Not Like Her Mama

Remember when you were a kid and you would spin in a circle? You (or me) would spin and spin and spin until you felt almost high from it all. You stop spinning but you couldn't really stop spinning and you would feel dizzy and excited and then eventually sick and then crash into a cabinet and bust your face?

Not a universal experience?

I feel like that right now. I can't focus, my emotions fly up and crash down so quickly I have whiplash, my natural anxiety is cranked up to eleven and the guilt is crushing me under it's weight. The good times are amazing, the kind you want to keep in your pocket so you can just rub your hands on them when things are dark. But the bad times send me deep into a diet coke can and wishing that I still smoked.

I remember now how anxious my mother was with us when we were small. How much she worried about us and how we felt and what we ate and was anyone mean to us at school? She has a crease on her forehead from the year we both got perms I think. And definitely a wrinkle from the one time I got home very late. She was sobbing so hard I was never ever late again. I understand now how some one with her worrying nature (my worrying nature too) could be turned inside out and flayed by motherhood. And how it never goes away. I am thirty one years old and my mother worries about me constantly. I wish I could go back to the year I started kindergarten and couldn't skip and my mother mind-fucked whether I was too young and should they have held me back, I wish I could go back and hold her hand. I wish I could tell her not to worry--her girls would grow up and get married and buy houses and pay their taxes and have their own babies giving you two more people to worry about.

It is the circle of life yo.

I would like very much for some one to hold my hand. J is wonderful and perfect in many ways and actually a comfort but he is not a natural worrier. He worries about how we are going to pay for an Ivy league college in case she gets in but he doesn't understand my anxiety. It isn't how his brain is wired (which is a damn good thing because two people like this would have nervous breakdowns and need to be monitored around the clock like those temperamental pandas in the zoo). He doesn't really understand, he thinks I can just stop.

I would like to know that we will be fine. That I haven't damaged my professional life beyond repair. That some day I will make actual money again. That I haven't doomed us to poverty FOREVER. I would like to know that my daughter will understand that I am doing this for her but also for me. That her mother is a person because I really want her to grow up to be a person too, and a mama if she wants to be. And I would like to know that one day she will look at my very rumpled face (because worriers do not age well) and wish that she could go back in time and hold my hand.

Also I hope that she is different than me. I hope she is brave.