‘Beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached.’

-Franz Kafka

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.   I had been so meticulous in planning and preparing for other. For better, much better. And for a while it was.  ‘Know there is someone who will work very hard every day to make you happy,’ Steven had said to me. I believed him. I was half of that smug married couple who really thought our lives were perfect. Except we were doubly smug because we eschewed the formality of marriage, not needing traditional conventions to prove our devotion to each other.   In the early days he would joke to me about our ‘quads,’ the four imagined children we’d have circling our equally hypothetical family home. I could return to work, or not. Combining our finances, we were fortunate I’d have the choice.  We laughed about the idea of me as a homemaker. Me, who was often referred to as ‘Scary Kelly’ due to my steely focus and determination in the office. Before Steven, I ate all three daily meals at my desk. I had never even turned on the oven in my rented apartment. Yet here we were now contemplating my imminent domesticity. We even selected a name for our future son while vacationing in Tanzania. After both tearing through Don Delillo’s White Noise we agreed the young character ‘Wilder’ provided a fitting choice. We drank champagne, munched on warmed, salty peanuts and watched the sun slowly sinking into the Indian Ocean.  Smug indeed.

 At least we got part of the name right anyway. William Wilder was born two and a half years later, on 2 June 2009.  By October of the same year Steven had moved out.   

* * *

This project started as therapy. After a few days of catatonic shock during which I couldn’t imagine waking and eating let alone putting pen to paper, the numbness started to tingle and I found that I quite simply had to write. To question, to process, to describe, to understand, to cry, to feel again.  The first time I was called a ‘single mom’ I cringed. Somehow the term has such negative connotations. A failure left in the wake of a decapitated Nuclear Family. Victim. Bad Parent.  Welfare Mom. So I brainstormed with a similarly solo friend for a better description.  One that portrayed us as smart, savvy, loving mothers who, yes, happened to be on our own. ‘Independent’ seemed so much more positive than ‘single,’ thus the birth of ‘IndieMums.’ I started a blog and a community of sorts was born. I wasn’t alone, far from it. In the UK, over 20% of households are headed by IndieMums[1]. And many of these similarly-minded women were out there sharing on the topics of life as both a betrayed spouse and sole parent. I found comfort in reading others’ tales. There is no shortage of divorce drama in the world, and these written chronicles serve a dual purpose: cathartic for those who write them, comforting for those who hungrily devour them, craving solidarity. But I found the solace short lived, the literary equivalent of junk food. Once the sugar high passed, I was left more confused than ever: How in the hell did I end up here?   

Even in those first months, in the ghost-of-myself stage, I had a ferocious curiosity about my baby Will’s development. Perhaps because I felt the absence of his father so acutely, I wanted to make sure I was really present to understand all the changes in the little guy’s life. And to try and shield him from any similar feelings of loss. The quest to educate myself about the neuroscience of Will’s brain provided a needed ‘fill-up’ at a time when I was empty. More importantly, it alerted me to the critical impact our early interactions would have on his adult relationships. Simply put, how he is raised, particularly in the first three years of life, matters.  While genes lay down his brain’s basic anatomy in a form of scientific blueprint, experience—especially in early childhood--will siphon out which specific attributes come together as the person, my son. The proverbial penny dropped: Despite my best intentions, I was living a drama resurfacing in my family for generations.   The situation I found myself in was eerily similar to that in my mother’s past, and of her mother’s as well. To protect Will from the same, I, as the most influential person in his infant life, needed to sort myself out. To question how my own early stages influenced the decisions I’ve made in adult life. To find out what was lurking in my family history requiring my attention and recognition so it wouldn’t later haunt Will. 

And so started a dual process – trying to understand how my own brain is wired while simultaneously studying the maturation of my infant’s. My research and writing turned to focusing on the emotional development of human beings, in general, and of me and my baby more specifically.  As I learned about Will, I used this knowledge to question myself. I was surprised by what I found. 

The pages that follow are a diary of my experiences in this first year since my baby was born. The sheer amount of literature out there was daunting.  I had to take it in bite-sized pieces, focusing only on what I needed to know for the next three months of Will’s development, then digesting before moving on. The specialists I quote were not chosen randomly; it was these morsels of more complex theories that illuminated the concepts to me most lucidly, and that resonated with me on a personal level.

A hefty disclaimer: I am not a psychologist. In my writing, I have always felt I was wearing some sort of ‘guest pass’ in this discipline.  And that readers would understand this, accepting my musings as nothing more; taking helpful bits, questioning preconceived notions and perhaps rejecting some conclusions as outright wrong. ‘I’d rather be happy than right,’ as the cliché goes, and in writing I have been able to claw my way back to a different kind of happiness. It’s not that I think my situation is so special it needed to be documented but because it is all too common that I hope describing my process will be useful to others who find themselves in similar situations.  Not just other IndieMums, but anyone who questions how our most prized intimate relationships get screwed up so fantastically. Only by doing so can we hope to stop the madness. Psychologist Carl Jung once famously said, ‘what doesn’t surface into consciousness comes back to us as fate,’ and I’d had about all of the fate I could handle for a lifetime, thank you. Maybe it was supposed to be like this after all.

Great experiences are made better in good company. Parenting more so than any. ‘Being a single parent is the saddest thing,’ I text Steven, ‘the good times as well as the bad.’ When he first left, I assumed it would be the challenging moments I’d find the hardest – Will’s meltdowns in public places, the terror of that first illness, the juggling of entirely too many tasks. But I was wrong. It is the simple pleasures that get me. The first smiles, the first laughs, the sheer joy my son has playing in his bath. ‘Someone should be sharing this with me!’ I scream, if only silently to myself. And not just anyone, but my baby’s father, my co-parent, the person I had planned out our happy ‘family of three’ with together. 

It is a curious thing to feel genuinely alone but be surrounded by people. I know I amluckier than many – I have wonderful friends and family calling on me, listening to me, hugging me, comforting me. And the presence of an angelic nanny. But none of these people are the one with whom I had created my new life. The life annulled before it was ever given a chance. I am mourning this loss, deeply, not just of the person but of the script we carefully crafted for our coming decades together. I liked that imagined home movie, a lot. I want it back. What’s worse, the one person I want  to console me, the one I have turned to in my toughest moments in previous years, is no longer present. I want to call up the best friend that was Steven to sob sloppily, snottily, whole-heartedly about the same man. Neither is there. 

I know the danger, of course, that my depression could have on my child. It is the reason I caved and went on medication in the first place, so worried I was Will would somehow get sucked into my downward spiral. A baby observes a sad mother and can conclude that sadness is the human condition and act accordingly[1]. Seeing my sad infant might have made me feel guilty, compounding my depression and his. The cycle could have turned quite vicious, and quickly. But it didn’t. ‘Children give us so much strength,’ a father of two told me just after Steven left. I didn’t understand what he meant at the time, but I get it now: every night I count down until the 11pm feed so I can give my little guy a cuddle, and every morning I am greeted with Will’s beaming smile. In these moments, I cant help but feel, and give back, love.   No matter how in tatters I was in the hours preceding.   Those moments in the wee morning when I feared I wouldn’t be able to pull it together for his sake I thought: If I didn’t, who would? Thankfully, his cry alerting me he was awake came to my rescue; once in his presence I am Mummy. Not ripped-up, torn-to-shreds, tear-soaked Mummy, just Mummy, there to be whatever he needs me to be. Of all the people who are helping pull me back from the worst, Will is undoubtedly the most influential. Children give us so much strength.

So Will and I chug along, maximizing our time together to keep Mum sane and baby feeling loved.   It is a cocoon of sorts, ours, the kind I’d heard about mothers and newborns having but hadn’t experienced while his father was in the house. In ‘My Newborn is Like a Narcotic[2],’ the author Katie Roiphe poignantly describes going out to do a book reading when her baby was four weeks old:

 ‘When I walked out onto the street, I felt like I was missing a limb…During the reading, I thought about the baby. As people asked questions, I calculated how long the taxi ride home would take…During the taxi ride down the FDR highway, I looked out at the water and cried. It was insane, sentimental, out of proportion, and I was aware that it was insane, sentimental and out of proportion. But only when the baby was back in my arms did I feel OK again.’ 

Steven had sent me the article while we were still living together.   Our reactions to it couldn’t have been more different. ‘It reminded me of you,’ he said. It reminded me nothing of me, so focused I had been on meeting his needs that, until he left, I’m ashamed to admit Will was of secondary concern. Of course I had done the frantic rushing about, pumping milk, changing nappies, bathing baby, sterilizing bottles, taking videos and photos to capture Will’s daily achievements. I loved being his mother. But emotionally I was consumed by attempts to engage his father. Roiphe was pained at leaving her baby at week four; I had been out for dinner in week one, to the opera by week two. Partly this was ‘putting out fires,’ Will’s father was kindling; our son an easy little boy from Day One. Only in hindsight can I recognize how wrong my priorities were, but then part of the maternal instinct is to keep the family together, at all costs, as I was trying to do.

Paradoxically, in his father’s absence I am to give Will what he deserved all along – the knowledge that he is my priority. There is no competition for my time and affection, there is just Will. Me and Will. We never quite entered the ‘opium-den quality’ to maternity that Roiphe described -- ‘The high of a love that obliterates everything. A need so consuming that it is threatening to everything you are and care about[3].’-- but we are on much more comfortable footing now that Mum isn’t dancing to two distinctly different tunes. And not a moment too soon.   Because these early interactions are seminal in forming a child’s security, self-esteem, self-control and social skills. Through the incredibly intimate relationship a baby develops with his mother, he learns how to identify his own feelings and how to read them in others. Mum – the person who has most consistently fed, changed, comforted and cuddled him – becomes a baby’s first true love. And what if his first true love had been out at the opera when he needed her?  

Children at this teeny-tiny age should never have to compete for their parents’ attention. A baby is a huge undertaking and, particularly in the first six months of life when it is important he develops a sense of security in the strange new world outside the womb, he should be both parents’ top priority, at least here in the Western world in the 21^st Century. I always knew this but I also wanted to do everything in my power to keep Dad happy too, and to assure him that our lives didn’t have to change too, too much with a baby. Consequently, most nights I went out (dinners, theatre, whatever) after putting Will to sleep, then rushed home to make it back for his 11pm feed. In dressing myself up and putting on a big smile, I spent enormous time trying to convince Steven – and maybe myself—that our lives didn’t need to change. But what a pity if they hadn’t. Of course a child changed my life – immediately, irrevocably and amazingly. I would gladly now forgo every last tasting menu out for the ongoing privilege of bath time at home with Will. And he needs me there.

‘From the cradle to the grave,’ is how British psychologist and father of attachment theory John Bowlby described the emotional bond between mother and child impacting behaviour throughout life. Controversial when first presented[4] in 1957, attachment theory has since become a dominant principle of social and personality development[5].   A baby ‘enters this world in a manner entirely fitting for a civilized person – through the love of another person, for he discovers himself and he discovers the world outside himself through his mother[6],’ child psychoanalyst Selma Fraiberg wrote in ‘The Magic Years.’   If the bond is healthy, a baby will feel loved and accepted and begin to learn the value of affection and empathy. Stop, rewind. These are hugely important concepts to me, much more so than anything Baby Einstein or Will’s first IQ testing can deliver. So if I understood the theory correctly, I do my job well at six to eight months of life and this lays the groundwork for Will to have healthy, fulfilling, loving relationships in his years to follow? What a wonderful challenge.  One I am only truly up for now that I can stop worrying about Steven and shift the focus to our child.  There is something genuinely gratifying in the idea that despite the shock of his father leaving early on, this, in all likelihood, will lead to a better outcome for our son. Maybe this is just glass-half-full-thinking, but I look back at the bond the little guy and I have, the two of us, on our own, versus what it could have been…and I think: ‘I choose this.’

‘This gets more Jerry Springer by the second. I’m pregnant.’    I knew a text message wasn’t the most appropriate way to convey the news, but since I wasn’t on speaking terms with Steven it was the obvious default. With every day since he left our communication had become more strained. The thing about duplicity: You aren’t confronted with it head on, in one knock-out blow. Little truths sink in with every day as additional information surfaces. Just when you think you’ve processed about all you can deal with, you unearth another layer that sends you reeling. 

First Steven left. I thought this was the hardest thing I’d have to face. It was a short four months after the birth of our son. The panic of raising this little being on my own mixed with the havoc of postpartum hormones created a noxious cocktail of tears, sleeplessness and cigarettes. Then I learned of Steven’s other woman, of the life they were creating together while the life of our son was growing inside of me. My whole previous world was at once not mine at all. The second pregnancy was only the latest instalment.

Within seconds he replied: ‘I assume this is as big a shock to you as it is to me. We need to talk.’ Steven had been angling for a meeting for weeks but I feared seeing him in person. I had changed the locks on our door, no longer knowing what he was capable of; feeling an urgent need to protect myself, to protect Will.   

Will was asleep in the next room. I went in search of his nanny, Milly, who was really so much more. Since Steven left she was the only partner I had, a situation that quickly forged a closeness between us.   She started dancing at the news, ‘A bab-y, a bab-y, we’re gonna have a bab-y.’ I reminded her we already had a baby. Now we had two babies, and no Baby Daddy. Still, I couldn’t help but feel light, a bit giddy. The first warmth in…how long had it been since Steven left? Three weeks. Twenty-one of the longest, darkest days. But on this particular one, the sun was shining.  London at its brisk autumn best. 

‘I can’t have this baby,’ I laughed to Milly, not because the situation was at all funny, but because the idea of doing so made me happy. Despite everything, I loved being a mother. Surprising to many people, most of all myself. The vibration of laughter felt unusual, welcomed. 

‘My head’s a mess. Give me the weekend,’ I continued my digital communication with Steven, ‘speak Monday.’

‘Ok. Mon.’

I needed to call my sister. Even the thousands of miles and eight-hour time difference between us hadn’t kept her from being my most trusted confidante.   ‘You have no choice,’ Kristin said. Lately she had taken on the role of a second mother. A mother of two herself, she was good at it. ‘Two kids under two – no way. One plus one equals more than three times the work.’ Kristin would know. ‘I’m coming. Will call you back when I know my flight details.’ Feeling comforted by her made me want a sibling for Will all the more. I spent the weekend imagining his sister. Smiling at the thought of another chubby, yummy one sitting next to her older brother. 

I knew Kristin’s words were true, I really didn’t have a choice. I was barely functioning as it was. A hefty prescription of anti-depressants had done little to improve things. I tried to return to work but crawled under my desk on Day One, shivering and crying and hiding myself from curious eyes. Will already needed more than I was giving him on my own. A second baby? It made no sense. But I savoured those initial forty-eight hours, allowing myself to feel otherwise.

I was crying as I opened the door to greet my sister. Kristin clung to me, sobbing herself. My weekend reveries came to an end. She practically had to carry me to the sofa where I wilted. She stroked my head and rubbed away my tears with the cuff of her sweater. 

‘I love this baby,’ my muffled cry into a pillow, ‘I want her.’ Then: ‘Fuck Him for taking away all my choices.’

I was only six weeks along so the procedure was remarkably simple, two pills. Too simple I thought. I wanted the occasion somehow marked with more importance. Grotesque physical pain to mirror my emotions. The cramps came later, after I returned home. I writhed on my sofa and screamed out, knowing my baby’s life was ending slowly, but definitely, one floor down from where she was conceived.

Kristin left after assurances I’d be okay. And I would be. I had to be for Will. As I saw my four-then-six month baby advance from mere smiles to chuckles to infectious laughter, I was pulled along. The tears eventually dried; my long dormant smile returned sporadically, but enough to remind me what being me felt like. It wasn’t that I forgot – or probably ever would – my second child. Just that mourning this loss became less important than appreciating the joy that was Will growing up. 

Looking back now, it would be easy to get angry with myself; to say I could have made it work for us all if I could have just stuck in there a little longer, knowing that easier days were ahead. But I am reminded of advice a friend gave me at the time: ‘Whatever you decide today, don’t go back years from now and blame yourself. You are making the best decision you can now, with the information you have now. This is all any of us can do.’ 

 I think I understand, I do. Still, I can’t ignore a resurfacing pang -- my baby would undoubtedly feel differently. 

* * *

How did I get here? It was a question I asked myself repeatedly. I was as let down by myself as I was by Steven. A strange thing we women do, beating ourselves up when someone else has already done a sufficiently good job of it. If only I had done more, known more, thought more, been more… somehow this wouldn’t be happening. 

There was an obvious person to turn to for counsel – my own mother whose experiences in marriage were eerily similar to my own. But somehow my repeating the pattern made frank conversations on the subject difficult for us, even though she had flown in to be supportive. ‘How long is this going to last?’ I sobbed in her arms. She was quiet, hesitant before whispering, ‘A long, long time.’ What else could she say? Secretly I feared that the healing process for her had never ended. And now she was reliving the acute pain of her earlier agony while feeling guilty that I had contracted my own from her, a form of virus passed on from mother to daughter.   And in a way she was right: 

‘Before any glimmerings of memory appear, (a baby) stores an impression of what love feels like…that knowledge whispers to a child from beneath the veil of consciousness, telling him what relationships are, how they function, what to anticipate, how to conduct them[1].’  My latest Amazon delivery included A General Theory of Love (Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, Richard Lannon). 

As the Theory goes, a baby cannot judge whether the example set for her is a good one or a bad one. It is all she knows, and this experience forms the basis of how she feels comfortable relating to others – particularly in romantic relationships -- in the years to come. The closer a potential partner resembles this historical comfort zone, the more likely of a pairing. This intuitively makes sense, but the science behind it is compelling. In Chapter 1, I referenced how at birth a baby’s brain is full of far more neurons than it ultimately keeps. Most of these are pruned out over the course of childhood. But what dictates which neurons stay put while others wither? Neurons that establish strong interconnections with similar ones in a child’s environment are the ones that survive. Simply put, a baby learns from her earliest teachers. Warmth begets warmth, stress begets stress. These reciprocated neurons are what the General Theory authors call ‘Attractors.’ They aren’t the first ones to write on the topic. ‘Cells that fire together, wire together,’ is the catchy phrase Canadian psychologist Donald Hebb first suggested in 1949[2]. 

While I was ostensibly studying my baby’s development, this latest read turned my focus rather inward, to what I had learned in my earliest stages.   Double the curiosity propelling me forward. It is a cliché to say we end up with partners who resemble our parents, but then there is an element of truth in most stereotypes. As the General Theory authors continue:

 ‘(People) balk at believing that a person can scan a crowed and pick out the intimate elements in a strangers’ heart. Can somebody survey a group and intuit who has a bad temper, an alcoholic mother, who dreams at night of revenge on the father who left him? Look at the relationships around you and judge for yourself. People target the mates who mesh with their own minds, and they do so with speed and precision that our smartest smart bombs are not sufficiently intelligent to envy.’ A pretty humbling line to read for someone in my situation. 

And, in answer to ‘How did I get here?’:

‘One of love’s common and initially baffling quirks: Most people will chose misery with a partner their [history] recognizes over the stagnant pleasure of a ‘nice’ relationship with someone their attachment mechanisms cannot detect[3].’ The reason some of us end up in bad relationships is precisely because we’ve been trained very well for them. They are what we know. Until we know differently. 

It has been a summer of discarding crutches. A five-week detox meant saying goodbye to the nightly wine and hourly cigarettes that have been my constant companions in recent months. I won’t begrudge my ‘friendship’ with these – extreme times call for extreme measures – but nor will I allow myself to make a life-long habit of hanging out with them. When the possibility became a distinct danger, I had to put a stop to it, cold turkey. (‘Inpatient or outpatient?’ asked one well-meaning friend, suggesting that she, too, had picked up that a different way was needed, albeit one more serious than I was contemplating). The antidepressants, too, are a thing of the past. I’m not sure what effect they ever had on me – maybe any potential benefit too obscured by the ‘depressant’ qualities of the alcohol. But since I couldn’t sense any redeeming effects, when the prescription ran out I never went back for more.   ‘Manic scheduling,’ has been another coping mechanism now in hibernation. If you don’t have any free moments in the day then there is no time for sadness? Or something like that. As if. In any event, more recently my calendar has been notable for its emptiness, and the necessities of caring for a young child dictate much time around the house anyway. Motherhood has a way of slowing you down whether you want to or not. Without these various crutches propping me up, it was, I suppose, inevitable that I’d fall flat on my face. Which is not a comfortable place to be. Not least because the months keep passing and with them my view that my ‘progress’ should move forward in step. Face-planting at this stage in the game seems rather a move too far in the wrong direction.  

It is hard to admit, to myself as much as to others, that I find myself in what can only be called a depression. Perhaps a physically healthier state than before, but an emotionally depressed one nonetheless. I’m embarrassed by this ‘weakness,’ this inability to show a stronger face to an expectant crowd, in which I, myself, am the most hopeful for improvement and therefore disappointed in being stuck here. And the cruel thing about depression is it takes any innate optimism one might have about the future and shakes the walls of that foundation, fooling you into thinking, really feeling, that it is always going to be like this. Which is why we all run so hard to avoid getting here in the first place. Literally. A friend recently told me that she had to go jogging daily to stave off ‘the Void.’ She could not sit still with it because it was that scary. I get this, and how. My version has been a rather lass athletic form of running, but constant motion in any manner does tend to help one sidestep the abyss. All of the crutches cited above, too, are classic Void-dodging behaviour. But does cobbling together a system of dancing around the issue ever prove anything but a short term solution? Merely by ‘not going there,’ can such avoidance eradicate the Void’s existence?   I’m starting to think not.  Maybe plunging in, head-first is paradoxically a better approach?  

In Jungian psychology, depression can be viewed as a good thing. A signal of a wrong direction taken and an admittedly painful nudge (kick? stomp? whallup?) to get back on track. Jung’s views on depression were explained in relation to his libido (‘psychic energy’) theory. In normal times, our energy is distributed throughout the psychic system and the unconscious and conscious are balanced.  Life moves along nicely until we meet an obstacle we cannot handle with our established conscious attitudes. The unconscious then steps in as a protective measure (‘wake up!’) draining away this energy thereby creating a depleted, depressed existence. This energy suck is purposeful – it goes in search of unresolved or repressed grief, trauma, loss, etc existing in the unconscious. When we resist this regression (as all of my various crutches attempted to) we avoid dealing with the source of our depression and so it persists; only through the painful process of searching inward for what attracted libido in the first place and bringing this to consciousness can we replenish the lost psychic energy in the ego’s hands.  The resulting marriage of the unconscious with the conscious (‘the transcendent function’) is key to Jung’s process of ‘individuation,’ or becoming the person we were meant to be. Not exactly a bad thing.

By contrast, ‘what is not brought to consciousness comes to us as fate.’ This particular Jung quote resonates with me given the parallels between my broken relationship with W’s father and that between my own mother and father. So much so that I am willing to sit here in the Void for a while, unpleasant though it is; searching in the dark for that lost energy. As I sang to W in the aftermath of his immunization shots last week: ‘Short-term pain, long-term gain. Short-term pain, long-term gain…’ I kept repeating it to him while trying to kiss the tears away. Mom could use the little ditty too.

The various injustices are old hat, not to be repeated. I would merely say these are long forgotten by you (if indeed they were ever truly appreciated, and by this I mean felt), but not me. So why even bring them up? Because past behaviour is indicative of future outcomes…my big mistake in all of this was seeing how badly you treated your Ex, colleagues and, perhaps most surprising, your own parents and thought somehow you would be different with me. You were, only as long as the ‘falling in love’ stage lasted, because this magical time serves your ego perfectly. Self-interest dictated sweetness, kindness for this finite period of time.  As the aftermath of a divorce (for that is effectively what this was) is diametrically opposed to the honeymoon phase, it is safe to assume that the ‘exception to the rule’ displayed during the latter should no longer be in consideration except in your current affections toward J, not my concern or interest.

Even if I wanted to forget the horrible treatment during my pregnancy and after (and no one wants this more than me!), the question remains why I should want anything to do with someone who readily admits ‘I have an amazingly selfish streak that decides what it wants to do, does it, and leaves others to pick up the pieces (knowing I will be okay)?’ It’s good that you know this about yourself, less so that you actively cultivate an image (at least in the ‘falling in love’ stage) that is markedly different. Moreover, ‘you know I live very comfortably with who I am. I am sure that is hard for you to accept but it has always been true.’ I said at the time, and I’ll repeat it now: That is either complete BS or scary beyond belief (in light of your behaviour during our last year+ together). No longer my business, so it doesn’t really matter which it is. Either way, the person you have proven to be, the person who made both of these statements, is not someone I care to know. 

I tried so hard to make it easier for you to do better. Multiple times during our last year together I invited frank conversation. But you couldn’t even afford me the decency of honesty. With the luxury of 20:20 hindsight, my own behaviour can be viewed as grotesque. There is nothing so humiliating (from my standpoint) or unattractive (from yours) as someone throwing her heart and soul into saving something that was already gone. In my defense, I would merely say I was operating under the false scenario that you created, telling me ‘it’s not like I’ve fallen out of love with you’ and, even after all was out in the open, saying your thing with J was a big mistake, and you ‘realized what you wanted’ (being me). Lies, lies, lies. More so to yourself than anyone I suspect. As long as you continue to believe your own BS you should be fine, but I’ll steer well clear thanks. 

The ironic thing is at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if your anger towards me was more than mine towards you. I had to let go of mine (although it does rear its ugly head from time to time) as it does no one any good. But what am I to you now, except a poor reflection. Ie,  the one person who truly ‘knows’ you. Not the ‘you’ you present to the rest of the world (even your best friend N doesn’t get this as I found when he was doing his two-bit attempt at ‘counselling’ me – what a joke – and it was clear he had no idea the extent of your egregious behaviour towards me). J? Fat chance. Only I had the benefit of seeing the emails you wrote here side by side with those you wrote me, the way you were stringing us both along.

Your ego needs surrounding from people who tell you how ‘amazing’ you are (my version was ‘my beautiful boy…my brilliant boy..’). When that goes, so does any affection for the person, the Echo to your Narcissus. Let’s be clear, the reason you have so few people close to you (a subject we once discussed before all hell broke loose), is not because ‘no one is compelling enough to break through’ (another wonderful quote) but because most people won’t play by your preferred rules. ‘I’m not very good at making myself happy,’ you once conceded. I’m not surprised. Treat people like shit, you’ll get shit back. No doubt you have long forgotten this statement, all loved up as you are at the moment. Doesn’t mean it’s not true. Kierkegaard has some interesting thoughts on the matter…

I don’t write the above to provoke, although I know that is, unfortunately, the obvious reaction. We can’t all tell you what you want to hear, which is why silence between us is probably the best policy. But so you know, I don’t claim to be an unbiased cornerstone of wisdom here. I don’t mean to sound pedantic nor patronizing although you undoubtedly will see this as such. Honesty has always been very important to me, now more than ever. And if I’m honest with myself, I will readily admit my reaction to all of this (my ‘stubbornness’ to you) is inextricably linked to my past. Although I told you repeatedly in the early days how hurt I was by my fathers actions, I see now that you couldn’t have fully appreciated this. You’ll just have to take my word for it that enduring a second round of this kind of duplicity has understandably taken me back to a very difficult time. Although you have never been close with your parents, there was a time when I was extremely so with my father, and he didn’t afford me honesty either. Seeing a repeat of much the same is just hurtful, and fuses the current wound with ones long ignored. 

It didn’t need to be like this. You/I said from the beginning that we thought we would be together forever, but that given the statistics it was unlikely. I distinctly remember talking about how we would deal with this maturely and honestly. Kind of like discussing how we would deal with parenthood – giving me the false impression that in both of these instances we were acting thoughtfully and in good faith. Absent the duplicity, I know we could have gone on to reasonable co-parenting together. Throughout that last, horrible year together I wasn’t stupid enough to think that our ‘making it’ was a forgone conclusion. I was mentally prepared for a break, just not the kind of treatment I got. Even after the affair was common knowledge, I still worked as hard as I could to find common ground. It was elusive. I got one (spoon fed) apology and a promise to do better in considering my feelings. In the event, your actions didn’t change, because my feelings no longer matter to you. Which leaves us where we are. I just can’t meet someone halfway when he is convinced it is his way or no way. 

Recently, while on my quarterly visit to New York, I picked up a July issue of New York magazine and was surprised to find that parents hate parenting. At least according to the cover article, ‘All Joy and No Fun.’ In this controversial article (which had stirred up much conversation among parent-friends of mine in the City), the author presents a wide variety of academic research showing that parenting does not bring incremental happiness; indeed most of the studies discussed conclude parents are less happy than their childless peers. Apparently, such a view is now ‘commonplace’ (to quote the author) although it was news to me.

Thirteen months into being a mother (and one without at co-parent at that), I’m not so naïve to think that parenting is all sunshine and roses. But then I knew this long before I and my then-partner made the decision to try for children. There are enough ‘Johnny was up alllllll night’ tales bantered around at dinner parties, not to mention the sharp warnings existing parents give the child-less that you can ‘kiss your sleep-ins, hobbies and vacations as you know them goodbye with kids’ to hold on to any idealistic myth that a baby brings all the joy you ever hoped for without any serious incremental work. What surprised me more in reading the New York article was twofold: 1/ How the studies involved measured happiness, and 2/ How the several hundred commentators on the magazine’s website did so. To put it bluntly, all have lost the plot. It is only a slight exaggeration to assert that the main issue here is how many people currently equate the selfish pursuit of hedonism with happiness. And then we wonder why the coveted state proves elusive!

To be clear, I get that sleep deprivation is less preferable than the opposite. I, too, find travel with a toddler (especially on my own) more difficult than the pre-parenthood days. Long-haul flights used to be a favourite of mine, particularly to California when I had a full eleven hours to enjoy movies and books with no pesky blackberry to get in the way. No more. I could catalogue here a litany of ways in which parenting has inflicted inconveniences on my daily life, but to do so would be both stating the obvious and totally missing the point. Instead I will focus on what I believe are the bigger issues alluded to above, namely our totally misguided pursuit of happiness and how we were lead so astray. In short, we are rapidly becoming a society of Narcissists, a condition notoriously associated with unhappiness.

As Jean Twenge and W Keith Campbell point out in their book The Narcissim Epidemic, nearly 10% of twenty-somethings have already experienced symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder compared with just over 3% of the 65+ age cohort. Age-wise therefore, new parents in their thirties, say, are likely to have a higher propensity for a ‘me first’ outlook than their parents did. Which brings me to citing some of the comments posted in reaction to the New York Magazine article on parenting:

 ‘Get a nanny and enjoy your life’

 ‘…A nanny and boarding school…’

 ‘Sometimes I resent my plants for all of the attention they require’ (Note: I get there is a joke of sorts here, but there is always truth in humour)

 To which I respond: ‘Me. Me. Me.’ It is all about what I want, when and where I want it. On the surface, what’s to disagree with? We are fortunate enough to live in an age where choices are aplenty. Why shouldn’t we pursue those options that we find most enjoyable? Except when ever did short-term enjoyment equate to the more fundamental (and therefore lasting) optimal outcomes?

I cite a simplistic example: Chocolate chip cookies (or Phish Food ice cream or Cool Ranch Doritos or sour gummies…pick your vice) unquestionably taste better than steamed chicken but does any sane, emotionally stable individual pursue a diet dominated by the former ‘food groups’? Obviously not. Most healthy beings know the balance between ‘treats’ and needed nutrients to maintain optimal functioning (and, vanity would add, appearance). Not to mention all of the ‘work’ required in physical fitness to keep us feeling if not our best, at least better than the sloth-like existence created by a junk food diet. 

Since when did great achievement come without a decent amount of hard work? It doesn’t; any statement otherwise is a myth, too good to be true. But as The Narcissism Epidemic authors would argue, younger generations have been reared to think that merely being the wonderful human beings they are has entitled them to all. Forgetting any effort required to result in desired outcomes. Bringing this back to the question at hand, parenting, it would follow that these same children as adults would somehow expect a baby, the perfect little reflection of its parents, should arrive all loving and knowing without any need for (often frustrating, exhausting) guidance along the way. Unfortunately for us, humans require more early stage care than any species out there. No ready-made mini-mes without years of blood/sweat/tears/type nurture. By definition, this is going to disrupt sleep, require more financial resources, result in a drain on personal time, present challenges in the relationship between parents…the list goes on…but does this mean children make us less happy?

The New York article eventually gets there in the end when it asks the question how we define happiness. Yes, if psychologists were measuring ‘moment-to-moment’ feelings, and many of these moments pit a stressed-out mother juggling family, household and job vs her less encumbered single counterpart, the parent is likely to come out short. But when the measurements went below the surface, beyond things that subjects find merely ‘pleasurable’ and instead focused on ‘rewarding,’ well then parenting started to hit its stride. More on this below, but the mere fact that the majority of couples continue to procreate suggests longer term considerations of ‘living a purposeful, rewarding life’ outweigh near term loss of pleasure. Not for everyone, of course, but the majority continues to vote via its ongoing breeding.  If having children wasn’t ‘worth it’ in the end, what explains the prevalence of seconds, thirds, fourths of them?

So what is it about giving up so much of oneself for the sake of our offspring that proves so, well, fulfilling for lack of a better word? If we are all either narcissists or, like me, trying to rediscover the importance of being alone, how is it that we are so drawn to the company of little creatures who, quite literally, depend on us for life? Here I would suggest that despite our selfish tendencies, human beings are basically social animals. Quoting the Dalai Lama here, ‘It is part of our basic nature to come together, to form community bonds…’ And I would assert that there can be no stronger possibility for community than with one’s nuclear family, despite all we do to stress and sometimes inadvertently sever these bonds along the way. In family – or any created community – we find ‘a kind of anchor, an emotional anchor’ that roots us amidst the constant upheaval that is day to day life in the 21^st century. Indeed, in The Art of Happiness, the Dalai Lama’s discourse continues ‘it seems from when we are very young, from a very early age, we have this innate sense of connection with our mothers, we have a feeling that we can depend on our mother’s care and concern – but somehow later on, as we grow up, we fell that we can get by completely on our own, as if we can exist independently from others. I think that’s a mistake.’  So in becoming parents ourselves, we throw our hat back into the communal ring.   If interdependence is key to our personal happiness, as the Dalai Lama explicitly argues, it is no wonder that the reality of a little being depending so much on what we can provide for him proves a natural means for pursuing this lifeline to community. And not just any community, but one that comes with our same genes, history and (hopefully) stronger emotional bonds than are found elsewhere. 

There are many definitions of happiness out there. Never has the pursuit of happiness been a more studied issue than in the past two decades (most notably in Dr Martin Seligman’s promotion of ‘Positive Psychology’). Paradoxically, however, despite most experts’ conclusions that happiness is definitively more than maximizing pleasure (the hedonic tradition), this seems to be the very narrow-sighted approach en vogue today. Is it any wonder that depression and addictions are ever-escalating given this attitude?

Common wisdom among the experts in now what is regarded a serious science—happiness-- contends that a society encouraging heightened individualism (ie, the self and its wants) is completely at odds with the close personal relationships crucial to achieving the desired outcome. Enter the ‘prosperity paradox’ in which we are richer but more unhappy. (Note the New York Magazine article reported that dissatisfaction was positively correlated with money, ie, the more parents had of it, the more unhappy they were as parents despite having the ability to afford more child care!)

In considering happiness, scientists acknowledge the importance of pleasure but believe this to be fleeting. What endures (the eudaimonic tradition dating back to the days of Aristotle) is happiness derived from serving a goal bigger than oneself. Parenting is one, albeit certainly not the only, road to take here. Interestingly, in forming bonds with our children, sometimes even the near term definitions of happiness/pleasure become blurred, depending on our perspective. I remember once a male friend of mine, a father of three,  laughed ‘you know, I’ve even come to love the bad bits now.’ 

I think back to last weekend’s flight back from New York when the momentary thrill I got from being upgraded to First was quickly killed by the necessity of hanging out with W for most of the time in the stewardess’ less cushy quarters to keep his protests away from well-paying travellers. As long as W was relieved from the confines of his seat (albeit the best one in the house!), he was back to his cheery self. He smiled and giggled and flirted with the ladies as they arranged dinners for the others while Mummy gnawed on a bread roll to keep hunger at bay.   ‘It’s hard to get too annoyed when he is just so sweet,’ I shrugged to one of the flight staff. This wasn’t mere posturing, I truly meant it.   Maybe it was a 'trick' that nature played on my mind to keep my motherly instincts in motion in lieu of fretting about seven hours effectively guarding the Loo with my sidekick instead of relaxing in transit.  More likely it's just that this little guy to me is happiness personified and I feel lucky to be around him regardless of the circumstances.

‘I am…alone…,’ so says the only text below one of my favourite Yoshitomo Nara caricatures, a lone girl with her arms folded in defiance, seemingly floating in the clouds on a banner with this sad pronouncement. Her lips (a single black line in reality), turned up ever so slightly at the ends, forming not close to a smile, not quite self-satisfied enough to be a smirk. Widely spaced half-moons form her green eyes, two dots in the middle a furrowed brow.  A boat rests precariously on her bobbed hair – why? – is she going somewhere or has she just arrived? Or is it merely a play thing with which she is showing off this balancing tactic?

I don’t know why this image stuck me so the first time I saw it. What I found so interesting about her sulky, suspicious glare. One more typical of adulthood disillusionment than the innocence more associated with childhood. We were at a cocktail party chez the Bofa’s boss. All loved up in the romance of a new relationship, I was anything but alone. There was champagne flowing and servers circulating with canapés. I had made, I knew, a good impression on my partner’s colleagues. I am good at this. Speak just enough business to let the ‘guys’ know I’m in their world; wear just the right designer heels to assure that I (literally) keep my feet in the more feminine one. But my mingling came to a stop when I ‘met’ this new friend. To the left of the artist’s signature I saw the reassuring indication (‘26/73’) telling me there were 72 others of ‘her’ out there.  I had to find one. My search didn’t take long, as the Bofa brought one home from a trip to Tokyo several months later (the guy was deceptively good in the honeymoon phase, it was only after that things went pear-shaped).

And so we set out to hang our treasure in our newly-furnished shared home. We decided on the foot of the staircase, so I could see her every morning when I came down to start the day and every evening when I made my way up to bed.  Perfectly placed. That is, of course, until the Bofa’s departure when my mother, friends and Kwagala were all quick to counsel me to take her down. ‘Bad energy,’ they said. ‘No need for that reminder.’ But I couldn’t do it. She was so much a part of me, and seemed to be so well-suited to her space. It was only when I moved to my new house that I left her wrapped in a bubble blanket, packaging tape obstructing many of her features which were turned toward the wall so out of sight anyway. Suddenly there was nothing ironic or amusing about my little friend. 

Although she was tucked away, I was reminded of my lonely Nara while listening to some lectures by the Jungian analyst Marion Woodman. She was talking about ‘finding the reality of ourselves in images.’ Was this pint-sized cynic really ‘my’ image?  The words of one Nara-critic echoed in my mind, ‘they (Nara toddlers) are candy-cane puzzles begging to be deciphered, only to reveal the cavities inside our own grown up hearts[1].’ The truth is I’ve felt like that little Nara girl more often than I would like to admit. The early years with the Bofa being the obvious exception. Which is why his departure continues to haunt me. It isn’t him, per se, that I’m missing. Hell no - I’d have to be a masochist to sign up for a second round in the ring following that first body blow. Rather, the absence of him (or who I thought he was) is just lonely.  For the first several months after he left it was all I (and my support network) could do to merely hold me together. To keep me functioning through it rather than sinking in my grief. And there was ongoing drama to be had – new ‘events’ seemed to unfold weekly as my therapist reminds me. That’s the thing about truly duplicitous situations – you aren’t confronted with the full horror of the situation up front, all at once. Little truisms sink in with every day, as additional pieces of information come to light. Just when you think you’ve processed about all you can deal with, you unearth another buried ‘treasure’ that sends you reeling. (A separate entry must be written on the cruelty of duplicity; there surely must be karmic retribution for those who employ it repeatedly). But after the storm(s) come the proverbial calm. In theory, a good time just curl up and heal. But in reality the absence of distractions, tortuous though they were, leaves a certain emptiness in their wake. Not even any vices to fill the void as I gave up the wine and cigs two weeks ago (enough is enough). No real fairy godmothers to boot as it is summer and a time for family vacations and fun. Kwagala, too, is off for three weeks’ well-deserved holiday. My ‘partner’ by default out the door. It is just me and W. When he is awake, his infectious smile works wonders. But when he’s not….well, the little Nara girl, my mirror-image, is back.   My only companion is my ever-growing library of various psychology theories.

 So here I am, listening to lectures, Sitting by the Well.  At least Woodman’s voice fills my otherwise silent home. And she is talking about surrender and the strength it takes to do so. ‘You have no idea what your destiny is,’ so why am I so sure that it is filled with every future Sunday spent thus, with W taking his afternoon nap while I feel like a balloon-headed Nara doll sulking in my admittedly luxurious surroundings? (Side note: I never cease to feel grateful for my good fortune regarding living accommodations, but it must be said that being depressed in such a beautiful place has the unwelcome result of making me feel worse, as in only a truly pathetic soul can’t get a grip in these environs when there are people dying, starving, etc in the world. I am a master at beating myself up for this kind of shit, but the simple truth is pain is pain. It isn’t relative and it isn’t a competition.)

Woodman is talking about how we all want security and comfort and love (‘yes, yes, yes!) but because we are so disconnected emotionally these desires manifest themselves in ‘I want muffins!...The soul is starving for sweetness but chocolate chip muffins won’t supply it.’ Hmm, I put down my spoon poised with the last bit of last night’s lemon tart long enough to ponder the statement. Is it any wonder all of the women in my family have issues with emotional eating? Stripped of my booze and fags, my sweet tooth has come to the rescue, and now Woodman is telling me this won’t do the trick either? Where to turn?

The answer, according to this Jungian, resides in images. ‘When you find images…ones you have in your being…you find security (being) alone.’ But because these images are by definition personal, there are no role models to help us out. No pre-packaged ‘images for a happier lifestyle.’ (Although surely the publishing industry must have attempted this as it would likely sell like commercial hotcakes?). Our images instead come via our own dreams, our art, our creative expressions…This portion of the lecture over, I start to ponder ‘my’ images.  What would they be? How can they ground me? Will they really keep me contentedly solo? It sounds too good to be true. This is how my Nara twin came to mind after hiding out for so long facing the wall. But I reject her. She may have special meaning to me, but seemingly only due to the ‘cavity’ in my soul she personifies. As a second Nara critic said: ‘Maturity implies coming to terms with one’s regrets for what has been and for what might have been[2].’ I may have spent a lot of time being that balloon head, and it’s too bad I didn’t really address it until this, my thirty eighth year, but she is not who I want to be for the other half (plus?) of my adult life. There must be more positive anchoring imagery in me…So I pick up my pen, trusty green notebook and start listing them:

• A photo of me and Will moments after birth. Although it was taken on an iphone so the quality isn’t great and the photographer (Bofa) even less desirable, this single image is the first and most grounding one. He is curled up against my floral hospital dressing gown. My eyes only on him, oblivious of the camera. I am in love.
• A painting by Martin Kline. More of a sculpture really as it is white flower painted in wax, petals extending forth from the confines of the wooden frame. I have always loved this flower for its femininity yet strength. I remember when an all around tough-looking moving man paused before packing it up and asked me if he could photograph it on his phone, so moved he was by the work. It is arresting to many people, has always been so to me, and (significantly) pre-dates the ‘me’ I became while living with the Bofa. This painting is more reflective of me than the many dark images the Bofa and I purchased together, leering faces that resulted in what my fairy godmothers called the ‘bad energy’ in my former home.
• E.e. cummings, ‘I carry your heart…’ As I’ve written on these pages before, I’ve always loved this poem. But I only ever truly felt it towards my son.
• A view of Paris from the Seine. I’ve had a romance with the city from the first time I visited, age 14.  Over time, this post card beauty has been complemented by my more intimate knowledge of the city’s less tourist-friendly faces.  I love it all the more for knowing these. Paris remains a special place for me, and one I should visit more frequently. W will be up for travel there soon.
• The light and airy oasis that is my kitchen. As a reminder, this is an image that came to me during hypnotherapy when I was asked to imagine my perfect place. I found the home housing this kitchen a mere few weeks later. It remains the heart of my new household.
• The Pacific Ocean a la Hiroshi Sugimoto. I love Sugimoto’s seascapes. ‘So simple – water and air. So very commonplace…every time I view the sea, I feel a calming sense of security[3].’ And for me, seeing the Pacific Ocean thus reminds me of where I came from in a very beautiful way.
• …and the clincher…an image that exists only in my mind…it is black and white and I am pregnant. Not with W so it must be in the future. I am happy, blissfully so. Holding my swollen belly and looking up into the eyes of…? He doesn’t make it into my image, but presumably he is there.

Which brings me to a children’s book penned and illustrated by Nara, The Lonesome Puppy (also the sole item purchased by the Bofa for W in the four and a half months he lived with him). The tale is one of a puppy so large that no one sees him. That is until a determined young girl sets out to be his friend. There are a few more twists to the tale but not really-- the book more one to showcase Nara’s talent as an artist than that as a writer. But the message is reassuring; the final page reads. ‘No matter how alone you are, there is always someone, somewhere, waiting to meet you. Just look and you will find them[4].’  Here’s hoping. But something tells me I have to get more comfortable with it just being me, W and my images for the time being.   

 I subscribed to a listserve 'SingleMommyNYC,' an e-mail community of women with diverse backgrounds, but who share one very common situation as the group name implies.  Communities like these are an extremely valuable support network for all of us trying to get past the dark moments and resurface in life as we used to know it.   I haven't typically asked for advice from the group but felt compelled to do so the other week as I was frustrated by how much my anger towards 'the other woman' and my ex kept surfacing.  Hearing he was out purchasing a BBQ and inflatable pool to take to her house for a dual-family day in the sun had me fuming 'he should have been doing that for us, for our nascent family!!'  Rather than spend the day chain-smoking in rage while my little one bonded with hers, I sent a plea out to the group for any advice on how to get past they angry phase.  I found the below so insightful, so perfectly put that I decided to copy it in its entirety for others who, like me, could use the perspective.  The last line has somewhat become my new mantra, so do read on...