Musings on Motherhood

I wrote this the other night and posted it on my birthclub bulletin board. However, it seems right to post it here as well:

I lost ALL my "friends" when I got pg with Beaner...I went to work waiting
tables 5 days a wk then spent my evenings with our dog cause dh was still very
immature and tended to stay out drinking and partying with his work friends
after they closed the restaurant he cooked at. I felt like I had been completely
abandoned...quarantined like a plague carrying rat!!

We were the first of our "peer group" to have a child, and even the only ones
that actually had custody of their child throughout her early years!! She was a
novelty to some of our friends, but in a very ADHD sort of way...fun only when
they felt like acknowledging her existence...this definitely made me feel
alienated a lot, and certainly decreased their overall value in my eyes.

On the other hand, I really feel like parenthood just affects women so much
more dramatically than it does men. Once we have brought life into the world,
our entire identity is changed in our eyes. I had a hard time with that for a
long time (and still have growing pains now and again). I would get depressed
cause I felt like I no longer had an identity outside of wife and mother, but also
keep "June Cleaver-ing" it cause I was in that mindset. I was breathing,
eating, sleeping, existing only as wife and mommy, then getting frustrated
cause no one ever looked at me as a "real person".

It really is a cyclic thing...and through the years I have had many "friends" I could hang around with (after the family was asleep) that never really saw me in the wife/mom role so they did not think of me that way...It has been a nice escape now and again. It is so hard once you have kids, (esp. young kids) to feel dynamic, creative, sexy, intriguing, (pick your adjective) cause they just take so much of your time and energy...motherhood has seen me lament the loss of my own identity time and time again. Pre-kids I was a published poet, taught voice and piano
privately, performed onstage, read everything I could get my hands on, got
into deep, philosophical conversations over endless coffee and cigarettes at
IHOP, wrapped myself in my spirituality, and damced til the wee hours of the
morning to The Cure and Sisters of Mercy.Now I am having a good day if I brush my hair and get carded for beer!!

I know it gets easier, (then harder cause they're teenagers LOL) but I really
am still having a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that I was a
"Mother of 1" for 8 yrs, then became a "Mother of 3" overnight..."Mother of 3"
just sounds like a much more settled, informed, in charge, at peace, and above
all else, professional. Mom than I feel like I have any right to pretend to be!!

Your mind settles with this in time, but you'll still have surreal days, and Lost days...on the other hand, that means that you are still in touch with the fact that there is life outside of mommy and wifehood, and you will not go quietly into that good night!!

Angel