To Be Better

Having a kid makes you do some weird shit.

Like sometimes you wipe bodily fluids with your bare hand. That's one of the biggest cliches in the honest mom blogosphere but it's true. I mean you spend a relatively large percentage of your day cleaning another person's butthole. Most people's lives pre-baby have very little cleaning of buttholes, and given the incredibly abrupt transition between one and the other, it's pretty amazing how little thought you give it.

There are other, deeper things though. Deeper even than buttholes.

(Sorry.)

There are times you feel like you could explode with all the love you have for this tiny miracle of life and a second later you're walking to the mailbox and wondering if you could just keep walking into the forest and disappear.

And other times you come to fundamentally questioning who you are and what you've done. Every stupid or cruel or obnoxious thing you've said or done, no matter how distant in time or place, comes sharply into focus as though it happened just moments ago.  You become aware of how much trash you are responsible for putting into landfills, how much water you waste waiting for the shower to reach the right temperature or flushing bugs down the toilet, how little you have done to make a world with so much darkness into something better and brighter.

You look at your tiny miracle and realize that even if you do everything "right" you are constantly fucking it up.

I've always struggled with the pulse of failure beating in my brain, reminding me of all the stupid shit I said or did. I've dealt with imposter syndrome in just about every area of my life. But never has it been so strong or so fierce as when I realized that I am responsible for molding this human into someone who is better than I am.

Who agreed to let me do that? Who gave us permission to conceive and raise a child? When is her real mom coming to pick her up?

On the other hand, I suppose there's beauty in imperfection. Amelia doesn't know the difference since I'm the only mother she will ever have, and there's no rule that you need to have finished growing yourself before you grow a person.

All any of us can do is our best. I just hope I can make my best...better for her.