Rise Up or The Birth Day

Disclaimer: This is not, nor will it ever be, a parenting blog. I can't deal with parenting blogs.

However, parenting is just about all I'm doing right now, so it's all I've got to work with.

Ok. I'm about to get all revolutionary and cool and edgy with you.

Ready?

Motherhood ain't like you see on the TV. The early parts of it are a gruesome melee of emotion that are not always pretty.

My son, Charlie, was born on Wednesday, October 20th 2010. Charlie's mother, was also born that day. All that happy bullshit you hear people say about how "You are instantly changed" and stuff is real, man. When Charlie cried his first weak little cry ("Babies of mothers on anti-depressants are usually very quiet" - said the asshole nurse) I burst out with "Nothing else matters anymore!" So dramatic. There should have been more appropriate lighting design. But it was true! I suddenly got tunnel vision! I was like those poor Central Park horses with the blinders on! I compare it now to a tether, of sorts. Me to him. Right in the middle of our chests. Like that snaky iridescent thing in Donnie Darko. The farther I go from him the tighter and more uncomfortable it gets. I feel just as raw and new and red as he does. Sometimes all I can do to get my feelings out is cry and shake my fists, too. Now, just about the only time I feel whole and content is when I've got him in my arms, his hand wrapped around my finger, eyelids heavy, as I rock him to sleep. "Awwww, how nice!" , you say. Well, it's NOT nice. Nope. It's kinda....not so great. I love him so intensely and just.....feel....so intensely that I think I will eventually collapse under the weight of all that emotion. You want to feel connected to our primal, animal roots? Become a mother. These feelings are so base, so fundamental. It's taking me, a person very sensitive to change, a while to adjust.

Motherhood, at it's best, is remarkable, astounding, amazing, enlightening, exciting, important, exclusive, and fun.

At it's worst it's confusing, isolating, competitive, painful, gut-wrenching, expensive and lonely.

So we're learning. Me and Charlie. We're learning to navigate this strange new place. We're growing. up...together.