One Half Makes a Whole Person
first, a poem
She halved me.
I am halved.
When she left my body,
I had a dinner plate sized wound
left in my uterus,
according to the demonstrations.
I am halved.
I am halved.
I am less,
so she is more.
If curled into myself,
I wouldn’t find the end.
Everything is halved,
everything is halved,
half-finished coffee,
half-finished thoughts,
one leg in the shower
before I hear her cry again,
when I sleep,
one eye is open.
She has my nose and lips,
I am halved.
I love them more
on her than I ever did
in my own half-life.
—
I am allowed to be whole.
I am allowed to be whole.
I am allowed to be whole.
I am allowed to be whole.
When I became a mom, there was this constant pendulum of emotions between desperately wanting to be with my baby, then swinging violently in the other direction, of wanting desperately to be completely and utterly alone. This created what I would consider a permanent pocket of guilt in my heart.
Our daughter, Amelia Grace, is a year-and-a-half now. Her father is a full-time graduate student studying in an intensive medical program for a Physician Assistant Master’s degree. I work a consulting job 40 hours a week to financially support our family. I never, ever expected to feel the way I do about someone else watching my daughter during the day. Every day when I drop her off, I have to swallow the emotions that are overwhelming inside my throat, which is something akin to falling to my knees and begging to have her for myself. To raise her myself. Instead, I smile, I kiss her goodbye, I wish her a fun day with grandparents. I close the door and blast music to resist the urge to sob, again. I stare at a screen for the rest of the day hoping to numb myself with the brightness, pretending I am doing something just as important, as if she wasn’t the most important thing in the world.
*
In motherhood, I was never prepared to be halved.
Half finished cups of coffee every morning. Mascara only on one eye before I was distracted; I fell asleep with one contact last night. The other day I went to the aquarium without realizing I’d only done half the makeup on half of my face until we took a photo in front of the green screen. When she was younger, I used to always be halfway naked and have one leg in the shower before her cries summoned me once again. Every thought is half-baked because it feels like my brain is crowded with everything I need to do for her and everyone else and there isn’t room for a fully fleshed out thought. A year later, I still look half-assed just about every day. I am constantly operating at 50% functioning capacity.
I am the glass half-empty. Not full.
She is half of me. She has my lips and nose.
If pregnancy was about growth, then this can only be destruction.
When I drop my daughter off each day so I can work, I am halved again. I leave her, and it hurts more than missing a limb. I am carrying a wound. They say there is a dinner plate sized wound in your uterus immediately after giving birth. I never healed. I stopped counting the hours I actually get to spend with her each week because it was stretching the wound too far, too wide. I was leaving scars.
Women are stronger than men. You hear that a lot, about birth and pregnancy, all of the before. Is it strength? Why was I given the superpower to birth a human life? To carry her for months on end. To give up my body for hers. To hand her off to someone else when it felt like the most unnatural punishment. When every trimester felt like another test, I didn’t feel like this gift was a measure of so-called strength. When I labored for 36 hours at my induction, my husband whispered in my ear, “I wish I could do this for you. I wish I could take your place.” I think he’s the kind of guy who would jump in front of a bullet for me.
This isn’t strength, honey. I think I just have always been better at suffering. Maybe it’s the same thing, I am not sure.
*
In this hazy, injured state, I wander through the rest of my week, lost. Who am I? What do I need? Somehow I make it to the weekend yet again, and finally, finally, she is mine. Now what?
When I wrap her in my arms (finally, finally) I am accepting that I cannot be elsewhere. I am ruled by her schedule, her needs. Consumed by them. It’s a choice I own. I choose her happiness before my own. I am getting everything I wanted and still I am not happy — why? There’s a lot of things I want — to have time to work out, to read and write at my own leisure, to travel, to sleep in, to not be rushing through life so I can get everything done before naptime.
The pendulum swings. I can’t find the middle ground.
Then she smiles and strings two words together in a sentence. My heart ignites. I feel a sweep of pride and I feel like I am standing on Mt. Rainier. I feel like I have finished a marathon. I feel like I am higher than anyone else in the entire world.
I am happy. This half of me is happy. This happiness matters.
*
But, there is a certain kind of grief that comes with the arrival of motherhood. The grief of shedding who you used to be — because that old you is no longer there after the total psychological, physical, and emotional transformation of motherhood. All of the things I used to care about seem so far away from what I could call reality. The half that was taken…she might as well be dead.
Instead of a baby shower, women should have a funeral.
My Obituary
Ariana Bessette was an overly ambitious over achiever who was known to others as a career counselor, Scorpio, perfectionist, and wise friend. Her friends affectionately referred to her as “Party Ari” after three drinks or a single shot. She suddenly left our world at 8:47 pm on February 17, 2022.
She had a Masters degree, outstanding performance reviews, and a bright limitless future of possibility when it came to her career. She enjoyed reading books, writing, and didn’t appreciate her body before it was too late. Ariana couldn’t hold a beat to save her life but that never stopped her from dancing. She was a rare mix of dreamer and realist. She will be missed by her family, husband, and fur-child. In lieu of flowers, please delete all of her weird childhood blogs from the internet.
Stay with me here. Doesn’t she warrant some sort of ceremonious moment? Acknowledgement of her sacrifice? I would even accept a small ritual of some sort. In my experience, it felt like men were handed the title of Dad as an addition to their identity. Like the way doctors or lawyers get a few professional letters added to their name. Whereas women simply become Mom. Our identities are deleted and replaced with Mom. Her title is shorter, her identity is smaller. Halved. Unfortunately, it’s always been foreshadowed this way. The way our maiden names are traditionally disposed of and replaced with the husband’s last name. Fathers walking us down the aisle. Childbirth wreaking havoc on our bodies. The needle has always been pointing this way, hasn’t it?
God, I miss her sometimes. I miss the girl who was just married with a dog. I miss the single version of myself. I even miss the girl from high school. So why does this grief hit so much harder?
I think it’s the process.
It’s the suddenness. You walk into the hospital to have the baby and you will, hopefully, inevitably, leave with a baby. You are now a mom. And from every moment on, you will always be a mom, and the time you have is no longer yours. I didn’t have time to honor my grieving process, not when I was wearing adult diapers, bleeding giant clots, praying for a bowel movement, and crying about breastfeeding. There wasn’t time amidst the sleep exhaustion. And there certainly isn’t space for sadness when your baby is bringing you and your relatives an incredible amount of joy.
There is tiny life here! A brand new piece of a person. What a blessing. What an absolute blessing.
When do you stop and say, “Hi, I am very depressed and find myself sobbing at random times!”
No, I was terrified to admit anything but happiness. I remember my first night in the hospital, the nurse told me if I had scored one point lower on the Postpartum Depression Test that they would have called Child Services. After that, I quickly learned to shut my mouth.
*
Wait, I take it back.
I’d keep the baby shower. There’s so much shit you need for a baby.
When I have tried to share my thought process — my confliction between joy and depression — my everlasting pendulum of emotions surrounding motherhood, I am often faced with whiplash. Your baby is fine without you, don’t worry so much. Or ever worse, I thought you wanted more time with her? I thought this is what you wanted.
As I reached the beginning of toddlerhood, I was able to look back and see how things have changed but also remained the same. There is less crying. We are all sleeping through the night. There isn’t an invisible question mark after calling myself mother. When there is a small, running, hungry child yelling “Mama,” you take on the title gracefully and confidently. But with the arrival of my toddler, the rest of myself did not join. Half of me was elsewhere still while the one here was chasing my daughter around the house.
My body was back to normal. I looked in the mirror and she wasn’t a stranger anymore. So where was the old me? Did I honestly lose her forever?
*
I had a mantra in pregnancy and in the beginning of motherhood. It went like this:
“I can do hard things.”
When I spent more days than not face down in the toilet during pregnancy, I would say to myself, I can do hard things. When total fear gripped my body at the point of delivery, shivering, I whispered, I can do hard things. And when the nights were eternally long, sleepless, pushing me to the edges of rage and despair with a tiny being in my arms, I would say, I can do hard things. When I sit in yet another Zoom meeting for work while my toddler cries for me outside the door, I have to think to myself, I can do hard things.
And it has helped me so far. It really did.
But after a while, it’s starting to sound like: I am tired of doing hard things. When does it get easier? I think it’s time for a new mantra now.
I am allowed to be whole.
Did you hear that? I am allowed to be whole. It means my life doesn’t have to be dedicated to everyone around me. A mother is allowed to have her own interests, her own habits and hobbies, her own identity. I don’t have to wake up halved day after day, night after night. I am not the main character anymore in this season of life. Everything, and I mean everything, is about her right now. But one day…it will be my time again. The seasons will change. And when that time comes, I don’t want to realize I had been standing still the entire time, covered in dust and rusted. I don’t want to spend that time trying to remember who I am.
I am allowed to be whole. Now. Not later.
When my 9–5 is spent working and my 5–9 is spent caring, it is okay to desire time for myself. Bit by bit I will sew the other half together, bring her back from the dead, resurrect her from the depths of maternal sacrifice. She won’t be the same. But — I am allowed to be whole. I never lost her, I just hadn’t given her permission to exist.
Even when the pendulum swings back, it always punches me in the gut. And I still waver. Am I being selfish? No. No. Stop. I think, and I hope I am right, my daughter needs a mother who is interesting, a character of her own design, a person capable of being her friend and role model. She needs a mother with a story. A mother who is whole person.
I think she needs a glass-half-full kind of mom one day.
And that means I may need a break sometimes.
I am allowed to be whole.
I am allowed to be whole.
I am allowed to be whole.
I am allowed to be whole.
I am allowed to be whole.
For her as much as me.
