twentymonths Jus I think I get it now. Before I had my son, I found the idea of being a parent horrific, possibly the worst thing I could do in my beautifully self-centric life. When I got pregnant that feeling intensified. My body was my enemy, it betrayed me, it was changing in ways that felt like warfare. But when it was over, and I touched his warm head, I was in love. I told everyone about this love, that doesn't live up to the word, like it was earth's first achy breath. Then I was "in it" - the trenches of motherhood. The heightened hormones, the distended belly, the inability to release the muscles in my jaw, and the pre-emptive grief of knowing we are living in a flicker of time and some day none of this will exist. I went to a friend's house when my son was 8 months old. It was the first time I had been in a room of adults since giving birth. They asked if they should have kids, I said "Yes..." and then it hit me: the raw depth of anguish I had been living without realizing it. They nodded as I relinquished the pitfalls of early parenthood: the loneliness, loss of autonomy, and the profound fear of grief. My friend's wife said, "thank you for telling me the truth." And I think about that a lot. The way I felt when outside of my life, in the liminal space before heading back into battle. The guilt I felt for months about it. The way I still punctuate my complaints with, "but he is the best and I love him so much." It's all kind of fucked up. But recently things have changed. I've had a minute to be the new and improved me. And he has grown into a human with words and thoughts and preferences and I just keep thinking that THIS is what people mean when they say having kids is the most magical time of their lives. I want to call my friends and yell at them to find a donor immediately, that it is pure magic, that every one should do this! I wish I could go back and tell early motherhood me that it gets better. That soon he will look at you and say, "baby" and you will say, "you are my baby" and he will grab your face and kiss you messily on the nose, and you wont interrupt that moment for anything in the entire world, even if the house was burning around you, and now staying home is a gift, and being near him, helping him grow and become and find joy, is your life's mission, and being a mom is an identity you will happily kill your former self for, and every single millisecond in this flicker is met with intense gratitude and depths of emotions that are too big for words, and how can God not be real in that laugh, and I get it. I get it. 251212 what's it to you? who go blather from