Motherhood is a Fiction

That was the true call. At dawn, around 4 AM, was the call that couldn’t be ignored or left to the answering machine. One that I had to answer myself. It was a call to molt. My old skin would be shed, and two versions of me would emerge. The hollowed-out one would turn gray and be forgotten somewhere on the floor, while the glistening, new, yet immature version would stay with me for the years ahead.

My new skin would cause turbulence. You know, one has to be prepared to be good-looking, but at that time I wasn’t prepared to become good-looking. It was about a clash of aesthetics, of personalities. I was a jester, lover, outlaw, sage, magician, hero, caregiver, innocent, creator, explorer, ruler, and everyman all at once. And how would you respond when faced with something so confusing unprepared? At the very least, angry. Even I was angry at myself.

Receiving the call at 4 AM, mid-dream, after a false alarm less than 24 hours before, made us wake up slightly angry and in disbelief.

“Argh, what is it again?!” replied my husband in the dark with his typical forced-obligation grunts. “Are you sure?” he said. Before long, we were already on the road, heading to another moment that would change our life trajectories. We were heading to a dreadfully tiring morning, where I would writhed, cursed, and peed on a table with nurses coming and going. He would accepted the curses along with our new life, with no preparation whatsoever. At the same time, to hell with the “What To Expect” book. No one, including that book, told me that a molting to become a mother would become more miserable the more I prepped myself with expectations and knowledge of the societal norms. And I’m not a wise dervish with the true knowledge of the world, so half-knowledge it is.

Half knowledge is bound for a disappointment, and soon post-partum blues would come like a close friend dropping by now and then. Even when her cry is heard out of my womb after 7-8 hours of obscurity. Did I touch her and hold her? Did we have skin to skin moment immediately? Since my true truth was so obscured, I find it hard to remember the details. Two people will condemn me for it later on. When the truth is still hard to find after a while, you have to make it yourself.

If details were lost, a hue can still be counted as truth. The hue was bursted with loneliness that came washing me as she cried and I had no one to share the moment with. Not even my husband. The truth was confusion, even when she was placed at my chest for a few moments before she was taken away.

Sweet and small she was, bundled with an atmosphere of love. Her thick black hair was full of innocence, her clasped fingers were empty of faults. I might have start fallen into her right then and there at the moment she was born, but the truth is love grew unnoticed most of the time, and only by experiencing life forward did I come to understand the scale it has grown to be.