Motherhood is Protector
But who will fight for you?
Today you told the trees a secret. Your walks lately have been incredibly picturesque; an ambience of fall trees, piles of leaves formed in the corners of streets and driveways, every angle resembles a postcard. A hoarding of autumn all within your grasp, this weekend your toddler made a “leaf angel.” The colors alone basically has you on your knees; some trees are highlighter yellow, others are burning red, some a romantic shade of plum. It’s the sluttiest time of the year for these trees, the way they expose their most beautiful tones before stripping naked for the winter.
But these tries have you in a daze. As if you're drinking their sap. Maybe their pungent sap is seeping into the air? You’re being seduced, they're black balling you into their slutty spells. On your walks you glare at them and take pictures, overall dumbfounded by their beauty, hypnotized under their spell, knowing they are pulling you deeper into a grief. What are you grieving? Or, what are you not grieving? Are you even alive these days? What is there not to grieve? You begin to think we all are dying a little bit, not because of the passage of time, but because no one has any soul anymore.
You walk in order to wake yourself up; your muscles, your lungs, your thoughts. You walk to try to continue making sense of the memories. You walk because to be truly alive is to truly grieve. You walk because you are trying to figure out if this love is a blessing that will set you free or the kind of love that will bring you to your doom.
There is so much sun today. The trees are so red. The world is quietly burning.
***
Every other season comes with its drama, but not autumn. The stillness of autumn forces you to sit with yourself. Autumn is the gentler side of Mother Nature. The colors of the trees are getting brighter and brighter until the leaves gently suspend from the branches. It's been a few weeks of this, the leaves suspending - it’s a beautiful representation of the dying, the way these trees are grieving the end of their prime. So they show off, standing in their beauty until the very last leaf, until the oxygen runs out, until it all goes dark.
You want to tell them everything. You’re attune to their suffering.
On your walk you are overwhelmed by the lack of sounds. You’re an expert of sounds, you rely on them. You can translate sounds for what they really mean, typically you are a soldier amongst the noise, able to perform regardless of its octave. But what does a person do with all this quiet?
Silence reminds you of a confessional. Silence brings you back to the church.
It could be that these trees and all their slutty show, has been your form of prayer, year after year.
***
Now as a mother you always think: I used to be fearless. I’m not fearless anymore.
Now as a mother you always think: I used to be free. I’m not free anymore.
You don't want to surrender to someone else's idea of what a mother should be. Even your own.
***
Maybe these trees, as they take in their final days, as they accept the shedding of their leaves, are making loving promises to themselves:
Through this shedding, this internal grief of reaching the end of a season, comes a soul. A soul is built when something dies; a season, a person, a former life. A soul is born from suffering. A soul derives from tender wounds that succumb to the unbearable weight of trying to recover from them. A soul is the richest thing anyone/anything can have.
So in a few weeks from now, in the peak of winter, when the trees are barely there, muted and weak, maybe it's their soul that keeps them stable. Maybe it’s the depth of their souls that recovers them and brings them reemergence in the spring. Maybe it’s the richness of their souls that helps them withstand pain, year after year.
***
Questions for the way Mother Nature will end everything: will she end the world gently the way she ends these trees for the season? Or will she bring Bible scale plagues? The rain can certainly drown us, but flowers can grow where we rest.
***
You begin to be more realistic with yourself and ask: don’t all stories end this way? Doesn’t every plot involve deep internal suffering? Don’t all the best stories in the world embody the stories of trees? Don't the best stories in the world put their protagonist through deep internal strife, until one random fall afternoon, they reach some kind of clarity, which then awakens the protagonist into a newly founded person full of SOUL?
So that begs the question of your internal suffering, as all the best stories do: who am I? And how does that differ from the person I want to be?
Sadly the answer is, who the fuck knows and who the fuck cares. Because this isn’t a story, this isn't a New York Times bestselling novel, or a rom-com starring Jennifer Aniston. This is your life.
***
The older organisms don’t think this way. These trees are very old, and they don't have time for this self-doubt bullshit. These trees are WISE and you’re too young to understand the bigness of that word. These trees have been around the block and have learned a thing or two along the way. These trees, right now in their old age, don’t take shit from anyone and live with no regrets. These trees are self-indulgent, super weird, beautiful, pretentious assholes. How dare these trees stand so tall and proclaim all of their suffering to the world? How dare these trees withstand the power of Mother Nature, season after season? The thing about these trees that bother you the most is that they are dying triumphantly. No one dies triumphantly. At least not the people with souls. The people with souls die with all their pain showcased on their sleeves. Like a roadmap, like a tattoo of growth.
***
Another obnoxious and boring reality about stories; the plot to every story relies on a person's realization of their own performance.
You realize time and time again that you have no interest in performing your way through life anymore but it’s been embedded in you. You just want to achieve the ability to be free, to proclaim your suffering with the world and beget no self scrutiny.
***
The thing that’s not boring about this though, is your maternal side has brought you to the pinnacle of your curiosity and darkness. Motherhood has you swimming in the muck of your own imagination; yearning for a broader sense of freedom, grieving that you’ll likely never have it. You’re not bored because you wake up at 5am to write about how the trees insult you. You’re not bored because you’re teaching your kids about balancing anger with joy. You’re not bored because your mind is constantly racing to satisfy the needs of them while ignoring your own. You’re not bored because you're passing down your entire foundation unto your family. The thing about toddlers is that you could literally be having the worst day of your life, and they will still ask you to download the latest version of MarioKart on their iPad.
Motherhood is so complex, you have spent years trying to simplify it, and likely will continue to do so. You’re likely thinking too much into it. You are strong and capacious but your imagination turns on you. The trees annoy you because they are overwhelmingly simple. The stillness brings you a wave of panic. You’re constantly waiting for the ball to drop. You want these trees to go fuck themselves.
***
It’s true what they say, don’t love something so much that you lose yourself along the way. But for mothers this makes no sense. Your kids literally cannot survive without your love. Your love is the energy source to their development. Your love fuels their chaos and energy and fuck assery. Your love channels their self-worth and confidence. Your love is their safe place.
You remind yourself that you keep your kids incredibly safe; physically, emotionally, spiritually. It’s a beautiful idea, but to every beautiful idea, comes downsides. You are their barrier to all bad things; scrutiny, shame, fear. So you swallow all of these bad things and it festers in the murky swamp of your imagination.
Questions about safety: Does becoming a Mother mean you have to forego your own? When Mother Nature selfishly turns against her trees, do they resent her for it?
***
Another non-boring thing about these stories is that sometimes you will find supporting actresses who will tell you that life is incredibly depressive. These people pull down the curtain with confidence. These are the people that are craving more love, craving more safety, by entering full admission to the objective of life: suffering. This is the signature move for connection; finding community in suffering. You realize you have found loads of community. You wonder if your community is like the trees; varying in stories and colors and histories.
***
Here’s a reminder: you are a person who breathes oxygen and is attempting to raise young people into decent adults. Putting the side effects to this job on the page is just an example that you have soul. You want to learn to speak up instead of staying quiet. You bite your tongue and consider it a triumph, but then come to realize that it’s made you soul-less this whole time. The trees remind you that having a soul is a colorful, loud, obnoxious thing.
You can’t feel defensive towards these trees anymore. You need to get over their slutty exposures and put this to bed. You can be more, as a way to counteract feeling like less.