3 years, 2 months, and a revelation later.

I was startled to realize it, the other night while I sat in the dark on my bed. It was nearing midnight when all of a sudden, for some strange reason, it all made sense. This oppressive cloak I constantly walk beneath, the storm clouds in what should be my sunny days. The poison I'd been ingesting.

I’ve trained myself to believe I’m not enough.

I’ve known for a while, I think. Oh, it is painfully obvious.

The burning shame I feel flush my face when I see a woman 5 years my junior pregnant, with a child already in her arms.

My averted eyes when a young Mom smiles at me as her toddler loudly tantrums on the floor of Target.

“We’ve all been there, yeah?” she says with an exasperated laugh.

“Hmm? Oh, yeah." I smile, as if I actually have. Smile. Muscle memory.

With a smile as fake as her child’s meltdown, I nod understandingly. More muscle memory.

I keep walking, hoping she doesn’t notice the hole in my heart carved out by my empty womb, replaying the words that have been breaking my heart for too many years:

Whatever you do, don’t let her see you break. Don’t let her - or anyone - see what’s wrong with you.

You’re probably wondering what is wrong with me.

Oh, nothing much.

But it feels like a disease, because I’ve let it. Oh, I’ve fed it. I’ve spoon-fed this monster, this beast, since I was 12 years old, since I decided what I wanted to be, what I wanted to do with my life on this earth. Since I decided, without the shadow of a doubt, what my life would look like, come hell or high water.

I’ll marry young (duh). I’ll have a houseful of children (duh again).

Motherhood is what I’m made for. It’s the end goal. The hole-in-one. The touchdown.

I’ll be happy when I have a family.

Marriage & mothering is the pinnacle of womanhood.

Life happened. Hell came, and so did the High Water. The mountaintop moments, followed by the near-drowning, then the Hands of the Father holding me up when nothing else possibly could. The joy, the beautiful times, the hard times that brought me to my knees. I waited.

But my Knight didn’t come, so neither did the babies. You can imagine that I took this very well, no doubt with incredible grace.

Yep. Noooo.

It basically goes without saying that living with this mindset of "motherhood is all I want" for nearly 2 decades, I am irreparably emotionally screwed at this point.

Still with me?

Yes?

Okay, good.

#kudostoyouforstickingwithmethislong

Look. I’m 28. I’m unmarried.

At 28, I’ve had only one real relationship worth mentioning, but it messed with my head so much and for so long, that I wonder if I even should mention it. I make jokes, I laugh it off, but I don’t really tell anyone how he made me feel.

[We don’t like to admit to toxicity we allowed, even if we eventually had the strength to walk away from it.]

My sister had her first child, a daughter, the month I turned 25. I started to live again in so many ways, in a way I’d never experienced. I fell in genuine love with that little girl, just as I did 3 years later with her baby brother. I still get mildly drunk on the oxytocin (the “cuddle hormone”, to save you from a Google search) from their snuggles, from the love they so freely give their Auntie E.

My sister shares her children with me selflessly, letting me love them, feed them, bathe them, wear them in those hipster baby carriers, hold them, play with them, comfort them, rock them to sleep.

But the other day, that realization came along. So slowly, gradually it seemed, but also somehow it bowled me over all at once, as I drank my coffee at my desk and looked at the pictures of my niece and nephew next to my computer monitor.

You aren't their mother, Erica. You're no one's mother. You remember that, right?

Ouch.
Yes. I know I'm not.

Ow.

Another heartbeat.
Another sip of coffee.

Another breath.

But what would happen...what could you do, love, embrace more fully if you...oh, if you were finally okay with that?

I had to ask myself a question.
A hard question that requires me loosening my iron grip on my heart's desire.
What would happen to my life if I stopped chasing approval, stopped chasing this obsessive need to prove to everyone, to prove to myself that I can keep up with the “worth-so-much-more-than-me moms”?

Because that’s what I’m doing. Dear God, that’s what I’ve been doing. I've been trying so hard to prove my worth in this arena. In the arena of motherhood, that I'm not even a player in yet. My cheeks flush pink as I think about the thoughts that run through my mind.

"Well, I may not be able to have my own children right now; but damn it - I'll *bleeping* be the best *bleeping* un-mother there ever was!"

(please feel free to insert several more expletives in the quote above for realism, because when emotional, I swear like a sailor who stubbed all his/her toes.)

Guys, I think there comes a time our lives when we need to take stock, take notice of the good, the toxic, the helpful and the hurtful in our lives.

And right now, this is my toxicity. This deep-seated conviction that motherhood > everything else. It's a small wonder that my heart is broken, no wonder I feel defective in the shadows of women who have achieved it.

I am no less a woman simply because I'm not a mother.

That is truth. Blinding, freeing, simple truth. I need to scroll past the photos of my sweet friends with their children when I'm feeling vulnerable. Stop taking it personally when I see them using the hashtag #momlifeistheBESTlife. 

Because if I'm not a mother, then it's not my best life. It is painful and toxic to believe it. 

To all of my mother-friends, I love you. I admire you and I honor you, and the old Erica would envy you. But this isn't my best life. I hope and pray the day will come when I can sit with you and relate because I am in your shoes, but that day is not today. And I need to embrace this season.

So what is this revelation, then? What does it mean? This is a possibility of life in screaming color and not under a grey mist. This is not feeling like the failure at family reunions when I'm the only one without a baby on my hip. This is not needing to drown my gut-wrenching fear of failure in margaritas on the day before Mother's Day ever again. This is a latte and a novel on Saturday mornings because I can, because right now it's just me. And that's enough.

This is moving on. [Or something an awful lot like it.]

And I'm going to be okay.

All my love. xo.
Erica