I have become one by necessity. Our child gently reminds me with each rise and fall of my legs that I can only go so fast and certainly no faster. I waddle now, sometimes shuffle when the painful stretching sensation on the right side of my groin gets too much to bear lifting a foot for.
Motherhood is already transforming me in ways I’d not thought of - small and profound ways, often creeping into my being as I try to get on with things as best as I can; without more than a whisper, appearing out of nowhere over days and weeks and now months as I look back. In reality, I sort of expected this bafflingly new phase of my life to hit me like a boom between the ears, and then keep hitting and hitting as we hit each new milestone… but the blows have been soft yet somehow more powerful whenever they have come, and they have always come unexpectedly.
So with this particular blow, I am now a slow walker, and I should be content with that. I can no longer keep up. I should no longer try to keep up. And really this is the thing that I have waited and prayed for as I grew into whatever the next phase of my life would bring, but it’s also the thing I kept fighting because I just did not want to let go of how far and how fast I have come. My path is far more different & honestly more difficult now than I could ever have prepared myself for, and I cannot continue to pretend I’m able to straddle both it and the one the infamous ‘Everyone Else’s of the world walk. I am not on ‘their’ path. They are not even on ‘their path’ as far as my limited perception & shallow glimpses of other peoples’ lives will ever allow me to imagine… Motherhood tells me it’s time I leave behind such shallow ways of looking at myself, at others and at the world.
I will have much bigger things to care for soon enough and none of this will even matter in the end. That makes me so happy to think about. Anxious, but so unbelievably happy. . .
written: 32 weeks
