The flip side

Nothing is ever just one thing

Dear Writer,

As you probably picked up from the Wednesday digest this week, I’ve been thinking a lot about complexity, how nothing is ever just one thing. I am so happy to leave this house, you have no idea. I have been working toward this goal of getting gone for so long, it feels like I’ve never not been working toward it.

And now that it’s happening… I’m so sad.

The thing is, yes, terrible things happened here. I didn’t like this house, but he made me buy it. Likely because I didn’t like it. He did that kind of shit to me every day. But once he was gone, I was stuck here, killing myself to bring in the income I needed to maintain a house I hated by myself. And why?

The kids.

Look, I’m gonna be honest with you; I hate being a mother. Being a mother is the absolute fucking worst. Now, maybe your experience is different, and if that’s the case, that’s awesome. I’m not saying it’s the worst for everyone.

It was just the worst for me.

I hated being pregnant, both times. I hated the feeling of something else living inside of me. It’s so weird and you can’t have wine or caffeine and everything you eat has to go through this moral test Because Baby. I had eating and body issues before I was pregnant and pregnancy did not improve things.

Then you have the baby and suddenly, you no longer matter. You are Mom. You are honored for sacrifice and reviled for anything that is not sacrifice. Everything is your fault, everything is your responsibility. If you don’t protect them enough, you’re a bad mother. If you protect them too much, you’re a bad mother. There was no daylight between not enough and too much, and every day, I felt like I was failing them no matter what I did. And then I really super fucking failed them and it took me four years of wearing the hair shirt before I realized that I also got hit by the bus that hit them.

Let me be clear; the kids never did any of this to me. I did this to me, because I bought into the whole societal Good Mother bullshit. But it still is what it is; being a mother sucks.

I am stating all of this because how much I hated being a mother does not even begin to hold a candle to how much I loved my kids’ parent. They are extraordinary humans and I am grateful every day that I got them. I hit the kid lottery, y’all. There are no better humans on this earth than my kids and I will fight you on that. I got to watch them grow up. I got to be amazed at their first independent opinions, their artwork, their kindness, their intensity, their intelligence. That was an amazing experience, and as much as I hated being a mother, I loved being their parent.

And now that I’m leaving this house I’ve hated, where so many terrible things happened, I finally have the space to remember that they grew up in this house. They searched the place for Easter eggs the day we moved in. They helped me make cookies for Santa and they helped me decorate trees. They watched movies with me and I got to see them discover technology and stories, my two greatest loves. Sarah played the Game of Thrones theme endlessly on the violin, getting better each time; Cecilia figured out how to fix her own computer by herself when it broke and I had no idea what to do about it.

My favorite memory, and what I miss the most even now, is when I was upstairs and they were in the living room together and these sharp peaks of giggles and cackles would break through the sound of whatever I was doing. They almost never fought post-middle school; mostly, they just cracked each other up. To this day, they are best friends and I am so grateful I got to see that love happen, that I got to be the one who brought them to each other.

I take all that with me when I go, I know. And under no circumstances would I want to stay here, just to be with the ghost of their love and laughter. That’s not how it works. That time is done, and it would be done even if the only memories here were happy ones. Remember when Vision said “A thing isn’t beautiful because it lasts?”Sometimes, it is the very temporariness of a thing that makes it heart achingly beautiful.

And here I sit at the intersection of Can’t Wait and Don’t Go, and I realize that nothing is ever just one thing. I can look forward to my new life, while at the same time leaning back to hear the joyful ghost of their cackles one last time before I close the door and move on.

Everything,

L