Death of a Phantasy

Where do you find the time to tend to your own wounds when you are a single, fulltime working parent?
When your baby daddy can’t even be referred to as your coparent cuz that just isn’t a thing.
When the term “baby daddy” unfortunately is the best fit.
When that man who you now refer to as the “father of my child” has become nothing more than an extra, when once he was the lead supporting actor.
When he held within his presence the hopes and dreams of a better, brighter, fuller future. One in which there was a home, with a yard and screaming happy children.
Those are now nothing but residues of a dream. And instead what is left is the culturally appropriated term of “baby daddy.”
You are what you eat and if all you continue to consume is the normalized traumas of your family, community, culture and society at large than you are destined to be left with the soggy scraps of unfulfilled needs and an empty pit in your stomach.
I am more than that.
My child is more than that.
I carry the burden now of both mother and father and I am learning to become okay with that.
I am learning the strength in that.
I am learning that there are broken parts of me that still need to be healed and that I can and will find the salves and balms to soothe them through this wild and exhausting journey of motherhood.
There may be fractures within me but I am unshaken.
My blood stained sheets are being hung out to dry where they will be washed clean by the radiant light of the divine.
And so here. I. Lie.
Unbetrothed but not forgotten.
Wise but humbled.
Hungry but fed.
Alone but deeply connected.
I am not just woman. I am not just lover.

I
Am
Mother.