Questions You Never Knew Needed Answered

Very recently, I was asked a simple (but entirely annoying) question.

Someone (who I want to fucking bitch slap) asked me if becoming a mother made me want to be a better person.

Even though it took all of my energy not to tell her that only a dumb-fuck would ask a question like that, thankyouverymuch...I decided to take a moment to actually answer her (you know, because I'm sweet like that).

It doesn't take a genius to look at the situation I'm in and see that I have made a number of bad decisions. A few months into my pregnancy, once I had gotten past the this-can't-even-be-real feeling, I began to gain a little perspective on some things in my life. I remember telling a friend at one point that if you looked back on the decisions I have made in my life, you might come to the conclusion that I was a huge fucking idiot. Who knows...I just might be.

As I have done all too often in my life, I started picking myself apart. Hating myself, actually, for each and every idiotic decision I've ever made...from bad haircuts all the way to whoring it up, I made myself pay. Oh, how I would torture myself. I needed to pay for my stupidity, and no one could punish like I could punish, so I spent months beating myself up and brooding like some fifteen year old emo kid. I was a mess.

Then my son was born, and wouldn't sleep. I felt massive amounts of anxiety at being this child's only guardian, the one and only person who was responsible for keeping him alive, fed, clothed, sheltered, and happy. I thought if I looked away for one second he would simply stop breathing, and it made me crazy. I stayed up in the middle of the night during his short stretches of sleep, crying and watching him, feeling completely helpless. And he would wake. And he would cry. And I would try to tell myself we were both going to be just fine, but I was falling apart.

After some time passed, and I adjusted to the new demands on my time, as well as the lack of sleep, I decided to start exercising again. I started to feel good again. And I started to think about what to do with my life. All the while my son watched me. He watched me cry in the middle of the night, when I was tired and frustrated. He watched me try to learn how to make him happy. He watched me clean, he watched me cook, he watched me work out and get dressed and talk to him, and he started to react. He started copying the sounds I was making, copying what I was doing with my hands, and suddenly I realized that he sees everything I do.

That realization brought everything into focus. This child is going to learn how to react to the world by watching how I react to the world. And that's what made me vow to figure out my issues, and finally DEAL with them. My body image issues, my intimacy issues, my insecurities, my lack of direction, my emotional instability...all of it will impact him unless I find a way to work through it now.

So yes, being a mom made me want to be a better person. Not necessarily a give-to-the-poor, end world hunger, take a stand type of better person (though certainly the urge to help others has been impacted as well), but the type of person that doesn't have to worry that they're not good enough. A better ME.

And suddenly, happy mommy = happy baby began to make sense to me. So simple in theory. In reality, in life...it's a struggle. But if I ever figure it out, I know it will have been well worth the effort. For my sake, as well as his.