The hardest part is the starting. Starting to write entails that you believe that what you have to say is important enough for people to read and engage. You want to start conversations. But you’ve never been that great at self-promotion or putting yourself out there in general, I mean, unless you were really wasted.
So the hardest part is always the starting.
The first I’m sorry, the first person to dance at a party, the first time you hold a baby, the first to ask a beautiful face out. The hardest. The first blog post after a long time of not writing publicly, after realizing the other blog you started a long time ago was popular but not really you. You wrote about anal sex and then everyone thought you’re like this sex queen when really you’re just insecure and depressed so much so that you couldn’t even think about sex without first a few drinks with your eyes closed hard.
Then you start to get to know a guy a good guy and one day, out of the blue, you ask him if he wants to have a baby. You don't know what you're doing and neither does he but it turns out to be the best decision you've ever been impulsive enough to make. Then, well shit. BAM. You're pregnant and after lots of thinking and arguing and second-guessing and finally just knowing, you decide to have a baby. Then your hormones go batshitcrazy and make you more insane than you'd ever been and you make another decision, to love your baby/your body and so you start taking antidepressants. Something your depressed ass should've done a long time ago.
You give birth and dios santo el dolor. But as soon as it's over, it's over and you have a slippery little fuzzy baby in your trembling arms and it's a girl. Tu nena. And suddenly this newborn has six teeth, crawls with a toy in her mouth so she looks like a puppy and is no longer a newborn but eleven full months old. And you can’t wait to make her a healthy birthday cake to mark the first year of what you hope with be a long, important and challenging life. She dances to Aretha Franklin and falls asleep with your nipple in her mouth. Your stomach still has the long dark line that divided your pregnant belly in half, only thing not that dark anymore and now it ends before it runs into the soft mound of pubic hair.
And you’re happy.
And you and your good man drive to the beach in your 2001 Honda Civic with the broken AC and the dented fender. Baby is in the car seat and you're listening to eighties dance music and eating platanutres and the sun 'ta violento. You and your good man talk about having a big family even though so many mouths to feed means so much money that you still don’t have. But oh the love inside of you. To kiss those mouths and see them stretch into their first smiles.
This new love that you feel challenges you to be a better person. To brush your teeth every night even though sometimes you're so exhausted you can feel it in your fucking fingernails. To stop screaming when your mad. To call your mother every week. To make the world a better place, even though that sounds really naive and just writing it made you get MJ's "Heal the World" stuck in your head. Because now that you are a parent, everything is different. War is different. Airstrikes that blow up entire families into thousands of bloody unidentifiable pieces are different because now war is not just a series of generally fucked up situations, these are not just civilian casualties but the children of many mothers who now weep loudly into their empty hands. You are more anti-war now than you have ever been because as you look into your daughter's eyes as she crawls towards your open arms, for a moment you are the mother who remembers her own child doing just this, years ago when he was warm and alive.
Racism is different; being colonized has a sharper edge, makes you clench your jaw a little tighter when you're children are also colonized. Sexism, homophobia, gender and feminism are different, especially (especially) as the mother of a little girl in a country so hot you want to run around half naked but every time you go out you feel the stares of the men you pass stick to your sweaty skin like mosquitoes. That skin that burns a little hotter.
You see everything now as a mother. And so you write about it. Aunque 'ta fuerte. Even though the baby is biting the hem of your shorts because she’s tired and wants you to put her down for a nap. Even though she may or may not just have swallowed a chunk of banana that’s been on the floor since breakfast time and you should probably like sweep or mop or something. But you write because you want to start conversations with other parents, with other women, with men, with those who don’t have kids, with activists, and other writers.
This is not a parenting blog. This is an invitation to talk about the real shit that is happening in this world in which we raise the next generation. It's an invitation to talk about your shit since I will certainly be talking about mine because being a parent has also challenged me to confront my own shortcomings. I think it's important that our children know that we don't have everything figured out, that we're still working on ourselves, and that it's more than okay; this evolution and evaluation is necessary.
I sincerely hope you join the conversation and spread the word. There is a lot of healing to be done in the name of our children. Thank you. Peace.
