Oh, the things that are called "normal" throughout this experience. I don't even know why writing about it feels so good to me; like I could ever forget... but an attempt to actually capture this unique blend of emotions feels like all I can do. I have read many of these accounts - and now I write them. But it would never make sense to anyone reading who has not gone through it. Of course, almost everyone has told me this before. "You can never be ready", they said. Nothing has ever been more true because nothing, and I mean it - nothing - in life can prepare you for this completely unnatural experience: being happy and sad at the same moment, pushing through exhaustion you didn't know could exist and grieving everything you can't have now... but still showing up, doing the same, sane thing every day and actually, inexplicably, kind of loving it. The term "the new normal" is back - and it makes me understand that I never quite understood the "old normal".
I was fortunate that just before I bowed out to maternity leave, I had a business trip to my old digs in California. While I was cruising down the 101, standing on the Pismo Beach Pier for the first time in 18 years, I knew I was on a farewell trip: it was time to let go of what I thought life would be for me. Many years, it seemed like my family portion of life would happen just there: California. My diary from high school had "never return to Germany" written in bold letters on almost every page; I hated Berlin especially. The life I had envisioned in California did not end over night (although you could argue it did in the night of Nov 8, 2016). But when I stood there, I knew that life was over. For me. This creeping process had come to a standstill now that I had made a choice that would make it final. The "new normal" was that this door was closed now, never to be reopened.
I don't regret these choices; my life is good: I am financially secure, I have a wonderful family, my government isn't fascist (yet!). Even if my address was different through my own choices, let's face it, the country is not what it was when I dreamed about it as a teenager. In all ways, I made the correct choices. But the longing is still there. In the back of my mind, sometimes I feel like the choice I made for my own country is the head choice, not the heart choice. Even before having a baby, I realized that "the new normal" would have to be making head choices that benefit my child. My own corresponding happiness would be a bonus. But now that she's here, this is no longer the head choice; my heart also wants this: whatever is best for her has become my desire. They say that you suffer a loss of identity when you become a mom, and while prioritizing her is - for whatever reason - what I want, the loss of some of my own dreams feels ruthlessly harsh.
But the USA wasn't my only dream that I abandoned in the name of reason. The life I had in numerous places flashes before me more now than ever before. Leaving London, for example, was a choice that is actually five years old, but it wasn't until now that I really started to reminisce. Funnily enough, I left because I was tired of a Conservative government and couldn't afford rents there - which is now exactly the same position I find myself in where I live now. But when I made the decision, I also contemplated what I wanted from life and if London, even though it's my favorite city in the world, was the best place for me to achieve that. I wanted nice, down-to-Earth children and access to greenery. But as Germany is turning into everything I hated about England, a racist, unaffordable and socially divided country, it's hard not to question if the initial dream of a victorian flat near the Heath, despite being unaffordable (everything is now!) would maybe have been the better one. Does it beat this cold, post- Communist brutalism?
The difference between then and now is a simple one: back then I had choice. If my decisions didn't seem to be leading me into the direction I wanted, I had the authority to change direction. Of course I dreamed of the stability that comes with a family, to "have arrived", but is this concept maybe a 20th century relic? Can it truly exist in a world where you have to think about being laid off any day, bombed by nukes or at the very least evicted with no other place to go? The things that can - and did - go wrong in my life were just hick ups in the past that I had the power to navigate, now they may ruin the only life Alma knows (except nukes, they'd most likely end that...). My decisions matter. And that burden is exhausting by the time you wake up, never feeling like it's lifting. Head vs heart decisions have double the weight; does either know what's best? And, like, for who? Surely it'd be best for me to get a weekend in the countryside to sleep for the first time in well over a year, but that ain't happening, is it?
It boils down to a simple truth that we find many noble expressions for but initially it's just this: We are all very happy to be selfish. But then we introduce a baby to our life (possibly also because we're selfish) and the huge slap in the face that tells us we have to care now is uncomfortable. It makes us think we weren't ready - but we would never have been. Abandoning doing what's good for us, sacrificing our bodies and giving up choice could never *feel* good. And so the deepest realization is that when parents differentiated between "those with kids" and "those without", they are right: there are things people who never had to make these choices cannot understand. "The old normal" was a state of relative ease, one where the spectrum of emotions was comprehensible; now, one day's y-axis of emotions can vary between plus and minus 100, several times a day. And maybe, for some time, that price seems too high to pay. Put it definitely just depends on what kind of product one is after: the model "life with baby" has many features the "one without" doesn't have. I chose the product baby. So maybe "Comfort" is dead. But "love" is alive.
