Personal Essay: Blue
As I sit here writing analog, I’m feeling a little blue. I’ve felt quite blue throughout most of my pregnancy and for much of my child’s first 7.5 months of being here on this earth. What writing analog has done for me is cause me to stop, slow down, and really be present with my thoughts. To let the joy sit alongside indifference, sadness, and sometimes rage. At any moment, I am experiencing one or all of these emotions, often in rapid succession, on a devious loop that plays for minutes, hours, and sometimes days. Being a human is tough. Being a human being who cares about the world and the other human beings in it is tougher. Being a human being who lives in the world and cares about the other human beings in it, and is now responsible for raising and caring for one that came from your womb-well sometimes the pressure is enough to make you want to dive into Niagara Falls and bid farewell. But, at other times, I want to step onto the balcony of the highest, most glamorous, penthouse in Manhattan and scream,
“My baby is great!”
“My life is great!”
“Humans are shitty and destroying our beloved ecosystem, but we’re also pretty great.”
“Earth is great!”
Highs, lows and all the plateaus.
Still, in this moment, I am feeling melancholy. I haven’t quite figured out why, but I have a few guesses. One is that I am mourning my old self, my old life, and my prior plans and dreams. Dreams that I thought would have been accomplished by this point in my 33ish years of living, but simply have not.
Illustration by Gloria Day
See, that’s one thing that kids do to you unexpectedly and unintentionally: they shine a light in all of your dark places, through the holes that you think no can see, through the muck you’ve been hiding for months, for years. They strip you down and you’re so emotionally bare that you can’t do anything but be your whole self, and look at yourself—really look. At every part.
It’s scary to peel away the different layers, to unearth and reveal all of you, but man, I don’t know a better way to get to know who I am. And I want to know and understand me for my child’s sake. To love myself, for my child’s sake. To believe in myself for my child’s sake—and most importantly, to do all of this for my own sake. To know that through faults and fights, I am a good mother, a good partner, and my dreams are still important. I can still plan and reach, even for those I have yet to dream of. That even if I fail, my child can look at me and say, “she might have not succeeded how she wanted, but my mama tried—and that’s more than most people can say.”
