She grips so tightly to my fingers now. Almost as if she acknowledges that I am warranted in having autonomy over how I share my body with her. That statement is a half-truth at best when considering the repeated mini feet in my jugular every morning. The seemingly growing trust in her own grip around my finger brings my heart the warmth that melts half a Hershey’s bar under a well toasted marshmallow. Instead of outsourcing her strength to the person that has kept her alive until now, she has chosen to give herself a little credit for being an 18 month old human being. In doing so, she has also chosen to let her mother have a bit of her energy returned to her.
She holds to two or three fingers at a time. Usually the pinky and ring finger are the ones to tickle her fancy. Regardless of the skin to skin contact, she periodically checks to see if her mouth remembers my name. Then, of course, she wants my acknowledgment, ensuring that I heard her vocal cords do that thing again. Oftentimes, after my silent rebuttal, her lips repeat the light taps that form mommy, making it clear that I ought to recognize her evolving vocabulary.
I love that she calls me that — mommy. It’s sweet. All of her words are sweet, actually. She’s gotta know close to 50 by now: mommy, daddy, please, thanks, apple, up, down, walk, talk, ball, bowl, pink, red, blue, pig, moo, dog, yes, meow, roar, bow wow, dark, on, boot, bubble, toe, knee, butt, poopy, ew, yuck, home, box, book, help, again, stick, stuck, two, bull, shoe, eat, fruit, food, hand, nose, mouth, eye, oooo, more, water, boobie, juice, and her third favorite of all — NOWEEE! Which is the hangry 2nd cousin of no and nope. IYKYK.
(I must say, I’m quite jealous of the love that my boobs get from this toddler. She’d never admit loving the woman attached to the boobs. She’ll consider loving the person who chose her sex. Anyone else: NO WEE!).
She’s growing up so fast. I’m spending as much time as I can balancing the soaking-it-all-in with writing-it-all-down while trying to survive it all. I miss each moment as soon as it passes to the next. I can only live here momentarily. There’s no other way. Parenting, in a way, has become the medicine needed to remind me that any given moment is all that matters. Gosh, I hope I’m doing enough documenting. Enough of anything really.
My brain has become foggy. I have a hard time focusing on anything. I’m so reliant on being interrupted while doing anything. I must remind myself that my capacity is valid, that my needs are valid. I’ve gotten used to gaslighting myself, not holding space for myself to be as I am. I have small slots of time that I can sit with myself and think. It’s rare that I get a worthy moment of silence. Most of my minutes are guaranteed to be spent with someone touching me, asking for something, or listening to some doot-doots. My resilience through all of this is honorable. Every day is a test of my patience. Every day, a test of my ability to sacrifice. My ears bleed daily from kids YouTube. My remaining brain cells draining through my eardrums, leaving a stunted mother, stuck in one spot, unable to make any decisions about anything except which video will follow the current one, in hopes to give me more time to try and find some lingering life, lingering excitement that’s been hidden underneath the scars of birthing my babe and growing new pathways to survive and keep her thriving.
I have no idea what I’m doing. But I hope this shit is worth the loss of identity. And I hope her dad is grateful and thriving in the sacrifice that I’ve made so that he can have the freedom to do whatever the fuck he wants, like always.
I’m looking to gain some perspective somehow. I’ll prolly take some mushrooms and cry it all out. LOL
THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU.
Abby xx