There's a version of me that existed before kids.
She had opinions about her evenings. She had a body that belonged entirely to her. She made decisions, small stupid ones, like what to eat and when to stop working, without anyone screaming about it.
I miss her. I'm not always sure where she went.
My son is sixteen months old. He is wonderful and chaotic and currently going through a phase I can only describe as: exclusively me.
Not his dad. Not Nana, who he spots at the door and immediately starts panicking over because clearly her arrival means I am about to disappear. Not even his older brother, who he genuinely adores and will follow around like a tiny shadow, right up until he needs something and the only acceptable answer is me.
Every surface I try to cook at, he arrives. He doesn't walk to me so much as scale me, arms up, body pressing in, full koala energy at 4pm when I am already running on nothing.
The only exception is the Minions. Those little yellow guys get a pass. Apparently they have what it takes. I, standing right there, often do not.
I know this phase is temporary. I know it means he feels safe with me, that I'm his person, that it's developmentally normal and actually kind of beautiful if you zoom way, way out.
But from inside it? It feels like I've ceased to exist as a person and become a function.
The nights are the worst part.
We're not sleeping. Not really. He wakes, sometimes once, sometimes four times, and wants me, specifically, in a way that doesn't negotiate. I drag myself down the hall in the dark and I stand over his crib and I do what needs to be done.
And some nights, I'm fine. Tired, but fine.
And some nights, I have thoughts I don't want to tell you about.
Not dangerous thoughts. But dark ones. The kind that arrive when you're sleep-deprived and touched-out and you've given every last scrap of yourself to a person who cannot yet say thank you. Intrusive thoughts, which if you have OCD like I do, you already know are a separate category of terrifying. They're not wishes. They're not plans. They're your brain misfiring under pressure, throwing up worst-case images like a broken slot machine.
They still feel awful. And then the guilt arrives, right on schedule.
Because how can you love someone this much and still have thoughts like that?
Here's what I've learned, slowly, in therapy and in the trenches: you can. Love and rage coexist. Devotion and resentment live in the same house. Intrusive thoughts are not confessions, they're symptoms. They spike when we're depleted, when we've lost all sense of ourselves, when there's nothing left in the tank.
They're not who you are. They're what happens when you've been someone else's entire world for too long without anyone asking how you're doing.
I don't have a solution for this. I'm not going to tell you to sleep when the baby sleeps or find five minutes for yourself or remember that this is the good stuff.
I'm just sitting in it with you. The 4pm wall. The 3am dark. The counter you can't stand at without someone climbing you like a tree.
You're not disappearing. But it makes sense that it feels that way.
And maybe the question worth sitting with isn't how do I get back to who I was, but who am I becoming, in all of this?
I don't know the answer yet either.
Talk soon,
Tara
CEO of Chaos & Co.