Those of you who have been following my personal blog here would have read something disturbing yesterday. I talked about how I felt that I was slipping into post natal depression and about how I wasn’t coping all that well with being in a new country (that I truly didn’t like – no offence to Singaporeans out there) and having to choose between what I wanted for myself (and Eva) or what would be better for my family at her expense. I was very candid and I don’t plan to be otherwise.
I have always been frank on my blogs, especially this one. I started my blogs with the aim of opening up people’s perspective about many things – life as an expat, motherhood and so forth. It isn’t just all about the good stuff, fun or roses; I wanted people out there to know that there are two sides to an experience and that they don’t have to feel alone in the things that they go through in life.
I am not going to write about how being a mother is the most glorious and wonderful job in the world because to be honest, there are just days when I ask myself what the heck was I thinking of when I planned for this baby, and when I just want to give it all up and go back to my old self. But I can’t. Because being a parent is a lifelong commitment and like it or not, I’m stuck to her and she to me.
A lifelong commitment – I knew them previously as just words. Like how a marriage is about two people sharing a burden yet maintaining an identity. Like how being a mother is all about making sacrifices and such. All the things we know, we hear, we learn about these experiences are nothing until we experience them fully for ourselves.
And I can tell you that it won’t be easy being a wife and a mother.
It won’t be easy trying to share the load with another person. At least not for someone like me who is used to tackling and solving problems on her own. Sometimes it’s hard to admit that I need help, that I can’t do everything all by myself, that my partner in life doesn’t want me to do all these things all by myself because that isn’t what a marriage is all about.
It won’t be easy trying to find the fulfilment of motherhood when your child is throwing the biggest tantrum of the year or when you’re required to make certain sacrifices that you don’t really want to make. Sometimes it’s hard to admit that motherhood is a double-edge sword, that it’s not all fun and games, pink roses and such, that the ultimate step into adulthood is when you give up the things you want for someone else, especially your own child.
The difference between the ones who manage to find the joy in their marriages or children despite the lemons that get thrown at them and the ones who don’t is whether we have learnt to accept our new roles wholeheartedly and willingly…with some help from our spouses, family and loved ones. There will always be people who think otherwise, who feel otherwise, who will want to share their well-meaning advice. I can’t say that I’ll always ignoring them and not feel the pinch – it’s just not how I was built.
What I do know is that I am slowly embracing my new role as a stay/work at home mum with the support of a loving and understanding husband. Perhaps at the end of it all, that’s all that really counts not what other people think I should do or be.
