The Young Mother
I have more to say, maybe I will figure it out at a later date.
She’s a martyr, that one. Oh, the 20-something mother, the whir of machinery as she pumps breastmilk, a child mounted upon her calf. She is 25 with a two-year-old, a sourdough starter, and dehydrated eco-friendly laundry detergent sheets. Everything in the house smells like patchouli and honey. This is where she will spend every day she has left, a ring light in the kitchen, French tips dusted in flour.
I have not always wanted children. I went through a phase in my teen years where I denounced the act as entirely selfish. The world’s burning, why would I want a kid? Yada yada yada. I would trace my stomach and picture baby dolls melting in a fire, their eyes drooping at the pupils before spilling on the ground. A smudge of ash on their fabric torsos. I imagined all the ways in which a child would ruin my body, the baby shit and talcum powder. This is not a unique experience. I still see and engage with countless TikToks and threads containing reasons not to have children.
Reason 14: You won’t be able to backpack around Europe like you always wanted to.
Reason 23: Your teeth might fall out.
My teen angst has dried up. I hold my breath whilst watching ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin,’ I sobbed this morning at a reel of Steve Irwin holding his newborn son. I have made Photoapp mockups of what my children would look like with my best friend as the father (love you Leon), howling over FaceTime as what resembles Will Buyers is produced, a future he/she/they, who loves their gay dad and bisexual mother. I watch mums on Instagram cutting fruit and sandwiches into stars. I cannot help but enjoy the smallness of the shoes in the kids’ section. I’m sick, sick to my stomach.
I want to be a young mother, 28 at most. Self-assured, neat, and tidy. I want to scrub my skin clean of all of my tattoos and (ironically) lose 30 pounds. I want to be the agnostic trad wife. I have an ever-growing fascination with the aesthetics of motherhood and pregnancy. I could go on and on about the videos of pregnant artsy 20-somethings with their tall photographer/model/businessman husbands, that I consume hours of. Family fit checks and days in the life play on a loop in the darkness of my bedroom. I chew at the skin around my fingernails. I pray for such love to find me.
The questions remain: Do I want to get married, or do I want someone to promise they won’t leave? Do I want to be a stay-at-home mother, or do I yearn for a sort of financial freedom? I don’t think an obsession with young homemaker influencer types is uncommon. In an age of dating apps and situationships, leaning into the traditional (for me at least) supplements a desire for stability. We have all become incredibly insular, yet we have files upon files of algorithmically chosen options; you don’t just meet people anymore, right? So, it’s easy for me to slip into a deep, painful longing for someone to meld their life into mine, to impregnate and patronize me, buy me matching pastel kitchen appliances, to tell me what to do until the day I wilt and rot. That's heaven.
These are idealistic fantasies, so fragmented that they resemble the dead wife B-roll at the beginning of the movie. She is rolling around in white bed sheets, smiling, and asking you to put down the camera. Fuck it, I think I want to be the dead wife, forever in a highlight reel of her life. She’s this repetitive yet vague impression of everything a wife and mother should be. Her widow watches her roll around in bed every night. Her character compressed into the contents of a USB stick. He watches her laugh, sigh, and flirt over and over. She’s digitized, she’s perfect, she’s dead.
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