Mom

Hi, I’m Mom. Okay, that’s not really my name, but it might as well be. My entire life and personality for the past sixteen years have revolved around being a mom to my children. So at this point, you can just call me Mom. It’s what I hear fifty times an hour, anyway. “Mom, can you come help me?” “Mom, where is my black shirt with the cat on it?” “Mom, are there any clean socks?” “Mom, can you make food?” “Mom, can I have fruit snacks?” The reasons to call Mom seem to be limitless. Don’t get me wrong, it feels really good, most of the time, to be the one they turn to. It brings me comfort to think I’m their safe space.

Ironically, any possible threatening situation sends me into a spiral of negativity. Their chance of being in danger at any moment, no matter how small, is always at the forefront of my brain. They could exist one moment and be gone the next, and I don’t have a crystal ball to know when that will happen. Instead, I worry about it every waking moment. Simple daily activities seem to pose risks. A coffee table corner looks like a possible brain bleed and becoming bedbound. A bath could mean drowning in an instant. Of course I supervise my toddler the entire time he’s in there. But even so, in just a split second he could go under, try to take a deep breath, and that’ll be all it takes.

The horror stories of the tragedies other parents have faced are plentiful. Empathy and worry consume me relentlessly. How would I react to hearing my child is dead? I don’t even want to think about it. Who would? But I can’t stop. These thoughts aren’t voluntary. They are me. It’s beyond exhausting. My husband thinks I complain too much about how tired I am even though I sleep (an interrupted) eight hours. Sleep is my only temporary reprieve. It’s the only time my brain gets to shut off its anxiety loop. And even then, I wake up multiple times a night from nightmares. I haven’t slept well… probably since high school. That’s when my firstborn made his way into this world.

I went straight from a punky rebel who skipped classes and drank here and there to Mom. I was sixteen. The impulsive version of me didn’t consider the consequences of my actions. Even when I was pregnant I was in denial until almost six months. The doctor saw me twice in that time, just enough to get one ultrasound picture. My mom didn’t find out until two weeks before I gave birth. Not only did I not consider the consequences of anything I did, I also didn’t consider anyone but myself. It was a personality trait I was forced to part with. Having a child, and being a mom who actually cared, meant thinking about the wants and needs of another person. It was a swift erasure of self.

Up until he was about three years old, my mom helped me take care of him so I could finish school. I had a promising future. I was set to complete university and law school in five years instead of seven. Then a wrench got thrown in when my mom died. I was nineteen. I had no one else. My son was in daycare during the day which helped immensely, but I also had night classes. What was I going to do?

I turned to an aunt I hadn’t talked to much, but was around enough growing up to trust her to watch him. She lived about forty minutes from me. On the nights I had classes, I would drive my son to her house, drive to school, and attend class. He spent the nights at her house, and she would drop him off at daycare in the morning.

She got sick of this, fast. We had this routine for about a month until she came up with some unconvincing excuse to no longer continue helping me. Not long after that I sent her an email letting her know my son misses her. The email went unanswered. She abandoned us. It’s been nearly fourteen years since then and neither of us has heard from her.

I have siblings who are much older than me, and I didn’t talk to them either. I don’t even consider them siblings. They’ve never reached out. Not a single blood relative has been in my life since my mom passed. Having no one meant I had no choice but to leave school. I took up a parttime job. Ever since then, I’m just Mom. The real me who existed as a sole entity had to grow up. Nearly seventeen years later, and she’s long lost. I haven’t known her since becoming Mom. A series of unfortunate (but preventable) events caused her to go into hiding until she eventually just disappeared entirely.

I’ve tried numerous ways to find her, short of plastering her face on a milk carton. Maybe she was still interested in law and criminology. Maybe she liked to draw, build dollhouses, start a business or simply take classes and learn. Maybe she wanted to work in medicine or resell on eBay. I think maybe she peered out from behind the shadows and tried to like those things, but they never quite stuck long enough for her to continue to emerge. They just weren’t her.

I’ve tried anything I can think of to see if she’s there. No luck yet. All that interest in the justice system has done no good in finding my missing person. The case has gone cold.

My kids never really understand the sacrifices made to raise them. A woman poured herself into building them cell-by-cell. She’s split herself three ways. It only makes sense she no longer exists, not really. That person is gone. Mom is here. My guess is I’ll be forced into a new identity one day and I might enjoy it once the pain of the transition settles. For now, that moment is nowhere in sight. She’ll sit lost in the shadows until she feels safe enough to claw her way out. I just hope the kids will call to talk to me then at least half as much as they call my name now once they’re older.