A hedge against future regret.
Tomorrow May comes into the calendars of the sort of people that keep pocket calendars with notes in pen or pencil marking events and to-do’s for the day; organizing a life. I bought one of those in December thinking I will not have my phone near S for reasons I no longer believe. Reasons like not having plastic toys or formula or worrying about brand recognition and screen time. We used to turn off our modem at night before bed so that as little wifi waves penetrated my body when S was inside me. That was when we, J and I, used to sleep together in our bed at night, for many hours at a time. I cared so much then. I cared so much about all of that penetrating my womb. Now I sleep with the phone in bed, next to my head, close to S. In the first weeks after S was born, I would turn my phone on airplane mode, something I rarely do in the haze and hell of nights when he’s waking up wailing and my body doesn’t want to but moves to console him, nurse him, pet him, burp him—to get him to sleep again. I nurse and scroll through Instagram, mostly envious of moms that have book deals and newborn twins, 3-month-olds that sleep through the night, or tummy sleeping with Dockatot’s and other accouterments that I desired fetishized before the reality of our financial situation was made clear to me. I used to think stuff could make me happier, my life easier. Even still we have spent hundreds of dollars on stuff. Stuff that makes little difference to S, stuff that doesn't replace me in soothing him back to sleep.
J, fed up and also exhausted, tells me: “You keep looking for some magical answer; that somewhere out there is a magic potion that is going to solve his sleep problem. You pathologize him, creating intricate scenarios that you insist cause problems with his sleep. But the only problem is that he’s a baby, and that’s not a problem. It’s a problem for you.”
“That’s not true. I don’t pathologize. Even the pediatrician said he should be sleeping in 4-hour chunks. T sleeps 4-4 by now and he was a wakeful sleeper like S before.”
In some ways I agree with J. But how could I not look to all and any reason S is not sleeping so that I can have an answer, something to look forward to, something to do, something that can exist as a line in my overpriced navy pocket planner—organizing a life.
I’ve never failed so much in my life. I usually get what I want because I work hard to get it. Nothing has ever come easy for me. I know every stupid little thing is going to be a struggle I have to work relentlessly to achieve. But this, this is like working in a fucking rat wheel, spinning in a circle thinking it’s going to be different somehow, that someday you’ll get out.
And I commiserate with all these mothers who feel what I feel. How, then, why, then do we become mothers? If it is so painful, such a constant battle to fail, why do we do it?
“As a hedge against future regret,” Sarah Manguso writes.
—30 april 2016*
*Some of the emails including this one are edited old writing. I've dated those emails accordingly, although I'm not sure I should. Does it matter? I date them because a newsletter seems like it should be in real-time, or at least assumed to be somewhat analogous to real time. I date them because many of the things I wrote then I don't feel anymore and do not want to associate with, but I recognize that my discomfort means something.