on going back to work (otherwise known as child abandonment)

The time has come. Hi ho hi ho it's off to work I go! 

Employment. 

Bleh. 

Can't. 
Even. 
Articulate.

But I will try.




I can't complain either. In my time off, I got to focus entirely on getting to know my son and bond with him. He's become my best pal and that has been more precious than I could have ever imagined. Infinitely special. Also, having an entire year off is eons compared to what you get in the US of A. Though it's also miniscule compared to what you get in some European countries. But I digress. I'm not pondering the various lengths of worldwide maternity benefits. Just pondering how I feel about mine and their pending finality.

A year is a long time. And also not. It brings me back to that saying "The days are long, but the years are short". That is maternity leave in a nutshell folks. Each day can feel like an isolated eternity, especially in the newborn stage. And the days have a tendency to sort of roll into one long string of mundane monotony. But then I blinked. And the year was over. And what I wouldn't give for just a smidgeon more of that mundane monotony. I spent every day for an entire year (365 consecutive days - give or take a few) with the sole purpose of being a mother to Leo. Now that's going to pathetically and depressingly dwindle to approximately 2 hours a day. Yes, I'm a mother always to Leo since the day he was born, but the physical act of mothering in his presence is lessening. Not to mention that the majority of that disgustingly small amount of time will be spent just carrying out the daily tasks of meals and baths and bed times. No more slow mornings, no more afternoon cuddles. Less toys thrown across the room, less poopy diapers to clean, less grubby hand smears on the furniture. Someone else will get a bouncy ball to the head while wrestling to avoid flailing bowel movements and sticky fingers leftover from breakfast. All of these mundane monotonies will have to be squeezed into the Saturdays and Sundays of life. And that makes me sad. Those little things are so fleeting.

But such is life. Being a stay at home mom is not a reality in my reality. Financially speaking, but also, I'm not sure I'd even want to be a stay at home mom either. Just like my generation I suppose, wanting it all. Grass is always greener on the other side and all that. Sometimes I wish it was 1952 or whatever and I had no choice. Homemaker or bust. I think I could be good at it. Feel fulfilled. Even thrive. Keeping house, raising babies, achieving my oh so womanly purposes. It would make things simpler maybe. But then that's not all I am, a wife and a mother. Though there is no greater ambition than to be purposeful as both. Eventually I would feel the need to claw out of the homestead. I have a choice for more versions of myself (if that's what I want). And I do want more. But by choosing more, I'm also choosing less (less time with Leo). So that dichotomy tugs at my heart strings. There is no right or wrong, but I can't have it both ways. All I know, is that there were times during my maternity leave that I felt very isolated and craved a morsel of existence separate from my little one. I felt so one dimensional at home and like there needed to be more facets to my being. I don't want to live entirely for my child, to the detriment of living for myself. I would scale the highest of mountains and take a barrage of bullets for that boy, but he shouldn't eclipse who I am either. The more multi-faceted his mama, the happier we both shall be.

Ugh it's the constant maternal struggle though of wanting to do better, be better, define what that "better" even means. Never being good enough. Fact is that everyone has a different definition of their "better". The problem lies in comparing "betters". THAT is the worst. Comparison is the thief of joy. That is what causes the mommy guilt, the feeling that you're not good enough because you're not aligned with someone else's rendering of parenthood perfected (or even with your own utopian narrative).

I already feel guilty. Guilty that I'm not going to be the mom that is going to be there when her kid wakes up from his nap. Guilty that I'm not going to be the mom who spends lazy mornings with him in our pajamas playing superhero make believe under towering couch cushion forts. Guilty that I'm not going to be able to take him to the park on a Wednesday afternoon and play irregardless of the daily grind. Guilty that I will no longer be his whole world. Guilty that I will no longer be his best pal like he is mine. Guilty that I'm essentially abandoning him (in my broken hearted mama mind). Guilty that I'm going to work to earn the money to pay someone else to do all these things from 9-5, Monday to Friday. Guilty that a part of me finds this SUCH a relief. Guilty guilty guilty.

I know none of this makes me a worse mother. In my head I know that (my heart is an altogether different story). Though it does make me a slightly sadder one at this particular moment in time. This too shall pass. When I embrace quality over quantity of time with the little one. I'm sure in a few weeks I will no longer be quite so nostalgic about missing out on poops. And I'm not going to lie, I've thought about the other end of it all and how freeing it will be to have lunch uninterrupted. To have limbs independent of a baby hanging off of them. To not be on 24/7 patrol of the stairs and cupboards and vents (and whatever else he is getting his hands into). To have an adult conversation that doesn't divert back to childrearing. I actually think it might make me a more present mother, more appreciative of the limited. That when I'm home, there will be less distractions and more focus on acknowledgment of the moment. More positivity and more gratefulness. I just wish it was like a month into our new normal and not this horrible purgatory of feeling trapped in this shit turd propeller of abandonment issues. At that point where naturally he has adjusted just fine and I'm slowly coming around myself to that place of positivity and gratefulness. Comfortable in the awareness that less can be more.

Either way, me and my boy are entering into a bit of an unknown. But we'll get through it together.

Now as if I'm not feeling emotionally crummy enough, here is our year in photographs: