Fault Lines

by Emily Itami

Sometimes the days last forever, and still the weeks and months and years go whizzing unstoppably by.

Parenting is savage—there is no other activity on earth that you could get up to do four times a night for two years straight, and at the end of it be merely in the running for mediocre.

When Aki was born, this slithery little alien, I saw the look of utter panic on his face and started to cry. The feeling that I’d made a terrible mistake was instantaneous—not because I didn’t want him, but exactly the opposite. In that insane maternal way, I loved him so much, so quickly, that I didn’t know what to do. It was immediately, blindingly obvious that there was nowhere near enough time in all my life and in all the world to give both him and his sister everything they needed and that I wanted to give them. The whole task was far beyond anything I was capable of, and the only possible outcome was failure of the most heartbreaking kind.

I suppose it’s unsurprising that one might question things sometimes, being in a state of indentured servitude to two small psychopaths.

My children. My life’s work, my greatest loves, orchestrators of total psychological trauma and everyday destruction.

You can accept yourself, here, but only if you’re fulfilling your obligation to society. I guess that’s why America is the land of the free, but we have lower crime rates and litter-free streets.

But as soon as the children were born it was blindingly obvious—your heart can’t break unless it has something to love. The way you love your children, they take your heart with you everywhere they go. Suddenly you realize just how cruel, just how loud and brash and harsh and illogically cruel, the world is, and it turns out that other mother was right. When they laugh, when they cry, when they’re ill, when they grow, every moment they adore you and every step they take away from you—the whole thing is completely heartbreaking.

💔💔💔 Exactly