Skinless

Two weeks ago, when you hit the six-month mark, I wished you a happy birthday on Facebook. I thought about celebrating with a post about the mammoth accomplishment that has been nursing you. Over the couple of years I've been on Facebook, I've seen posts about all sorts of celebratory things: weight loss, wedding anniversaries, ultrasounds, healthy babies. Every single one of those things is bound to be a struggle for someone reading them - someone's got a friend who is 50 pounds overweight, someone who has recently been divorced, someone who can't carry a baby to term or has a child with health problems. I wouldn't be angry or feel judged by someone who lost weight, but being a mother's not like that.

Being a mother, at least being a new mother (I can only hope this fades somewhat), is like having no skin. Skin is an intermediary for nerves, a big down comforter that strips the experiences of the world down to a manageable level. Skin softens the sensory overload of the world to a tolerable point. But now I find myself walking around with no skin, and even the gentlest, most well-intentioned "touches" from contact with other people burn like fire. Even the most commonplace interactions can suddenly leave me feeling flayed open, internally wide-eyed at the rapid delivery of distress and panic and inadequacy, like having a house dropped on me out of a clear blue conversational sky.

Speaking to me now, at least in an ideal way, would probably be akin to speaking to a wild animal or a mental patient. It's best to make no sudden movements, to speak softly and slowly and roll the weight of every word around before dispensing it. Sometimes, all of a sudden, language seems awash with vast gulfs of meaning, and instead of standing on a secure shoreline with gentle waves, I find myself miles from anything solid, casting about, sucked into the trough between "Is she..." and "Isn't she...." "Is she..." implies hope and future and growth and potential, while "Isn't she..." seems filled with recrimination and criticism and uncertainty. "Is she..." means she will, but "Isn't she..." means she should be by now.

Initially, I was sure this was the fault of other people (and I still make regular vows to myself about the kinds of things I'll say to new mothers), but I think some people are just more firmly anchored, so moored to their secure sense of being right and doing right that there aren't places between the words for them to fall. I realize now it's a testament to my carefully constructed facade, to my years of studying how best to approximate normal, that someone can look at me and see a confident sailor, at the helm of a steady little craft skimming across smooth water instead of a small vessel floundering in dark, rough seas, struggling to find keel, to keep from taking on water.

At one time, I would have been sure this was my curse, comfortable with the sharp irony that my talent was my undoing, but now, I just wonder if maybe, just maybe, they might be right and I might be wrong. Could my understanding of myself possibly be so skewed? There's irony in that as well, I suppose. Perhaps, like the Velveteen Rabbit, after years of being pretend, I've finally been made Real, and somehow I'm the only one who doesn't know it yet.