I’ve had this recurring fantasy lately. When I’m doing dishes and staring out the window, when I’m falling asleep at night, when I’m riding in the car and things get quiet, it comes to me.
It is this: A sun-drenched room. There’s an open window, where long white curtains barely stir in a grass-scented breeze. In front of the window, a simple desk sits, topped with a stack of plain white paper and a Mason jar filled with pens. The floors are worn wood, there is a small chair in one corner, in the other corner is a single bed with white sheets and a folded quilt across its foot. It is quiet. The door is closed.
Yeah. I’m fantasizing about having my own room. I am a cliche.
I don’t know if I could have ever prepared for the complete and shattering loss of identity that motherhood has visited upon me. All my boundaries seem to have disappeared sometimes; there isn’t anything that seems wholly mine anymore, no separate space that isn’t gently, but insistently, overrun by the toddler and, lately, the toddler’s father.
I no longer even get to do things like changing my clothes without every member of my household wandering in.
I miss privacy. I miss closing the bathroom door. I miss having space for my own thoughts, for my own self, for being who I am when I’m not being someone’s expectations. As much as I adore staying home with my sweet boy, I am envious of my husband who at least gets to go the restroom alone a few times a day and do luxurious things like eat a meal sitting down in the company of other adults.
This is whining. I know this. I am lucky beyond measure. But even so: I am feeling rudderless and trapped and don’t exactly know how to carve out space for me to exist in separate from the expectations of motherhood and housewifery. I turned 35 last week and here I am, on what is likely the downhill side of my life, feeling as though the self-knowledge I’ve struggled to build is somehow eroding. I don’t know what to do.
What I do know is that I don’t want to be a cliche. I don’t want to grow to resent people for depending on me when I’ve been encouraging that dependence.
I just want to find space to remember who I am, because I know if I lose any more of it, I will eventually cease to be useful to anyone.
