This is what it feels like. As a parent of very young kids, it often boils down to putting your own life to a grinding halt in order to “give” life to them. I don’t know if it makes a lot of sense but again, this is what it feels like for me. I never realised how much a parent has to give: as a child you just receive. And take and take and take, without taking anything into consideration except for yourself.
I can’t remember my parents having any hobby except for keeping me and my sisters—and perhaps the vegetable garden—in check. When I ask them about this now, they respond along the lines of “just wait, you’ll quickly learn that with kids there’s no space for that”. That was a few years ago when we had only one kid. I didn’t believe them. Now I do.
I also can’t remember my parents taking the time to often visit friends. There have been a few moments where they would drive over to friends with us three kids but that was initially limited to a few times a year and then gradually disappeared. Yet another thing scratched in favour of more time/life for the kids? Perhaps I am writing this down as a warning for myself not to let my own life derail too much: last week I could feel the dark abyss calling my name. I often resent just starting the day and sometimes wish I didn’t wake up. I am exhausted.
Should I be? I see friends jamming their way through life, with multiple kids, pretending there’s an endless well of love to give. I read and hear about folks taking their very young kids on their far travels while we can’t even muster to get our asses to the Belgian coast.
My well isn’t endless: it’s drying up. Its love level is about the same as the rain barrel outside: dangerously low. We are giving and giving up to the point that we don’t recognise ourselves anymore. My relationship with my wife is crumbling because of these little takers. I partially changed jobs because of them. My head is a gaping void and the few intact spots are partially inaccessible due to brain fog. I want to go and sleep this off and wake up a few years later.
But I should know better. We people are experts at pretending. Other households have their own problems, they just carefully hide them. As my wife likes to say: nobody escapes their youth unscathed. I’d like to extend that saying: nobody escapes parenthood unscathed. It permanently changes you—and not always in a good way. What am I doing here in front of this laptop anyway, during these few hours that my parents are looking after the kids? Shouldn’t I go back to bed? More anxiety pops up: how to most efficiently pass this highly rare quality alone time? Before you know it it’s gone. This need to quickly enjoy this little bit of free time evaporates my motivation to do anything at all…
And thus I keep on thinking: creating life is sacrificing a bit of your own. Creating two lives is sacrificing a lot of your own. Sometimes too much. But the kicker is that you are completely unaware of this as a soon-to-be parent: you’re just excited about what’s to come, blind to the “few” downsides that come with it. And then it’s too late. What did we even do to pass the time before we had kids? I can’t remember. Loitering? Nothing? Gaming? Living?
Even in the sense of a non-living creation, creating life is also giving: you’re pouring years of hard work into a project to realise something. Only with kids, these years never end, and the working hours are not from nine to five. Every little scream and cough at night will keep you awake and every little scream and cough during the day will drive you crazy.
We don’t have the fortitude of a big social safety net making it difficult to break through this circle of negative thoughts. I didn’t write I regret having children but sometimes I do and today is just one of those days. Another problem that presents itself in our situation is that you can’t talk about this with anyone. Friends with only one kid don’t understand what the big deal is. Friends with multiple kids that are older simply forgot their biggest nightmares and very helpfully say it’ll get better. Friends that don’t have kids can’t imagine that misery—and I don’t blame them for not trying.
And even if you could. I don’t have the energy to talk. What is there left to say that will change our situation? Nothing. We’ll still have to get up tomorrow and we’ll still have to keep on giving life in order to sustain and grow these other little lives. A few months ago we had a rare weekend off for ourselves and got out of the house to do something nice together. Later that night I got sick. Flash! Now the weekend is gone and you’re back to giving.
My apologies for these rather depressing words but I have the feeling that too many parents are pretending and not showing the true side of daily misery. That’s what it is. It could be happy bearable misery but it’s still misery nonetheless. And it won’t end: diapers will be replaced by another thing to worry about. We endlessly worry. Why is she eating so little? Oh no the youngest fell again, what’s this bump on his head? Was that there yesterday? Why doesn’t she say how school was? Does she feel at home there? Do we really need to rush off to the doctor again for the third time this month?
During all that worrying, we lose ourselves. We should be worrying about ourselves instead. But at the end of the day, when the kids are in bed, all we have left in us is the ability to lie down on the couch and mindlessly watch something or read a light novel, if that. Maybe the secret lies in not thinking too far ahead: if you look ahead in time you’ll only be faced with that gigantic amount of life still to give until they’re old enough to start changing our diapers.
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