Oh, these children. These children of mine, I love them so much. And I wanted them so much. I don’t remember not wanting them.
And if someone would have told me, when I was a starry-eyed tween dreaming of a family one day, of a cute baby who’d adore the crap out of me, that I’d be hiding from my own spawn in the kitchen sucking down a Mountain Dew and freebasing cookie dough to deal with the STRESS they’d be causing me, well, I’d have said “that sounds like crazy talk”.
But, as it turns out, it’s like, very realistic talk.
No one tells you, when you’re pregnant, or trying to get that way, that although your baby will surely adore you, there will quickly come a time when they adore themselves so much more. And this time is acutally a long stretch of years when the natural selfishness of a child takes over and they kind of treat you like crap. When they can’t see that mommy is exhausted, depleted, or for goodness’ sake BUSY because really, their IMMEDIATE EMERGENCY need for fruit snacks is pretty much all-consuming.
I know I was like this as a child. We all were. And now I am an adoring daughter and my mom and I enjoy a wonderful relationship, so clearly at some point I stopped being a selfish little leach.
So that’s good. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe in about 2o years my children will see me as more than a means to an end.
A mom can dream.
