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“You Don’t Have The Luxury. You Have A Baby Now.”
A tale of two mothers.
“You don’t have the luxury. You have a baby now,” her mother said smugly as she handed her daughter her infant. It was almost like she enjoyed saying this. “No more school. No more therapy. This is what you do now.”
Before she got pregnant, she always struggled with anxiety and depression. Deep down, she thought her mom struggled with the same issues, but she would never admit it.
“In my day, we were tougher. Did I want to get up? No. Of course not. Who really wants to get up every day? But I had to, or you would die,” her mom laughed. It did not seem funny. She never found this joke funny.
In fact, this joke seemed to shut down some very real discussions. Her mom had not fed her enough. Her mom had cut open raw hot dogs and left them in the fridge where she could reach them. There were no fresh fruits or vegetables. She had to microwave most of her meals, because her mother would sleep and sleep.
But her mom would make those jokes as if to say “I did so much for you. So you’d better not complain.”
She didn’t want to be that kind of mom. She kept going to therapy, and switched to online therapy when it got too hard. She did take a semester off of school, and arranged for her baby’s dad to watch…
