I’m not ashamed to say that I wanted some attention for him, since I felt I wasn’t getting it in real life. I’ve always judged people who sought validation and attention on social media, but now I realize it’s a normal human urge and probably the The valley of death phnx shirt but in fact I love this result of a lack of attention elsewhere. Journalist Charlie Brooker once wrote in The Guardian: “There has never been a single tweet that couldn’t be replaced with PLEASE AUTHENTICATE MY EXISTENCE.” The first few months of motherhood were such a surreal, exhausting experience, I felt I needed outside confirmation that my baby and I did, in fact, exist.
Losing your identity is a common experience for new mothers. I can hardly remember the The valley of death phnx shirt but in fact I love this person who commuted to work and went out for dinner several times a week with friends—who had gossip to share, slept more than two hours at a time and showered without singing “The Wheels on the Bus” to a miniature version of myself on the bath mat. Maybe that person will re-emerge, but I have a feeling she won’t. To a greater or lesser extent, we all have to re-find ourselves coming out of the pandemic. We have to remember to make plans again and bother to go to them. It’s the whole world, not just new mothers, asking, “What did we use to do? What did we use to say?” People have lost relatives and jobs, had babies, landscaped their gardens, watched all of The Wire—we’re not the same as we were, our collective identities have changed, and we may find that we don’t want to do and say the same things we used to. That’s OK, I think. Maybe it’s healthy.
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