A broken mother trying to hold herself and her family together – that is what I am. My 4 year old told me yesterday when I was crying at the dining table – I will never give up on you Mama. For my daughter, I will never give up on myself.
I have realized that nothing and no one can prepare you for motherhood. It is unlike anything I have ever experienced. When I feel like I just got the hang of it, another thing is thrown at me barely making me feel like I can even stand on my own.
At the end of the day, once my daughter sleeps, I want to take time out for myself to read, relax, and even to just watch Netflix. But my body feels limp and my head feels like a rock, almost as if my neck can’t even support my head anymore. I can do nothing but just lie in bed and before I know it I’m asleep.
Every night I go to bed thinking tomorrow I will wake up before my daughter and do my workout, yoga, meditation, have a cup of coffee and prepare breakfast. And every single morning I’m unable to get up before them. Sleep is so precious and so important for my own sanity. I feel like the slightly good moments with my daughter are because of adequate sleep, without the minimal sleep I get I would be a bigger mess. Albeit very important, sleep is not the same as self-care.
I haven’t done anything for myself for so many years that I have almost forgotten what self-care means. What do I like?
My daughter knows what her Papa likes, even simple things like the colors he likes, the food he likes, the things he likes doing. When asked what mama likes doing she is confused… she doesn’t know what mama likes. Even mama doesn’t know what mama likes anymore.
And that is when I realized that self-care for me was a forgotten word. What do I want to do for myself? I felt like cleaning the house and decluttering is my self-care time. But I was just fooling myself de-cluttering feels like self-care only because it helps de-clutter the fragments in my mind temporarily. However, it doesn’t really allow me any time for self-reflection, to introspect, and to really go deep in my thoughts.
Scrolling endlessly on Instagram gives me moments where I reflect and introspect but not enough to actually make much of a difference the next day.
Everyone keeps saying it will get easier, it will get better. But what if it won’t. Everyone says it with the assumption that the problem is due to the child, that with time the child will get bigger and more understanding and independent and that might be true. But what if fundamentally that is a wrong assumption, to begin with. What if the problem is not with my child but with me? Me being unable to deal with my emotions, my relationships. That will certainly only get worse with time if I don’t take the time to address the issues and heal now.
No matter how hard, I am constantly trying to be the best mother to my child, to give them all I have… whatever pieces I have whether broken or complete.
