Secrets...

I feel in a sort of "purging" mood today.  I have been holding some deep feelings in for a LONG time and I think its time to be brave and let them all out.

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My secrets..oh I have so many.... but the ones I feel most compelled to share, the ones that I feel SO guilty about... are the feelings I have had for my family and my life so far...

I always thought of myself as a "good girl".  Growing up had always dreamed about the 10 children I would have.  I always thought about how perfect it would be, how I would have this big wedding with all my family around me and and how I would be such an awesome loving mom.   I was so naive...

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 I got pregnant when I was 20.   The hardest thing was telling my best friend, my mom.  She was crushed.  I wasn't married.  I was so embarrassed.   I didn't get married to my husband (the father) until I was 6 months pregnant.  It was a shotgun wedding with us in pairs of jeans at a little place aptly called The Hitching Post.  Classy right?  We didn't even tell my family until the next day.  My mom was crushed again, I hadn't invited her.  My husband (who is in fact 2 years younger than me) decided to go and join the army 3 months before I was due.  I missed him so badly.  When my daughter finally came, I was so happy, and yet so sad.  The stress of having an emergency c section and my husband gone for the whole thing (she was 5 months old before we got to see him again)  made nursing her extremely painful.  I tried for a little while, and gave up.  I loved her dearly, but I felt so disconnected from her.  I felt like I didn't get to bond with her properly when she was born, and then I didn't even get to share oxytocin with her through nursing her. 

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She started to grow, and soon I had a son.  He was so perfect, and I got to nurse him for a year, just like I had always wanted to to with my daughter.  I started to feel even MORE separate from her.  I felt strangely jealous and guilty and distant from her.  I felt even MORE guilty, as she loved to snuggle, loved to tell me how much she loved me, and it hurt to not have as strong feelings for her as she had for me.. I felt so INADEQUATE. This was not who I was supposed to be.  I was supposed to be super mom, not some guilty loveless shell.   Why couldn't I just LOVE HER??

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She and her brother grew some more, and then my beautiful third daughter came.  She was so happy, always smiling, my little sunshine.  I felt so guilty again, I felt like I loved her more than the first two.  I kept asking myself  WHY??  Why can't I just LOVE my kids all at the SAME TIME?  They are beautiful special sweet spirits that came to me, wanted to be in MY family, and I felt as if i had let them down.   How could I POSSIBLY bring another 7 kids into this world If i can't get a handle on my feelings for the three I already have??  I vowed then that I wouldn't have any more kids.  The stress was just "too much" for a mother of a newborn with two other small children.  I didn't get much sleep.  I hallucinated at night A LOT from lack of sleep.  (Not that I ever SAID anything to anyone about it...) 

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 But life moved on, as it surely does.
One time, I tried to talk about it.  My mother scolded me when I mentioned that I didn't feel like I loved my first daughter as much as the others.  She told me all the things I WASN'T doing that she had done in her own perfect way to raise ME.   I never talked about it ever again.  It just made me feel that much more inadequate and useless.  I KNEW it wasn't right.  I just didn't know how to fix it.  Oh how I wanted to fix it!

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(In retro spect, I probably had SERIOUS post-partum depression and didn't even know it.)

Fast forward  to the present.  I want another baby.  I see everyone around me having babies and OH how i miss it!  My mother gets so exited when my step sisters, my brothers wife, and anyone else is expecting.  She has never been overly THRILLED when I get pregnant.  Its always a "health" issue, about how I should wait till this or that.  How I should "take care of the kids that I already have".  I know she only wants the best for me,  but what about MY dreams? what about the 12 year old little girl inside this 27 year old body who had so many ambitious dreams about how her life would turn out?    I'm afraid.  I am SO afraid of getting pregnant and completely falling apart emotionally.  I am so afraid of telling my mother when I DO get pregnant.  (Don't get me wrong, she ADORES my kids.  She is an awesome grandmother.  She is STILL my bestest best friend and I love her dearly. )
 But what happens when things just don't work out the way you expected them to, when life takes you hurtling in the opposite direction than you wanted to head?  What happens when some of your dreams wither with age and misuse? 

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This is my secret, my ULTIMATE secret....
I would like people to think that I have everything under control, that I AM the perfect mom, that I have everything figured out, that I am SO completely confident in my life and its current direction.....but you know what? I DON'T.  I have absolutely NO idea what is going to happen next and it scares the CRAP out of me.  But you know what else? Despite all of this, despite the emotional roller coaster, the disappointments, the guilt, there is one thing I know for sure. and that is that I am NOT perfect, and really, that's OKAY.
 I will be OKAY.

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I will find my way and everything will end up beautiful and wonderful and more than I could ever have imagined...... and that makes it all worth the journey.

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