Looking back on a decade of Punk Mum-therhood

Wednesday, May 22nd, 2024, 21:17

Mood: Sick

My child graduated the fifth grade today. Ostensibly this will be the first of at least five total commencements I will attend, the others being middle and high school, and undergraduate and graduate school. The Country Brat intends currently on being a lawyer when she grows up, because she enjoys arguing and being right (and helping others too). (Am I leaving breadcrumbs for any future retrospectives?)

It's definitely bizarre that I have a full-fledged actual Tween™ now, in a way that's hard to describe if you've never grown a person from scratch before. When I first embarked on mothering her, I was only twenty, and admittedly more committed to retaining a sense of personal identity than producing a good human being. I was selfish and I'm very comfortable admitting that, because that's just how people at that age are a lot of the time. It's thought that our adolescent years and early twenties are for constructing a personal identity, and that our later twenties and thirties--maybe owing to the "second puberty" the brain and body undergo--are for learning where we fit into a greater community. The Country Brat and I have grown up together, and I never really stop to think about how striking our differences are unless big moments like these come up.

It seems extremely appropriate then that I should transition away from my previous stream-of-consciousness and current events blogging styles, and return to what I was doing when The Country Brat first came around: blogging about motherhood. Back when I first started Punk Mum, it was very popular to have a "themed" blog on Blogspot or Wordpress or something, like about music or fashion, and you could link something like your MySpace or Soundcloud or Lookbook.nu to go with it. In my case, I wanted to document my new adventure in life, ironically because I wanted so badly for motherhood to not define me. Keeping Punk Mum was my way of telling the world, "Hey everyone, I have a breast pump now, but I'm still a punk!" or something. I guess so is The Country Bat now, except I have over a decade to look back on and see what works and what doesn't. (Kinda.)

Without further ado, here's a look back on the good, the bad, the ugly, the same, the different, and everything in between, between back then and now.

I am very comfortable saying I have produced an objectively good human being.

Now, I'm not saying it's my fault she turned out so good. I cannot fully take credit for how amazing my daughter is. Maybe I did some things right and some wrong--we'll get to that soon--but I think The Country Brat would've turned out amazing even if I were a colossal dogshit parent and had no help or support. Some people just turn out like that, like the ones who write memoirs about how terrible their lives were and how much they've overcome. I think if I had succumbed to my demons more than I did, that's how The Country Brat would end up being. (Who knows? Maybe she still will.)

I couldn't have done any of this shit without help.

Other countries recognize the importance of "it takes a village" and either subsidize families to produce children, via paid leave and good benefits and so forth, or they promote cultures of close family ties. Here in the US, we have neither. I--and The Country Brat's dad, known only as The Dude in Punk Mum--have had a lot of help raising this child, and I've only had the one to worry about this whole time. (The Dude now has stepchildren. More on that in a minute.) In the time between then and now, I have amassed several degrees (and student debt) and embarked on two careers. The Dude has done the same. We managed to pull ourselves from poverty, in my case multigenerational. This would not have been possible in the US without our own homegrown social safety net of family, both of origin and chosen. Part of why we moved (in his case, back) to Muncie, despite its vast infrastructural flaws, was because of the family aspect. That ended up being a really good call.

Turns out, I only had one kid, and it was for bizarre and selfish reasons. I have no regrets.

As I discussed previously, The Dude and I wanted several children, maybe four or five. We wanted to get our lives together before producing more of them, though. Sometime in 2016, as we were both wrapping up our first undergraduate degrees, I had a terrible nightmare. The Country Brat was, at the time, just three years old. I dreamt we had another baby, so I put The Country Brat in the closet of our home at the time with nothing but a bag of Goldfish crackers and a tablet to occupy her time. A week went past in the dream, and I opened the closet to see The Country Brat covered in her own feces and smiling, "Hi, Mommy!" at me. I didn't know what it meant, but it terrified the shit out of me for weeks, and I resolved that I was one-and-done. I eventually underwent sterilization on June 24th, 2019; The Dude and I had long since been separated.

I had been flirting around then with one-and-doneness. I was becoming very interested in my career--back then as a web programmer--and feared I wouldn't have time to devote to child-rearing. These fears were only further compounded when I decided to return to school for sociology and enter the extremely demanding, thankless, rewarding world of higher education. There's a reason lots of women in higher ed have two children or less, often none. Under capitalism, I suppose you could call these my "legitimate" reasons for not wanting to provide The Country Brat with siblings. Another big factor was that I hated, hated, hated breastfeeding. I hated it more than pregnancy. Pregnancy felt at least like my child was still a part of me, gestating like a joey in her pouch. But breastfeeding? I just felt like I was sharing my body, my body, with another human being. (I later found out this is a very common experience for autistic mothers. It even has a name: getting "touched out".)

In January 2020, I was diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. This is a hereditary condition that causes the body to produce faulty connective tissue throughout the various organ systems, including the joints, skin, digestive tract, and cardiovascular system. While I would never encourage any other mother to make my choice, and feel this is an extremely personal matter, I am thankful that I have only passed this condition onto one person. I have also since been diagnosed with autism, as I mentioned, as well as bipolar disorder. These factors taken together have left me sad that it's medically a bad idea for me to have more children, but in terms of the social and emotional I am elated to be a one-and-done mom. I feel no sense of maternal longing for any other child but The Country Brat.

If you must divorce, do so gracefully and happily.

Maybe in retrospect, it is not a surprise that my relationship with The Dude transitioned to friendship. I am choosing my words very carefully here. About half of all American couples eventually divorce, and with good reason. Nobody is taught how to have good relationships, least of all those of us--speaking just for myself here, for the record--whose families of origins didn't teach them to love and be loved properly. We have seen many of our friends uncouple and it often involves court, lawyers, and the kinds of pomp and circumstance nobody wants but so many people fall into. I think the problem is that a lot of divorced people hate each other more than they love their children, and I mean that with my whole chest. I say that The Dude and I transitioned to friendship because that's what we did. We have since united with partners whose domestic and relational values more closely follow our own. Yet, with good reason, we have managed to stay out of the courtroom and attend as many family events together as we can.

Motherhood is a dish best served without drinks.

By the end of my drinking career, I had weaned The Country Brat for months. Now that I no longer had to worry about if I were too drunk to nurse The Country Brat--I'm not proud to admit this, but this didn't always stop me from drinking, anyway--I began using it as a crutch for everything again. Was The Country Brat fussy that day? Did I get bad news? Was there good news, actually? That's it, I'm going to the bar.

I actually, shortly after I quit drinking, made nearly all of the posts on Punk Mum private. This was because I was ashamed of myself. I was still deeply in my alcoholism when I was writing Punk Mum, and it was obvious. Even if I waited for The Country Brat to go to bed or left her with a sitter to drink, even if I "tried" (and often failed) to keep my drinking to a minimum so that I could safely nurse her, I still had the brain and the mentality of a big drinker. This is obvious in my posts where drinking is mentioned, both pre and post-dry date.

The Country Brat was about a month shy of her second birthday when I quit drinking, and I could not be more grateful that my bottom came so early on in her life. It has obviously spared her the misfortune of having an alcoholic mother, but it has also allowed me to fully enjoy her childhood. (Except for the part where I'm stil really mentally ill, but whatever, I do my best.)

My daughter's life is worse because I am mentally ill. My life is better because she exists.

Admitting this during my Punk Mum days would've elicited so much shame. In retrospect, I have to own up to the fact that this child is being raised by a mother who has meltdowns, openly hates herself and doesn't know how to not talk about it, and is unashamed to discuss things like suicide attempts. These are not things that children should have to deal with. However, my daughter has had to deal with this, because I am mentally ill. I have tried her whole life to seek help, and have mostly been unsuccessful. That isn't for lack of trying, but impact before intentions means that the consequence is still the same.

On the flip side, I think The Country Brat is probably the only reason I am still alive. I think I would've killed myself a long time ago, either acutely from suicide or over time with alcohol, if she weren't in my life. There is a great irony somewhere in there about how I, someone who was so allergic to being "defined" by motherhood, exist quite literally only because of it at this point. Has motherhood stripped me of the things that make me, me? No, but it is the only reason I am. She is the only reason I am.

I raised my daughter with punk rock values and I regret none of them.

Since I first began Punk Mum, I have produced a child who is capable of setting boundaries even with adults, setting goals and sticking to them, defending herself in physical conflict, and prioritizing her own sense of self over other people's opinions of her. I don't think this would've been possible if I had raised her in a more traditional household or culture. This one, I do think it's my fault. I think I can take credit for how she has turned out in this respect. Does it means sometimes I have an eleven-year-old who talks back, questions me constantly, and treats me like an equal? Yes, and I'm here for it.

I still can't look at my daughter without thinking, wow, this person is really in my life forever, same as it was when I had just given birth to her and she was demanding food every two to four hours. (Now she demands, like, money.) The one thing that has been most enduring is that to be this child's mother has been the greatest privilege of my life, one that I don't feel worthy of but have slowly begun to accept that I am kind of okay at.

Edit: I wanted to amend this with a few more things I forgot about when I was speedrunning this last night, admittedly in a rushed effort to just start producing content on here as quickly as possible. My goal with this blog is to write twice weekly, with more thoughtful and focused prompts.

I am no longer comfortable putting my child's face online, and it's a rule in the house that she can't either.

I was a child of the '90s with overworked and distant parents. I was primarily tended to by my grandmother, who was not capable of operating a computer, nor was my mother. This got me into some trouble online that probably wasn't great for my overall mental health or development. Fast-forwarding thirty years, we are now capable of generating CSA imagery from AI, and geolocating better than ever before. This was not, however, on my mind when The Country Brat was an infant and toddler. It didn't occur to me not to post her likeness online for safety reasons, nor had the philosophical conundrum that she couldn't really consent to it, either. It's now become one of the few hardline rules in my house that she not post her face online, and I'm continuing my efforts to scrub the web of her presence.

It no longer matters to me as much to raise a productive adult. Mostly, I want her to be happy and alive.

When The Country Brat was born, her father and I had only been together about two years. Prior to my relationship with him, I dated a series of very driftless boyfriends who were seemingly lacking in ambition; one in particular had left me with a great deal of trauma, as he insisted my life revolve primarily around caring for him and satiating his every need, regardless of my consent. I think a lot of that played into how my goal for The Country Brat was to turn her into a great roommate. When she was my age, I thought back then, she'd always have rent on time and her share of the chores done.

I also gave birth to The Country Brat during the rise of the opioid epidemic. Since then, I, her dad, and our current partners have collectively known dozens of people who have lost their lives to heroin, fentanyl, and other opioids; we've therefore seen what their moms look like at their funerals. It's hard to describe the anguish on their faces. It's something like all the color has been wiped away, like the life force inside of them has been sucked out. We've known mothers who have lost their only children, and all of their children. What was my biggest fear then, losing my child, is now my biggest fear now but even moreso.

Would I still like my child one day to grow up and be productive, helpful, and ambitious? Of course. I think anyone wants that for their kids. But mostly? I just want her to be happy. I want her to be herself, and unabashedly so. I want her to occupy whatever space on this Earth that makes sense to her. And, more than anything, I want her to just exist. A lot of what she's taught me is that all this stuff we do is intangible in the greater scheme of things. Those closest to us will remember us not for our material contributions but for our social and emotional ones. Mothering this person has helped me find meaning in a world I otherwise just don't really see any point in. Ultimately, that's what counts.