Age regression
Lots of people say having kids makes you feel young again. I used to think this was sweet; now I realize it was a warning.
Lately nothing makes me feel more like I’ve re-entered junior high than being around other mothers. The ones with four kids who arrive at preschool early, immaculate, in full makeup, with their kids all fed and perfectly groomed. The moms whose 18-month-old is completely potty trained and regularly eats things like lentil stew and spinach salad.
Meanwhile, I lumber out of the car most mornings in my sweatpants and headband, perpetually 15 minutes behind schedule, and do my best to wipe the crumbs off my toddler’s (notice the singular–just the one child) mouth and shove a barrette in her hair. We won’t even get into potty training and the diet heavy on spaghetti, fruit, and peanut-butter sandwiches.
I find myself fighting the urge to start dressing all in black, slink off in a corner and write bad poetry. In other words? It’s 1985 all over again.
I thought I worked through all this in my 20s. That I learned to just live my own life. (And also that people were usually to wrapped up in their own issues to be judging me as much as I thought they were.) What is it about parenthood, well, particularly, motherhood that brings this out in so many people?
Maybe it’s that we realize that no other job is going to be as important, with so much on the line, as this one? I think it tends to bring out raging insecurity. I think I’m even getting pimples again.
