And Now We Have Everything: On Motherhood Before I Was Ready

by Meaghan O'Connell

Who has not asked himself at some time or other: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person? —Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star

Sometimes it felt like I spent my whole life trying to tell the difference between fear and circumspection. I was always trying not to want things.

I was desperate for there to be a best course of action, some objective truth. I wanted to know what the right thing was; it felt so important to know the right decision, anything to avoid having to make it myself.

Imagine, this was how everyone came into the world. It seemed so extreme. I tried not to think about what life was like just a week ago. Thinking too much, generally, felt like self-harm. Hold the baby, bounce the baby, feed the baby, blot out the fantasies of boarding an airplane, flying to Paris, sleeping in the bookstore Shakespeare and Company, and never coming back. The biggest problem of all was that I loved the baby so immediately and desperately, I knew I could never actually escape. I was not just trapped in our apartment with my tits out, I was also trapped in love with him. I could never go back to before.

when they talked about their love for their children, maybe that was what they meant too. It was love but keener, with sharper edges, softer undersides. It was love wrapped up with desperate terror, inextricable.

I’d spent years pursuing sex, obsessing over it, thinking of intimacy as the main reason to be alive or the surest way to feel alive. I suspected it was the key to understanding everything about people, all our shame and desire and hurt and joy.

Why had I never told him? When did life get so delicate, I wondered—both too tenuous and too cherished—for me to say certain things out loud? The stakes were higher, the thoughts were darker, and our relationship was weaker than it had ever been.

If only I had the sort of spiritual stamina to stay in profundity longer, to not find it oppressive after ten minutes.