or away for a weekend. You say it’s fine, but it doesn’t feel fine. You want to have that sort of freedom even for a moment. To just drop things and leave without a care in the world, or a baby bag.
It’s losing it over the small things like the beeping dishwasher or the lost remote when you are so sleep deprived you cannot control your eye lids, let alone your mood. Most of the time losing it has nothing to do with these things.
It’s feeling alone and craving some adult discussion. To get away for a moment and feel like you can still speak in full sentences. Ironically, almost all discussions are about them when you do.
It’s feeling like you have lost your mind by 5.00pm at the latest every day, and wondering if it will ever come back again one day, let alone by morning.
It’s wanting to be on your own sometimes, to have your coffee, your breakfast, or so much as your body to yourself for even a minute.
This is the some of the time in real motherhood.
And like all things, there needs to be the some making up the all.
The all of the time in motherhood is loving them so damn much that you cannot remember life before them, imagine what you would do without them or what your life would be if something ever happened to them. It hurts too much to think about that, but you do sometimes.
It’s knowing the privilege of being someone’s everything, every day for years and then breaking at the thought of it ending. But it always will some day. The years go far too fast.
It’s feeling like it’s all worth it every day without question, no matter what. No matter how hard, how lonely, or how mundane it can feel some of the time.
It’s knowing that you would never trade this chapter for sleep, for the world, for anything.
And thankfully, that’s real too.
That’s real motherhood.
All of it.