Grieving The Other Lives: What People Don't Talk About When Having Kids

Sadness, in my life, had a very prevalent spot in growing up. I often felt sad as a teenager, would cry myself to sleep over memories. Nostalgia broke my heart before I even knew what that word meant. Often music sent me back to a memory of my childhood, a time I missed so much because I always felt that "things were good back then". Dramatic teenager, I know: shocker! Music then reminded me of places, eventually my deceased father, and then, when I got older, entire stages of my life that had always felt better once they had passed than when they were lived. This sadness I felt over it - I keep thinking now - wasn't sadness about what had happened; rather, I was grieving times that were never going to come back. Like the loss of a friend, I knew some times would never be returning to my life. They were over. So, I suppose, it was never sadness in the first place, but grief. Now that I have a baby, I feel this more than ever.

I probably have never been less sad in my life than right now. My daughter has definitely done to my life what everyone is expecting from procreation: a new sense of meaning, love with absolutely no boundaries and the complete loss of caring about anything that mattered before. I am not actually wanting my pre-Alma life back -  but I have not yet fully processed the grief over losing it. That life is gone. It will never be back. That is quite hard to accept. The thought makes me cry despite the absence of sadness. I am feeling a sense of decay, that life is a mere collection of memories that we will one day have to let go off into oblivion. All I have of my old life is memories, and one day I won't even have that. Sadness arises over the feeling that even my daughter will one day be a memory I don't get to remember anymore. And this hard but so wonderful stage of life I am in right now will pass just like the others. 

Pregnant corporate Sina hanging with millionaires

When I was starting this "postpartum journey", as the internet mommy community calls it, I was hit relatively hard - which I expected. I never thought having kids was the only thing I was born to do and despite wanting the baby, I never thought it would be the only path to happiness. So the memories of the past lives haunted me. I knew that forsaking the various other paths I had built in order to find happiness throughout life in case I never find the love of my life would not be altogether easy because these paths had not failed me so far: I was a happy person well before I had Alma. While pregnant, I considered if it was foolish to seek more happiness via such a drastic change when I was already very satisfied with life - but that's not what life is about. You don't stop in one place and hope to stay there. I wanted to move on with life and gamble with the existing happiness because the hand I was dealt made it pretty promising that there was even more happiness for me to explore. 

Suddenly, from one day to the other, the old path no longer exists. Everything that made you happy before is in some way gone - or at least no longer really relevant. You make new plans, even dreams. What you chased before might no longer apply. For a large part of my life I had sought to live in the States - and later, return to the States. And of course, my decision to not go back was already made in November 2016, however, suddenly the reason for making that decision won reelection and pretty much instantly started destroying the places I had often wanted to seek my happiness in. I was grieving the end of my teenage dreams in such a drastic, world-politically significant way that it wasn't just the "smart choice for the family" that made me abandon chasing it. But when I had Alma, I suddenly thought about how I thought it would go, and how it actually went. And the differences made me grieve the life I had planned despite the fact it never existed.

Many people have to bury their dreams, and I had a relatively high chance of having to do that, given that my teenage dream was to pursue a filmmaking career in Hollywood that would win me an Oscar (a path, I believe, that actually wouldn't have ended up much harder than the one I did choose trying to have it a bit easier in life - albeit maybe not with a consolation prize as sick as my current life). Maybe it is even the fact we only get one life and I will never have the chance to live anything but what I experienced so far that makes me so prone to these emotions. 8-year-old Sina was dreaming of having a family, but she wanted a colonial Boston townhouse and have her kids be picked up by a yellow bus. The reality is that she grew up in the 90s, where it was taught to her such things were possible. And now, she is 36 years old, will never be able to afford a house, let alone in Boston, and that country she once idolized might actually not exist once her kids hit school age. 

       Not quite so glamorous      

Both can be true: I miss my old life, my autonomy and commanding life to lead me to my own personal dreams AND I would never change anything I have done to get where I'm at. Being Alma's mom wasn't my ultimate life goal, it is not the only dream I ever had and her arrival does not symbolize to me what it does to so many: the arrival of meaning, arriving at the destination you long sought. My path continues, and in a way I am still dreaming of that Oscar nomination, and getting to thank my daughter in my acceptance speech. But I also must realize that my dreams come second to providing the best possible life for her (which, again, a certain orange monster is having a pretty damming effect on). Despite being the best thing in my life, she is just one other thing - besides me. There was a life before her, and the dreams associated with that have had to change now. I have new, better dreams. I want a family home for her, growing up in freedom and democracy, her becoming just as happy as I am lucky enough to be. This dream doesn't work with the old dreams. I can't pursue these new dreams simultaneously with my old ones. And so I have to let go of one set of dreams... and it is with absolute pleasure that I choose Alma. But I'll need a few more weeks to get used to it.