I've been neglecting this project already, but I want to continue. I've been rather manic, to be truthful, and there is no better time to do something creative than when hypomanic. Full blown mania is no time for it, but I'm just sort of moderately manic, to my way of looking at it.
anyway, this week's topic is "Children." It is such a large topic that I find myself shying away from this project, but it's time to tackle some of the things I want to express.
Once I actually hallucinated Mary. It was when my older daughter was just an infant, and I was up in the night with her and with a breast infection that brought my fever up to a point where I was not really myself. I had hit bottom that night, with frustration, anger, worry, sadness, and all the bad emotions all out of the pike at the same time. And who should appear at my bedside but Mary, the mother figure. She comforted me immensely and I was able to carry on and survive.
My own mother had abandoned the effort at helping me with the baby, and I was despondent over her. She couldn't be with me, and I felt like I was alone in the world, since Manny had to go to work every day and I knew very few mothers. I went to La Leche League meetings and didn't really feel akin to any of the women there.
But motherhood has changed as my daughters have grown up. And what I didn't realize when my own mother was my age and I was a child was that as a mother you change right alongside the kids. You discover that you have authority, confidence, that you have reserves to tap that you didn't know you had. You discover, also, that you have an immense capacity for rage. They are very intense, the emotions around mothering.
Children are what keep our lives moving, when we have them. I apologize to those who don't have children, because I really don't know what that's like, being an adult without children. I find, though, that I see most things in the world through the lens of being a mother. That's just how I am, though I do have my own life separate from them, particularly since I now share custody with my ex-husband and my children aren't always home with me. I have my own self. But in a lot of ways I identify myself through them, and that's both painful and wonderful.
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