Surfaced

When Gavin was born, I felt like I'd been sucked underwater. It seemed I had been heading that way - in the last few weeks of pregnancy my belly was so large it felt like a globe-shaped sandbag, and I waddled around with the sensation of slowly sinking. Once my beautiful little bean made his official debut, he nursed every two or three hours around the clock for months. Near-drowned on love and sleep deprivation, determined to feed him from my own body, I spent most of my time drifting through a dim, blurry waterscape between asleep and awake as summer, fall and winter passed through my peripheral like weather patterns.

Occasionally I would bubble to some surface and become fully aware of where I was in life, and note how changed I found my self and my surroundings. Then I'd go under again, and not think anything coherent for weeks.

As recently as a couple months ago, I became better able to manage caring for my son (nearly one year old now, and sleeps better though only marginally) with other life activities - brushing my teeth, taking care of laundry, socializing. It felt like having been lost at sea and finally crawling upon the shore of some island, bedraggled and confused, with terrible hair - where am i? Wait, who am I?

Maybe it's part of new motherhood, but I've been doing a lot of reflecting since the ability to do so was restored to my brain. The intense, difficult, joyful, exhausting, rewarding but frustrating experience of being in charge of another human life has highlighted my strengths and weaknesses in all areas, and made me think about what's important. I've come up with this - love and friendship. While this is not an original concept at all, it arrived as news to me.

My husband is still firmly by my side, but scanning my surroundings in this new place I see that not everyone who seemed to be with me in the beginning is here now. Life actually continued while I was away, which seems obvious, but the extent left me flabbergasted. I've drifted apart from a couple people, due to life moving us in different directions. I lost one good friend out of my own unintended negligence, and her absence digs around behind my ribcage like a claw.  

Those friendships that were left standing, or that were easily renewed, I'm grateful for. I've also opened my time to new friends, mama friends, and the experience has been refreshing.

Sitting here in this stage of life that still feels new sometimes, I find myself mentally gathering up important people in my life - my budding family, friends - and proceeding with caution, so as not to take any of them for granted.