Even children get older and I’m getting older too

When I had my first child, something in me changed, as they say. But motherhood was rife with hurt and confusion for me.

I could not wrap my mind around being away from my baby, ever. And what I mean by that, is not physical connection, but being part of their lives forever. To know them, to get to know them. To share every second I could, catching the joy in my hands before it slipped away. I could not stop myself from holding, kissing and loving my baby. And now, my babies. My boys.

I grappled with this experience heavily; and it wasn’t really until the minute Gage was in my arms that I could ever begin to peel apart what love really is, and what I was never going to receive from my own mom and dad, even when they grew up to know fucking better…What it means when loveis real, and the conditions when it is not.

Shortly after I had my first child, my brother and his wife already moved near us I think (I have no idea why) and then had their own kid, even though neither of them wanted kids and said that to me separately several times. Whatever, we all do that. But how my brother and I interacted and treated our children is very different. To each their own, but it could not work for me because I am sensitive and emotional, and there are things that matter to me I want to experience and be with my children during. What began to upset me was that our home started being treated like the local park, I’d get texts at like 7 am on a Saturday, my brother or his wife asking if our family of now four was up because they needed to take their daughter somewhere (our basement to play).

Did we have regular family dinners? Were we girlfriends? Did my brother and I really have a relationship? Did he mostly get a hold of me when he needed something? Just like my dad? And the wife started doing it too. I can’t explain the feeling of seeing in the review mirror that you are only a means to an end, but at the time, you felt like you were finally being invited to be a part of something real. Like families do. Of course, this little example open my eyes to the part I’d been dutifully (and stupidly) in hopes of finally maybe having something close to a real mother and father experience. Some of the tiktoks of fathers and daughters, I can’t even bring myself to watch.

There’s these experiences I see now, where I undoubtedly felt like the fucking pariah moving back to Michigan and my coping mechanism was to drink when I lived AT my dad’s house to save his house. My life in Texas was fun, and I had set myself up…but now I was home and the way I started to drink changed…and it changed me. Eventually, drinking with kids, this was 1. not fun and 2. not sustainable, and 3. for me, became too mixed in the emotions of motherhood and not being good enough. Some days, the thought of raising kids without my own parents because of what this life is of mine, I just want to crawl in a hole and die and not do it. And give up.

But…I quit drinking almost four years ago, and the last year before that was dry most of the year. My kids were much younger than I believe I was when my dad stopped using alcohol and while we both now share this experience, it is one I am grateful for.

Either way, this combination of sobriety and therapy…has made me…angry. I wake up some days, so heavy, like today, and I wish they would all just disappear. Why why why why couldn’t have I been born into a normal family? Instead, I was born into a modern-day encampment to a mother and father lacking in basic skillsets most kids in China have by 12. Their relationship was fucking painful, volatile and scary. While kids were learning to be well adjusted adults, I was learning something much different and the result was that my parents saw me as another thing to use, to depend on. My dad, in particular, a pattern over the little time we’ve spent together in my adulthood, taking what he needed from me, and discarding me when he was done. I don’t believe he ever had interest in me as my own person and individual — it’s not advantageous to him.

Some days, I heavily consider moving to get away from my brother’s family more. We’re in the same school district (which is actually hilarious for the way he and his wife talked about my kids, whatever. And that’s the thing. When my kids ask, I tell them their Uncle and Aunt decided not to see them and see other children not related to them due to us enrolling them in daycare. Their own FLESH AND BLOOD.) Kids eventually grow up, ya know?

What will yours say about you?