Forward.
Back.
Forward.
Back.
My body knew the movement without thought.
I remember looking into the darkness and thinking, This is a hard season.
I had probably repeated that phrase hundreds of times.
But that night another thought pushed through it.
Fuck.
Is this what the rest of my life is going to be like?
The thought terrified me because it felt less like complaining and more like seeing a door close.
Before becoming a parent, difficult situations always contained some form of exit.
I could leave a room.
End a relationship.
Quit something.
Change plans.
Sleep after a terrible week.
Parenthood was different.
I could not stop being her mother because I was overwhelmed by being her mother.
There was no ethical escape hatch from the responsibility itself.
I loved the person who needed me, and that love was exactly why I would keep answering the cries even when every part of me wanted to disappear into silence.
That was the night regret appeared.
I did not announce it.
I barely admitted it to myself.
Regret felt forbidden because people often treat it as evidence that love is absent.
But my experience was the opposite.
I kept caring for her because I loved her.
I regretted what parenthood was doing to me because I was still a person inside the role.
I missed sleep in a way that felt physical.
I missed stillness.
I missed having a nervous system that did not belong to somebody else’s needs.
I missed the person who could make plans without silently calculating when the next crisis might begin.
Most of all, I missed the assumption that my body was my own place to live.
For that first year, it felt more like a watchtower.
Always listening.
Always anticipating.
Always braced.
Then, gradually, my daughter changed.
Around the time she reached a year old, the screaming that had dominated our life began easing.
She slept more.
The impossible nights became less frequent.
The amount of energy required to get through one ordinary day began to decrease.
The future everyone had promised finally arrived.
It got better.
I expected relief to feel like a switch.
Instead it arrived unevenly.
One part of me could see clearly that conditions had improved.
Another part continued behaving as if the worst night might begin again at any moment.
A sudden cry still sent a shock through me.
Bedtime still carried tension.
Noise could make my heart accelerate before I had consciously evaluated it.
If she woke unexpectedly, I could feel the old dread rise with astonishing speed.
My mind knew she was older.
My body remembered being awake twenty times.
That gap between knowledge and reaction followed me as she grew.
At two, she was not the baby from those nights.
