Occasionally I come across a blog post saying something like this “So all my friends are having babies and I just really don’t understand why they’ve all lost themselves. I mean does having a baby mean the end of life? Of adulthood? Why do they put their kids first all the time? Why can’t they hang out with friends like they used to, drink some cocktails, GET A LIFE?”

I read a blog recently by some childless bag – wait, I didn’t mean that – I meant “blogger” who was simply appalled, aghast, offended, by the way her friends had just morphed into these pathetic adult imposters, consumed by their children, simply lifeless. I would link to it but I’m afraid you all would slaughter her with your wit and intelligence. That was not a sarcastic statement.

I’ll be honest, the first thing I wanted to do was rant like a psycho, but I’m not going to. Because I’m above that. Right?

Oh of course I’m not. I think I’ve proven that enough times.

However, in an entirely uncustomary gesture, I’m going to give these people the benefit of the doubt and assume they aren’t simply pricks, but instead really just don’t get it.

Yeah, I know. Mother Theresa and whatnot.

So, as a sort of public service announcement to people who write things like the aforementioned, I’m going to provide a little insider info on the topic, hoping to help them understand how their new-parent friends morphed into such despicably boring, haggard versions of their former selves.

First of all, childless people who can’t understand the degradation of your friends (NOT ALL CHILDLESS PEOPLE, OBVIOUSLY), I need to clear something up, right out of the gate: Most of the time you’re hanging out with us, WE’RE FUCKING FAKING IT. We only LOOK normal. We’re not normal. We’re losing our shit. But we don’t want you to see that because you’re childless and won’t understand. You’re still living in this alternate universe where things like “dinner dates” are enjoyable, or at least have the potential to be enjoyable.

Allow me to illustrate:

You want us to “hang out with friends” more often, presumably without kids, right? Did I get that right? Okay, check this out.

We’re meeting you and your significant other for dinner. Dinner on a Friday evening at a restaurant 45-minutes away, at 7pm. That sounds, easy, RIGHT? Well yes it is.

For you.

Here’s your experience: Come home from work, screw around on the internet, have a glass of wine, a snack, hop in the shower, bathe yourself leisurely, get out, towel off, peruse the closet, get dressed. Have your partner get ready. Pour another class of wine, maybe chat with a friend on speakerphone while you put on make-up, do your hair, put on shoes, get in the car at 6pm so you don’t have to rush…order a cocktail when you get there. Have dinner with friends, go out for a drink after, dance a little to work off dinner. Come home around 1am, have sex, sleep til 9am or 10am. Wake up to some coffee, chat about how sad it is that your friends have all “lost themselves” after they have kids.

Do you know what this little soiree looks like for us? No, no you don’t. But because I love you, I’m going to tell you. Here you go.

Dinner date with another couple at 7pm on a Friday at a restaurant 45 minutes away for a couple with a toddler and a baby…

Begin worrying about it approximately 5 minutes after the date is made because:

Who the fuck is going to watch the kids?

1. Grandparents? Best option, but they live 30 minutes away, which will make getting to the restaurant in time impossible because there’s Friday traffic. You could leave work early but not really because you already did it twice this month for baby doctor appointments. Plus, after dinner you’ll have to drive super far and Childless Friends are probably going to want drinks after…
2. Hire a babysitter? Well, at $20.00/hour, from 6pm until at least 11pm, that’s $100, which will make this evening (not including gas) at least $200. Holy SHIT!
3. One of us goes and the other stays home? No, then our Childless Friends will think we’ve lost ourselves and can’t “date” anymore, and all those stupid online forums say you simply MUST “date” your husband if you want the marriage to last. DAMNITALLTOHELL.

Guess we’ll go with babysitter. Hire the babysitter.

Spend the next two weeks going about your life, completely forgetting about the dinner date because life is insane and chaotic and never stops, until that afternoon when the reminder pops up on your iPhone and you almost wet your pants in fear (shoulda done those kegels!).

Race from work to daycare, call husband fifty times to remind him of the damn dinner date because you KNOW he’s forgotten. Plus, he was up all night with the baby who’s teething so he’ll definitely not be into this. Holy shit he’s teething! OMG I’m leaving my baby when he’s teething!

I can’t do it.

Call husband to announce teething and discuss how the hell you’re going to leave an insane infant with a non-family-member. Realize your husband has no opinion on the subject. DEMAND A DIVORCE IMMEDIATELY (in your head).

Figure out on your own what to do (as always, I mean seriously): baby Tylenol. Remember you used the last of it. Remember husband was supposed to buy some yesterday.

Ask husband. Hear “I forgot.”

KICK HIM IN THE BALLS. (in your head). Tell him to get Tylenol on the way home and you can’t live under these conditions anymore. Answer approximately 750 questions from your toddler girl as you drive home trying to figure out the maelstrom ahead of you. Pull in the driveway. Leave all the kids’ daycare stuff (bags bottles, nap mat sheet, 12 pounds of paperwork, art work, etc.) in the car because you can’t handle it.

Walk in the door, realize you left one of the dogs in the house so there’s piss on the kitchen floor. The toddler just walked in it. It’s 5:35. Freak out because it’s 5:35.

Try to plug toddler into television. Nurse pissed off infant. Make sure there’s pumped milk in the freezer. O thank god, two bags. Hear the husband come home. Want to punch him in the face.

Give baby to husband and get in the shower. Remember you haven’t shaved in three weeks and the only dress you have that fits your post-partum body is knee-length, which requires shaving but THERE’S NO TIME. Consider other clothes. None. Tights? Yeah right.

Shave. Wonder how to do your hair. Wonder how long it’s been. Wonder if you even have a blow-dryer.

Hear your baby screaming. Try to block it out.

Babysitter arrives. Get out of the shower while yelling instructions to the babysitter through the door. Wonder why the hell your husband isn’t getting ready. Yell at him too. Wonder if you have any clean underwear.

Put on Spanx, nursing pads and the dress. Look for shoes. Realize there’s only one shoe. Remember toddler playing in the closet this morning so you could take care of the baby. Holy fuck the toddler has REMOVED THE SHOE.

The only dress shoes I have!

Mayday! Mayday! I’m missing a shoe. It’s been deposited somewhere by a TODDLER, which means it’s in the ONLY PLACE IN THE WORLD you’d NEVER think it will be, possibly in the toilet.

Run around the house like a madwoman looking for the godforsaken shoe, find it in the dog crate, chewed by the other bastard canine.

Put on shoes that don’t go with the dress at all, realize Childless Friends will think you’ve lost all fashion sense. Realize you have.

See that it’s 6:10. Squeal.

Freak out at your husband. Notice he’s dressed, but wearing a shirt that needs about 20-minutes of ironing. Also observe he hasn’t showered even though he’s an ironworker. (Wait. Maybe that’s just me.)

Bolt out the door anyway, leaving behind a forlorn toddler and a baby who’s teething and OMG the dog piss on the floor and shit I forgot to tell the babysitter about the Tylenol and potty-training and not to put the breast milk in the microwave – wait, I told her that, right? – I mean she’s done it before. Look down and see baby vomit.

On the only dress you have that fits.

Wipe it off. Tell yourself breast milk puke doesn’t smell that bad.

Get in the car, start driving, spend the whole trip on the phone with the baby sitter, giving her details you forgot and trying to apply make-up.

Arrive at the restaurant at 7:10, smiling calmly with your hand in your husband’s, ready to “enjoy a relaxing, adult evening.” Act pulled-together, happy to be there, adult, social.

“How are you guys? How are the kids?”

“We’re great! It’s so great to see you! It’s just so great to be OUT, having a LIFE!”

Want to vomit as you realize your baby is at home, teething, without you.

Go through dinner…enjoying yourself, sort of, but also kind of faking it, because honesty will scare these people away and possibly result in the discontinuation of humanity. I mean who’s going to have kids when they realize The Truth?

Wait, was that my outside voice? Totally didn’t mean that.

So there, Childless People wondering why we’re such losers, do you get it a little better? Are you seeing things a little more clearly?

Maybe you see two adults who’ve added this baby to their lives, like an accessory, like a pet, like this new cute thing you carry around when you want it and drop when you don’t.

That’s what you see.

We, however, are LIVING something different.

We are having fundamentally different experiences of reality.

At every moment. In every interaction. We may look normal, we may look right there with ya, but you have NO IDEA HOW MUCH WORK it took to get ourselves to where we sit right now, in this restaurant, dressed, childless…

So please, don’t hate, when after a bottle or two of wine you and your Childless Cohort suggest a cocktail at this great place down the road and we look at you with a smile, trying to muster the energy, remembering the babysitter money rolling down the bowl of the toilet, and the toddler snoozing in her big-girl bed, and the baby…who could be crying…wait, do I have a text from the babysitter? – and the exhaustion, of the new life, the priorities that have shifted.

Don’t hate, just see, that you aren’t the most important thing in our lives anymore, and frankly, neither is that damn cocktail.

Also, we’re really fucking tired. Like really, really really tired. Like a tired that rests on our bones, all the time.

And there’s no sleeping in for those “adult imposters.”

You know, those people with “no life,” raising life, providing life, trying to adjust to a new life, remembering their old life, with people like you in it, kind of wishing we could go back there, when things were simpler and easier and more glamorous, and there was leisure and after-dinner cocktails, and…

then again, maybe not.

Nope, no life. No life at all.

I could have waited and lied to you, faked it, written something interesting or more amusing like I had my act together and haven’t been struggling, but I have been struggling, and that’s why it’s been a week of no writing.

No inspiration. What’s a girl to do?

There’s a temptation to pretend, you know, force myself to do something inauthentic. But I can’t seem to do that to you. Or me.

And the truth is there are times in my life when I’m done. Just done. I don’t know why or how it happens, but it seems like I turn some corner and boom.

Pain.

Not quick and sharp or stabbing pain, but more like a low hum in the back of my mind. A burning deep down.

A quiet simmer of vague discontentment, drifting, rudderless. A sneaking suspicion my life is not being lived, though it may appear so on the outside, and I’m alone. There’s a lot of fear though it can’t be nailed down.

I just feel so LOST.

I’m paralyzed by it all. The house, the mess, the stuff. The kids, the work, the years.

I lose interest in all the things. My temper grows short. Nothing feels enlightening or, to tell you the truth, even vaguely interesting. I feel like I’m faking it. All the time. With my smiles.

Joy passes in moments like a car racing by. I hear it, but by the time I look for it it’s gone. The sound resonates in my ears as my eyes turn back to nothing.

When the pain first descends, I start looking outside for the problem. Outside of me.

It must be that I gained that weight back. I’m fat. That’s what’s wrong.

It’s our money problems. I can’t stand being broke anymore.

I need a job. Obviously!

I need to write. My problem is I haven’t written that book.

It’s my town! I hate this shithole town!

It’s my house. This house is so trashed; nobody could live in this maelstrom of crap.

I used to blame my marriage, but that got too exhausting.

I used to blame everything, anything.

But eventually, I stopped looking, because I’ve already gone down those roads. I know they’ve got nothing for me. I used to read a bunch of existential literature. Sartre gets it. Nietzsche knows. What I need is a little Kierkegaard.

I used to drink, take drugs, get all dressed up and go out partying. Get some attention from some boys. That’ll cheer me up.

But I don’t do any of that anymore.

I know there’s only one way to escape from this, and that’s to move right into it.

Makes no sense, but it’s true.

My greatest fear, I guess, is that existence is meaningless, and that my life will be spent in a shithole town doing absolutely nothing of interest, and the words in my soul will be left unspoken, and my kids will grow as I grow and die, the end. Life will pass me by as I’m running on some plastic wheel made in China manufactured for Walmart, working for something that I can’t even see, for people I don’t even know, and when I’m 80 I’ll wonder what the fuck I was doing all that time.

Why didn’t I live when I could, I’ll ask. Who was I meant to be?

A wasted life. I’ve seen it so many times.

Eventually, with a mix of fury and terror I move headlong into my pain. Because at some point, there’s nowhere else to go. And I want to get to the truth.

If my depression were a room I’d walk into the center of it, where all its energy converges into a glowing face of my own agony, and I’d look it square in the eyes and wait.

“What you got, bitch?”

And I see she’s got nothing. Just the same old shit she’s been feeding me since I was a young girl, lying awake at night contemplating infinity, the crushing weight of it all on a tiny girl’s heart, wishing I could believe the stories I heard in church.

If I look hard enough into that fear, if I’m brave enough to really look, I see she’s full of shit.

I see everything I need is already here.

I see fear exists in the past and the future but never right now, in the center, in this spot, where my feet are, safely.

Where I live, NOW.

Now.

And I feel a little compassion for her, that burning ball of desperation, that sad little whiner deep inside, terrified beyond recall, poor little thing is just sure she’s going down.

I tell her “Honey, you’ve already gone down. And you’re still here.”

What are you afraid of?

And I’m grateful, because that pain comes along sometimes to jolt me alive, reminding me that this is really all I’ve got. And I see the ways I’ve been wasting my hours.

On my phone, screwing around when people are talking to me. Absent.

In anger. Surfing the internet. Escaping.

Worrying. Talking shit. Complaining. Putting off until tomorrow. Always.

Fearing. Fighting what is. Asleep.

Snoring.

Until I get so desperate I pack two of my three kids up (one was at a slumber party), and grab my husband and take a whole day off, of everything, and go to the beach, to surrender to my lack of ideas, hear waves and smell salt air and feel it too, the rocks and white cold water and the burn of the sun on my hungry skin – to feel connected to something again, old friend, the ocean.

And when I’m there I see this…

I leave laughing.

It’s still humming, the fear, prattling on in the back of my mind, but I don’t care, she’s just running the same old story.

And frankly, I’m no longer interested. You’d think she’d come up with some new shit after all these years. But she doesn’t.

I smile at her antics and drive home, realize I’ve got too much life to live now, you know. The kids want to listen to “Say Yes” by Langhorne Slim. We do.

There’s no time for anything else.

So I just hang out with her for awhile longer, let her do her thing, ride it out as best I can, until one morning I hear the ocean waves in my boy’s breath as he sleeps next to me, alive in perfect rhythm with the universe I’m terrified of.

And I realize I’m doing the same. And always have been.

Later I sit down and write to you all, telling the truth one more day.

1. Sometimes camping trips are fun. Sometimes your eldest daughter vomits in the tent, at 4am, somehow managing to not only hit THREE sleeping bags, but also your purse, but not the outside of the purse, THE INSIDE. Right inside.
2. I can’t make this shit up.
3. At times like that, one must recognize the need to fold. There’s no hand to play. Not the time to fight, pull through, power forward. That’s the time to throw in the vomit-stained towel, pack your shit, and leave.
4. That was this morning at 4am. I should not be writing this. I should be hanging with my beloved friends on a lake in the Tahoe National Forest. At least I should be just rolling into my driveway, after spending the day lakeside, among the pines and the mountain air, crystal water and California sunshine. But alas, being a gracious and loving mother, I came home for my poor sick daughter.
5. Half that sentence was a lie. I came home, but I didn’t do it graciously. Or lovingly.
6. In fact, I was a royal bitch about it. I acted like a horrible little kid not getting her way. You see, I had been looking forward to this trip as the light at the end of a long, dark miserable tunnel, and when it was cut short, I fell into a most impressive state of self-pity. Seriously, I felt like stomping my feet and refusing to participate (but what about meeeee!!!?). Instead, I just scowled and stomped around and assumed the martyr position.
7. Anyway I’m over it. Once again I learn old Will was right: “Expectation is the root of all heartache.” Shakespeare and the Buddhists – obviously they figured out something. I expected too much out of that trip. After months of no break, of excruciating exhaustion and almost ceaseless pressure, I staked it ALL on this trip. It was going to be The Thing that set me right again. Ah, fuck.
8. Hopefully you all are still somewhere cool for the long weekend…enjoying yourselves. WAH POOR ME. On your way home tomorrow, to tune out the sound of children asking 12,000 unanswerable questions, perhaps you can check out the podcast “One Bad Mother” with Biz Ellis & Theresa Thorn. They are funny, down-to-earth women who aren’t afraid of the occasional f-bomb. I was super honored (and terrified) to be on their show. You can listen here. Please do, and tell me what you think. {You can find their Facebook page here.}
9. Speaking of thinking, I did some of that Friday afternoon as I was driving from Sacramento up to the mountains. I was thinking that I graduated with an M.A. in English, on Friday, at 3pm. Wore the robe and everything. It’s done. Off and on for 7 years I worked for that fucker. And finally, I finished it.
10. Specifically, I was thinking about how five years ago I was sleeping in my car, but on Friday I graduated with an M.A. And this isn’t earth-shattering and it isn’t amazing and it’s barely even interesting in some circles, but it’s enough to blow me right out of the water, because it’s proof. Proof that nobody can tell me lives don’t turn around, people don’t change, or that some are just born losers, to die unchanged.

You see this picture? It says one thing. It says “there is hope in every lost cause.”

There’s hope in every single one of your lost causes, in human form or any form, I can promise you that.

And that’s a damn nice thing to know.

Thanks for traveling this road with me, you keep me rollin’ on.

with love,

Janelle

There’s that line from When Harry Met Sally: “You look like a normal person, but actually, you are the angel of death.”

We should rewrite that about Meg: “You look like the epitome of marital felicity, but actually, you are the destroyer of marriages.”

Oh come on. I know Meg Ryan doesn’t write the scripts for those romantic comedies. Duh. I realize there’s a good chance she thinks that stuff is inane drivel, but you have to admit, Ms. Ryan and her perky blonde curls, the unbelievably heartfelt love stories she tells, the “true love,” the best friendship, the soul mate stuff…she’s like the quintessential depiction of “all that a marriage should be.”

Or, as I like to call it “The Shit that Ruins Marriages.”

Let me explain: We watch movies like that from the time we’re young and it gives us ideas. Expectations. Beliefs.

And then we meet that special someone and we’re all “OMG I’ve found my soul mate, just like in the movies!”

And we’re just SURE he’s the one and the love story is coming true and OMG it’s all so good.

But then we get married, and one or two or three years later we’re like “Who is this douchebag and why is he in my house?”

And every day feels like work and work and MORE WORK. You hate your husband and he pretty much hates you.

There’s no romance. There’s only confusion and miscommunication and yelling and silence. There are tears and reflection of the “old days” when you were new to the relationship and actually liked each other. And you’re sure you’ve made a tragic mistake. Something’s happened to your marriage; the love has died. The friendship has flickered. Something is terribly wrong.

And all you can do when nobody’s around is think: But it’s not supposed to be like this! Marriage is supposed to be fulfilling! It’s supposed to be fun and interesting and enlightening! We’re supposed to laugh and flirt and have sex on the kitchen floor. Witty banter, coy smiles, dancing!

No, that’s not it. And since nobody else seems to be saying it, I guess I’ll take the plunge and just throw this out: “Marriage is the hardest fucking work in the world and the only thing that makes it last is bulldog-like tenacity and full acceptance of the fact that your partner is not supposed to give your life meaning.”

I can’t believe I just said that out loud.

But it’s true.

I’m no authority on marriage. OBVIOUSLY.

But sometimes, my friends get married. Then, about a year later, I get a phone call or fifty, generally announcing something along the lines of “I made a mistake. I hate being married. Screw this shit.”

And I’m like, “Yes, well. Welcome to the club.”

Them: “This is nothing like what I expected.”

Me: “Yeah. I know.”

Them: “I’m not fulfilled. This is totally not fulfilling. In fact, I hate the motherfucker.”

Me: “Yeah. I know.”

Them: “How did you and Mac make it so long?”

Me: “We didn’t divorce.”

And then there’s a weird silence while they try to think of a friend to call who’s actually helpful.

Having gotten married too young on a cold December day with a baby in a sling across my body, under a tree in front of a courthouse of a hideous town, dressed in all black, I started my marriage in a highly unromantic way.

We were insanely in love when we first met. You can read about it here. But after that, for a variety of reasons (mostly involving immaturity and Captain Morgan), we spent years and years doing everything in our power to obliterate our little love story. We often loathed one another.

Like seriously hated each other. We separated a couple times, but always came back together. I just never left for good. Why?

You want the truth?

Because I couldn’t stomach the thought of another woman being around my children.

Yeah, I know. It’s profound. Super romantic. Real Sleepless in Seattle shit.

But it’s the truth. I’m telling you this so you understand that THAT is how little “love” I felt. I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t feel it. All I knew is that I didn’t want a broken family. So I held on and held on and so did he and I’ll be damned if eleven years later, we’re still here, and we’re doing alright.

Most of the time. The rest of the time it’s yelling and screaming and wishing I could whack him with blunt objects. But that’s rare these days. Much to my astonishment, it’s pretty rare. And I’ll even say, we’re happy.

But nobody talks about the price you have to pay to get that “happy.” The longed-for “happy marriage.” Nobody talks about the screaming and the agony and the silent nights – after night, after night, of the same. The cruel insults and utter dismissal. The depression. The counseling. The soul-crushing inability to connect with a person you used to feel inextricably connected to.

The moment you realize “Whatever. Fuck it. I guess this is as good as it gets.”

And you surrender.

Because there’s nowhere  else to go and the thought of starting over with a NEW MAN is about as appealing as stabbing yourself in the eye with a razor blade, so you just give up. You “resign” yourself, even though you swore you’d never do such a thing…I mean how SAD! How pathetic!

You’ve sold out. It’s over. You’ve never been so down.

And in that moment of total desperation, in the deepest sorrow you’ve ever felt, the insane thought enters your mind… “Maybe marriage isn’t supposed to ‘fulfill’ me.”

Maybe I’m meant to live my life fully and completely and let him live his, and independently we build this thing together, but separately, and I let him be and he lets me be, because the “change each other” plan isn’t working, and I can’t live with him and I can’t live without him.

Maybe those movies were wrong, you think to yourself. Maybe Meg fucking Ryan lied.

Maybe I had it all wrong.

And with your heart in your gut and the surety your life is over, you stop fighting and accept the douchebag for who he is, and you make peace with the fact that he’ll never fully meet your expectations, he’ll never be your perfect “soul mate,” the one who makes your life whole and full and meaningful like the italicized poetry in those Hallmark cards.

[Alright maybe some people have Hallmark marriages from day one. Yeah, well, some people also experience “orgasms” during childbirth. The only thing to do with those people is assume they’re fucking lying and move on.]

For the rest of us, staying married often feels like stepping into an abyss and falling, forever, into the unknown.

Until two or three or four years go by, and one day you’re sitting on the couch with that same man and you break into laughter about something only you two understand, or you tell a friend about 10 years ago, when you first met, or you see him sleeping with your son curled against his chest, and in a flash you realize you’re desperately, terribly in love. That something has happened when you weren’t looking, that some new man stands before you and you hold him in respect with all your heart and there’s admiration and true, lasting friendship. He’s there, still, through history and hell and somehow, a life built itself while you were busy arguing, tearing each other apart, sure this couldn’t possibly be life.

And like war survivors you think back and know you’ve got each other only, a dark crazy history, and a family so gorgeous it makes your head spin.

My god, you think, I’ve got a goddamned love story.

And with everything you’ve got you want to thank your younger self and the universe for not giving up, for staying there, for this, even though you never knew it possible, to have this, with the man you were sure you “didn’t love anymore.”

You sit back, watching your friends get married, still a little amazed they look at you and him as a picture of a “happy marriage.” But mostly you can’t believe you really are happy, usually, and in love, mostly, and okay with all of it, the way it’s turned out, in the big picture, the only picture that really matters.

A Meg Ryan love story.

Fused perfectly with Apocalypse Now.

In the greatest love story ever told.

Or this, which is good enough for me.

Everybody’s always trying to figure out how to do it right.

What’s “best” for my children? What can I do to raise the healthiest, most well-adjusted kids possible?

How can I do it “right?”

Well I think we should reframe this whole discussion into a simple recognition that we’re doing it all wrong.

Everything we do, it’s wrong.

Every decision is the wrong decision. And I have proof. Check this out.

If you have a hospital birth you run the risk of being bullied and manipulated by misogynistic OB/GYNs determined to cut you.

But if you have a homebirth, you’ll probably kill your baby.

So there’s that.

And then, once the kid comes out, you will fail. If you circumcise your boy you’ve engaged in genital mutilation and will have most likely set off a disturbing chain of events in the child’s psyche, possibly resulting in a fascination with burning puppies.

But if you don’t, your kid’s gonna get HIV. And you’re a dirty ass hippie.

If you vaccinate, your kid will probably get autism. If you don’t vaccinate you’re a leach sucking the life out of society and bringing back preventable diseases.

So basically, killing all the people.

Breastfeeding? You’re tied to your kid and undoing years of feminist work. Also you’re ruining your tits and will never be hot again.

Not breastfeeding? Wow. Really nice of you to give your kid brain damage, ADHD and a propensity toward obesity.

Cosleeping? Your children are overly-dependent and will not leave your bed until they’re 19 (if they’re lucky enough to even live that long, since you’ll most likely SMOTHER THEM before that). Also your sex life will die and you’ll never sleep again.

Putting baby in a crib? Hello, attachment issues. Babies need their parents, not a CAGE! If you want to stick something in a cage why don’t you get a rabbit? Also you’ll never sleep again.

Working out of the home? Your children are suffering from your absence. They need a MOTHER, not more MONEY. Teen pregnancy and drug use a sure future.

Stay-at-home mom? Well since you don’t work you can’t afford the character-building activities that turn your children into well-rounded individuals. Teen pregnancy and drug use a sure future.

Involved in everything your kids do? Helicopter parenting. You’re creating entitled lazy asses.

Involved in nothing? Hands-off parenting. Why did you even have kids? Kids need parental involvement to succeed. Studies have proven it.

Private school? Your kids are receiving a skewed version of reality wherein everybody’s wealthy and hyper-educated. Learn nothing of the real world.

Public school? Learn too much of the real world. Pushed into non-thinking followers of society. Worker-bees. Nothing ruins a kid like public school.

Well except maybe homeschool.

Homeschool creates social derelicts. Everybody knows that.

Let your kids play with guns, raise serial killers.

Don’t let your kids play with guns? No worries, they’ll chew their pretzel into one.

Barbies? Your daughter requests breast implants at age 13.

No Barbies? Your daughter becomes so obsessed with Barbies she ends up jacking one from Walmart and you get taken by CPS for raising a little hoodlum.

Have TV in your home? Brainwash your kids.

No TV? Raise out-of-touch weirdos. Go fucking nuts because you can’t get a break, which increases irritability and thus yelling, which we all know ruins children.

Speaking of yelling, do you fight with your partner in front of your kids? Well, that sucks. Way to create an unstable, unsafe home environment.

Don’t ever fight with your partner in front of the kids? Nice. Now they have NO EXAMPLE of conflict resolution and will never communicate well.

We could go on like this all day.

Always vacation with your kids? If you don’t vacation alone with your spouse your marriage is going to fizzle out and die, ending in divorce.

Vacation without your kids? How are they ever going to see the world? You’re a self-centered asshole.

Stay in the same house for 20 years? Raise sheltered children afraid of the world.

Move?  Without stability, your children will seek shelter and grow afraid of the world.

And so…what’s the moral of this story?

What does it mean that we’re going everything wrong?

Well, lest my brain deceive me, I’ll be damned if it doesn’t mean we’re doing everything RIGHT.

It’s simple logic: if everything is wrong, then nothing could possibly be right, which then makes everything neither right nor wrong, but rather the same. Equal.

Cost, benefit. Advantage, disadvantage. Right, wrong. Yin and yang and shit.

Playing field, LEVELED.

So sit back and enjoy your failure.

Since there’s no other option, we might as well embrace it, have fun, and raise some fucking well-adjusted children…you know, by doing everything, WRONG.

Just like we’ve been doing since the beginning of time.

Do you know why?

Because motherhood can take it. Because there is nothing stronger.

I can tear it up, brutalize it, make fun of it in every way possible, tease the darkest corners, shed light in the most covered places…and yet she stands undiminished, untouched. She barely hears me. She raises a disinterested brow for a moment, maybe, but then goes on, being her.

The queen.

Like the friend with whom all barriers are broken, motherhood and I have gone the lengths. We’ve already beaten each other, or tried: She won. We’ve stood face to face in the firing line.

I’ve fought her in a million rings. She wins every time.

I’ve told her to get out. I’ve laughed in her face. I’ve sworn I would force her out.

She sits like a ghost in the easy chair. Never moves a muscle.

You know she’s dished out more than I can ever give with my words, on this blog or a thousand blogs.

She made me a woman I wasn’t ready to become. She throws me every day into the mercy of the universe: through pregnancy, birth, parenthood – my whole existence begs for my kids to keep living, for their hearts to keep beating, for their feet to find loving ground, from the moments of their births I’ve been enslaved. To her. To them.

And yet not.

For I am myself still, independently, and I’ve got this mind and heart and ambition, and it appears I’ll never fully reconcile the two.

There’s nothing gentle about that.

You think a mother’s love is gentle?

Think again.

My love will kick your ass. Don’t believe me? Try to hurt my kid.

My love is a muddy soldier charging enemy lines. Why? Because there is no other choice. This is where we are. This is what we’re doing. It doesn’t matter that I’m tired and broken and somewhat disinterested. It doesn’t matter that it’s Saturday or I’m alone or my last baby passed away.

You get up. You move your feet. Motherhood wins again.

sweat and blood and work. grit and dirt and bruises.

I’m dragged through the mud crying, but begging for it never to change.

Please don’t leave me, motherhood. I’m nothing without you. But I wish, sometimes, you’d kindly go fuck yourself.

My love is the struggle of a drowning man catching air. My tenacity will amaze you.

My love is woman offering her breast to a starving child, knowing there’s no milk.

My love would kill me in an instant, for my baby.

And it would kill you too, for my baby.

Do you think she gets hurts feelings when I make fun of her, when I belittle her, when I voice my little fears and agonies and jab at her ribs?

You think she cares?

No. She doesn’t. Because motherhood has nothing to prove. She’s the one with the power and she knows it. WE BOTH KNOW IT. The one with the power sits back and relaxes. No bluster or fear.

I’m like an annoying puppy nipping at her heels. She kicks me aside without a word.

She knows I’ve got nothing on her, and I’ll kneel at her feet in adoration at any moment, because she’s given it all to me: my heart, my future, my life, in separate souls, these babies who caught me up in their gorgeous little hands and touched my head, with a kiss: “Mama.”

And I’ll fall at her knees to hear that voice again, to hear it always, to know it’s still me.

And I’ll fight whatever fight’s necessary to make her keep on loving me, motherhood. I’ll fight for you, you sick twisted fuck.

Knowing you are eating me alive, each day as I wake up exhausted without any answers, lying on the floor searching for peace, to know how to give the girl what she needs, and the boy eyes to read, and the baby. I’m just gone too much.

And I’m just so in love.

So yes, world, this Mother’s Day, you’ll find me talking shit about motherhood.  You’ll find me laughing my ass off. You’ll find me dripping with sarcasm and saying things I shouldn’t  in an unfeminine and unladylike manner. And you’ll say I’m diminishing a mother’s value.

But I disagree.

I just want to know: Why do I bother you so? My tongue, my attitude, my rugged irreverence?

What about the grit, the incredibly HARD WORK of my life makes you so uncomfortable?

Does it not fit your marketing, your Hallmark card? Does it make your Lifetime movie seem irrelevant? Do you have to rethink your own mother?

Or are you afraid? Are you just simply terrified?

To see us as we are….or can be…?

fierce, mouthy warriors,

fighters and shit-talkers.

Soldiers.

Burly and ripped and sweaty and so goddamn powerful, the toughest motherfuckers you’ve ever seen,

yet

offering the softest breast to a petal mouth seeking, a feather brush on a newborn’s cheek, the most delicate pink, a baby’s soft spot, a “hush” from a loving mouth, she enfolds a tiny creature of perfect vulnerability into stone security, a broken little being –

catching the exhausted of the world in muscle-ripped arms,

pulling small falling hands into her own calloused palms,

and kissing them a thousand times, sending them on their way, to build their own.

the mother.

Is it too much for you, that we exist like this, in perfect contradiction? Is it too much for you that we are all of it, right now, at once?

Then go. Good riddance.

If you can’t take our heat, get the hell out of our kitchens.

Your bellies aren’t the ones we’re living to fill anyway.

And honestly, motherhood doesn’t have time for this shit.

And we aren’t going to write a new story for you, because it’s more palatable, more pleasant. We aren’t going to invent something to soothe your desires.

This is us. This is it.

This is Mother’s Day….

the softest, fiercest mama love…

1. You know, sometimes life is to be lived. Other times, it’s to be endured. I mean nobody ever wants to admit it, but there are times when the only thing you can do is grit your teeth and power forward knowing it will get easier soon and you can live again.
2. I am in that place. I have so much going on right now I feel like I’m drowning and it really isn’t in a fun way. Last semester of grad school, writing for 2 websites, super busy in other work, three kids, trying to figure out what to do with my tween, my boy (see #8 below), myself after I graduate. The toddler. Hay fever. Lack of funds.
3. I’m so sorry for not writing much on this blog. I will come back. I WILL RESURFACE. I will write FTM Friday each week, and on Fridays (ok that might be pushing it). Hang with me, ladies and 3 or 4 gentleman. You know I love you.
4. I went on a “press trip” in April to San Antonio through Parenting magazine. I got to stay in a hotel for 2 nights BY MY FUCKING SELF and drive a BMW at high speeds on a wet track. You can read about my trip here. You might get a kick out of it.
5. We’re starting to plan family and friend summer mini-vacation trips. I’m holding on to them for dear life. June 1, people. June 1 and I get my life back (school and grading is over by then).
6. On a super positive note, one week from today I will be at the Crest Theater as a cast member for the “Listen to Your Mother” show. I wish I could express to you how lucky I feel to be a part of this, how genuinely struck I am by the other cast-members, by the power of the stories they’re telling – by their humor and depth.
7. There will be a lot of strength in that room – a lot of heart. A lot of the badassness (dude whatever it’s totally a word) that makes us women. And mothers. And no, we aren’t going to stand up and talk about our birth stories. We’re going to stand up and BLOW SOME MINDS. That, at least, is the plan.
8. I sincerely hope you will join us, and if you do, come and say “hello” to me after the show for goodness’ sake. I’d love to meet you.
9. Speaking of plans, my boy has been officially diagnosed with dyslexia. We’re trying to figure out what to do. You know, once again, it sucks to not be the people with thousands and thousands of extra dollars. Do you know how many programs are available for dyslexic kids if you have 5 or 10 thousand dollars? Do you know how LITTLE is available for people who don’t? God damn it the whole thing makes me sick.
10.  Also, my house. OMYGOD my house. It’s so bad it makes that picture I posted look orderly. Not quite. But almost.

Hold me. It’s almost over.

Anyway, here’s what we’ve been up to…well, the good stuff. xoxoxo

P.S. JUST GOT AN EMAIL: I passed my exam. I got my degree.

Sigh.

Hell yeah I’m proud. That was a long time coming.

YES!

Sticks don’t hurt people…Georgie, on the other hand…

barefoot fishing? it’s simply perfect.

needed this day…I live in a beautiful county.

When the hell did this happen?

the dimples, people. the dimples.

moments like this sure mean a ton to me now…

he’s totally learned to skateboard

to celebrate the fact that the hotel was so nice it had robes, I made duck face and sent this photo to my dad, who was supposed to be my husband. I AM A LOSER.

So it happened the other day.

My daughter, she’s eleven. She’ll be twelve in November.

She grew up the other day.

We were going to a town in the wine country, to hear a rock-n-roll band. We were going to have dinner first. It was a lovely evening.

She put on a dress, gloves, boots, a hat – and five years.

She wore them like a loose veil across cheek bones I never noticed, on the poise of squared shoulders, soft over eyes that knew something, something more than me, something adults know, or almost know, if they could remember.

She nearly stopped my heart when I saw her in that get-up, so beautiful she snatched my words away. I looked at her and kept on, harder and harder to see it clearly.

a woman?

The second I saw it it vanished, and there stood again my little one, my first one, who played in the sand and still does.

My Ava.

“Mama, I hate you!”

She yelled and ran off.

I stirred the meat in the pan and heated like the cast iron before me. I thought how dare she speak to me that way. I AM THE MOTHER. I thought about storming down the hall and demanding better treatment. HOW DARE YOU. Who do you think you are?

Well I’m a girl, growing up a little, and it fucking sucks sometimes.

A victim of biology.

Fuck biology.

Fuck hormones. And nature.

For taking my baby from me, even if it’s only in moments still, so young. A victim of a uterus and ovaries a decade or two before she even needs them.

I have no idea how to stand near this child. I have no idea what to say and where to reach as I watch her slip away, only in moments still, of beauty or rage.

So goddamn young.

But always moving away, or so it seems, until she tells me that she wants to hear my voice to feel better, and I want to cling to today for dear life. I want to hold it like a drowning man clings to a raft. I want to weave her back into my skin and hold her there like it was and it’s always been.

except that it isn’t. not anymore.

and I cannot.

“I HATE YOU!” the words sting my core because they’re true, for a moment, and maybe I hate her too. because how can I do anything different with this pain taunting me, dangling in my face. i know it’s coming. it’s right there.

losing her.

No, I don’t hate her, not really, even for a second.

They say she’ll come back, after the teenage years. That she’ll just seem gone.

They say it’s so wonderful again, after those years.

They say supportive things.

But what I see is that my daughter is growing up, and it’s all exactly as it should be, except that this is not a change a human can stomach. how can I take it? how can i accept it?

TELL ME YOU FUCKING WORLD, how can I let go? When all I want is one more day and one more after that of our little family and the oldest child still a child and she’s going.

She’s going anyway.

I can only let go, and yet I cannot.

Once again, here I am. A mother. The Mother.

With nothing.

I stir the meat a little longer and remember eleven and twelve and sixteen and how I couldn’t see myself in myself sometimes, and I didn’t know either. “Who do you think you are?”

I have no fucking clue, mom.

so I walk down the hall and open her door. she’s weeping into her pillow. I sit by her and say nothing, look at the trinkets and the papers and stuffed animals. I look at the jewelry and the books and treasures. I touch her arm. I see the clutter, the mess, the thousands of things on the walls. the notes from friends and things from second, third, fourth grade.

the little girl beneath a towering world.

her little haven in an untouchable world begging her to join it.

her place in my home, her home, all I can offer beyond what I am in all my broken form:  a mother, her mother, a new mother I guess, to a new form of child.

I see again it’s all just a series of being reborn. It’s all just a series of recreation, of being tweaked and carved into something new, as I kick and scream and weep for the old.

Just when I was sure it would never end.

Just when I thought I knew what tomorrow will hold.

I looked away for a moment and lost my baby.

In her room, I think I’ll join her.

I spend a good portion of my mothering life in a state of “What the fuck just happened?”

The rest of the time I’m like “Wait. I’m supposed to care about that?”

You know, I’m looking at magazines and headlines and websites and since they’re all saying the same thing it APPEARS that these things are central to motherhood and maybe, since those things don’t really interest me, I’M THE WEIRDO.

[Which we all know is true. I’m just sayin’ I don’t think it's on account of my lack of interest Jessica Simpson’s birth plan.]

At first this bothered me. I thought I was the lost sheep among well-adjusted, um, mother sheep? Sorry. That went poorly. You know, like everybody was “in” on something and I was out. Like all the mothers are doing it, Janelle, what’s wrong with you?

It was like high school all over again, when the popular girls seemed to know how to wear make-up and date boys and I was like “let’s drop acid and listen to some Dead.”

What is with me and the bad examples today?

Anyway I admit it, I used to think something was wrong with me because I didn’t give a shit about most of the things mainstream media seemed to say were inherent in the experience of motherhood. It’s not that I have anything against these things, it’s just that they don’t have much relevance to my actual life, my daily experience of motherhood.

But as the years went by and I grew more secure in my own marginality, sagging breasts and generally poor attitude, I started meeting more and more women who can’t relate to “The Very Best Jogging Stroller!!” and “The Mommy Spring Must-Haves!”

In fact, I now know there’s a whole shitload of us in the same “Yeah, sorry, don’t give a fuck” boat.

So, as a helpful little guide (I’m so helpful, right?), I have composed a list of topics I keep seeing but just don’t care about.

Its official name is:

Shit I Don’t Care About but You Keep Talking About Anyway.
(and by “you” I mean “media,” obviously)

• “The cutest [insert holiday] Cupcakes” – Since I never, ever, EVER volunteer for any school-related event, celebration or activity, my need for appropriately themed cupcakes is pretty much nil. Furthermore, if faced with a cupcake need (beyond hormonally induced depression), I usually discover it approximately 8 hours before they’re due, resulting in an angry last-minute trip to the store and boxed cupcakes that are lucky to have frosting. If they have sprinkles I have achieved greatness.
• Best Yoga Pant – I don’t do yoga (though I’m always going to start “next week!”). If I did, it would be amazing and my pride would overflow and I’d be running around telling my friends what a badass I am. The type of pant I’m in would be rather superfluous at that point, don’t you think?
• “Matching Bras and Underwear” – If attending an event important enough that I’m contemplating my undergarments, I WOULD BE WEARING SPANX, which immediately renders the whole discussion meaningless. Do you see the problem here?
• “How to Please my Man in Bed” – Totally got this one already: Have sex with him.
• “How to Spice up My Marriage” – Have sex with him more than once a week. Why are we discussing the obvious?
• “How to Raise Gifted Children” – Honestly, at this point, I’m just hoping they don’t end up crackheads.
• “How to Plan a Week’s Worth of Meals” – I feel like we should start with 2 or 3 days and see how that goes before we get all carried away with “weeks.”
• “How to Get Along with Other Moms at Playgroups” – Should be renamed to “How to spot the mom as miserable as you are so you can get together and talk shit.”
• “How to Entertain Kids.” – NOT MY PROBLEM.
• “How to Engage Kids in Imaginative Play” – Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose?
• “Baby Sleep Solutions.” – Lies, all lies.
• “Effective Disciplining Techniques” – Yes, thank you for the excellent ideas, which I will try so hard to adopt only to find myself 3 days later resorting to the old stand-by disciplinary technique of “yell, feel guilty, apologize, repeat.”
• “Favorite Baby Toys” – As much as you keep trying to convince me my baby will like [whatever] better than cardboard boxes, cell phones, kitchen utensils and/or the small chokable item she just discovered on the carpet, years of experience tell me otherwise and I no longer believe you.
• “Kate Middleton’s Maternity Outfits” – Also don’t give a shit about the maternity outfits of any other rich, skinny woman who looks better pregnant than I do not pregnant. Kthanksbai.
• Come to think of it, I also don’t care about their baby showers, nursery décor, strollers, weird-ass naming choices, or the $89.00 onesie they just purchased (with the ironic hipster slogan on the front).
• Any article with the word “vs.” in it (“Crib vs. Co-sleeping/Circumcision vs. Non/Bottle vs. Breast)” – WHAT DO YOU THINK I’M SOME SORT OF SADIST? All this article is going to do is result in the most insane horrific name-calling comment section you’ve ever seen. All the crazies come out for these fuckers. Please count me out.
• “How to have a Smooth Transition back to Work after Maternity Leave” - Replace “smooth” with “the least horrifying” or “least traumatic,” and we can talk.
• “How to Organize your House” – Reading an article as a first step to organizing my house is like sending an email to world leaders asking them to please consider world peace at their next staff meeting. NICE IDEA, completely ineffective.
• “How to Keep your Car Clean and Neat” – I’m sorry. Come again?
• “How to Nurse Discreetly” – Oh go fuck yourself.
• “Things you Shouldn’t Say in Front of Your Children” – I guarantee you that ship has sailed.
• “Food in the Shape of cute Animals” – I once made pancakes in the shape of Mickey Mouse. Then I felt weird inside for like a week. I’m pretty sure a vegetable panda would traumatize me for life.
• “How to make memorable holidays” – Um, “memorable” is not the problem. “Enjoyable” is the thing I can’t seem to find.
• “Easy Steps to Potty Training/Weaning/Sleeping alone” – Look, if you’re going to just make shit up, I feel like you shouldn’t be writing articles.

And now, my favorite topic of all time:  “How to be a More Confident, Guilt-Free Mother.”

This is pure beauty on account of the irony, because as we all know, the only way to achieve that is to STOP READING CRAP ABOUT MOTHERHOOD.

Boom.

I feel better already.

You?

I used to not cry about things like this.

The big tragedies. The ones that kill and kill and kill.

Columbine. 9-11.

I don’t think I cried about those. Not even a single tear.

Maybe I was just too self-centered. Maybe too young. Maybe I just didn’t get it, couldn’t feel it.

Humanity.

Maybe I hadn’t lived long enough to have that pain mean something, to me, safe and protected hundreds of miles away.

It used to feel unreal.

Like it was sad. “Wow, that’s sad.” But I didn’t cry. Because really. What do I care? It’s not me. I mean I cared because it’s sad, but it didn’t affect my life.

Or maybe I’m just an asshole.

I don’t know, I just didn’t cry.

But I cried today.

I was sitting in a staff meeting and I read an article on my phone. I read the words “8-year-old boy” and I put the phone down and I closed my eyes. And I fucking cried.

I felt so tired. Just so tired, beat.

I don’t know what I was crying about. I don’t know those people. I don’t know that boy. I’ve never been to Boston. But it was like this pain just came from the depths of me, out of nowhere and everywhere, from something that makes me the same as the mother who lost her son today and the people bleeding and the humanity.

I felt crushed under the weight of an idea of a boy gone.

A boy gone.

And when I cried the third time driving home, I realized I was wrong.

I know him. I’ve always known him.

I loved him.

I love him now.

I love him with all my damn heart. Because he’s a boy like mine or nothing like mine, and there’s something I recognize in him, something I know, like I know the people murdered and the youth bullied and the hatred and the war and your grandmother who passed away yesterday. And mine, who died 4 years ago.

A soul. Two eyes, hair, little hands and skin and a voice.

My boy. Yours.

If you let yourself go you’ll feel it too, the knowing. The friendship, the love, fond recognition of faces you’ve never seen. I know you.

And I wish you weren’t gone.

In a few days it will all be back to normal. The Facebook feed will be all the old meaningless shit and the news will have moved on and nobody will care except the distant passing glance. Of remembrance.

But at least today I cried, for an old friend, for a boy who was born and lived and died, like I have, and will, and you.

Humanity.

My old friends.

I guess I cried for you today.

hope i can recognize you tomorrow