Freedom

I never thought motherhood can be this hard. Sometimes, maybe I’m just lazy or I maybe I’m not meant for hard work. But this is a different kind of hard. With work, you can resign and leave immediately. But with being a wife and a mother, it is entirely different. It’s a different set of commitment. And there different aspects of yourself you’d discover. Moreover, there are things you’d do for your husband and child that you thought you couldn’t do.

For starters, I’m no longer the neat freak- colegiala I was before. When you’ve washed a child’s little butt a thousand times, wiped off snot, saliva and cleaned pee on the floor, everything else is fair game. I’m amused that my husband wouldn’t touch my child’s dripping cold without a handful of wet wipes.

Before my mommyhood days, I was a carefree individual with impromptu getaways with my friends and late night moviedates. I’m also used to having a maid when I was single . So when I got married I was culture shocked. There were moments of desperation then, wondering what happened to my life as I watched the toilet bowl flushing the remnants of yesterday’s dinner . And now, married with one child, with no maid and no monthly income , sometimes I just feel utterly useless, worthless. Maybe my Dad is sometimes wondering where all the college and MBA education he gave me had gone to.

I'm sure he didn’t imagine me to be a full-time housewife. I didn’t either. I thought I would be a more worldly woman, devouring the sights of the world than a housewife washing the dishes. I thought I’d relish my freedom like a full-time bachelorette. Then I realized as time passed that maybe freedom is all in the mind. Maybe being free to do all the things that you want then come home to a cat especially when most of your friends are married with kids, maybe that kind of life will lose its luster over time. I just don’t know. Because right now, I just enjoy momentary bursts of freedom while my child is sleeping and I can write. Maybe I enjoy this freedom more because it is limited. I may be housebound but my imagination is free, in my writing I can run naked in the streets, explore the world in a hot air balloon, fall in love with exotic and dangerous men and climb the highest mountains and explore the deepest oceans.

It is ironic that I had more freedom to write now than before. I don’t know why, maybe because I have finally granted this medium of self-expression to myself. Something I wouldn’t have done before because it’s not practical. And even if my domestic life has restricted me with other forms of freedom, I have finally reclaimed a different one for myself, my writing. It’s something that is mine and mine alone. I can be whoever I want to be, not who anyone dictates me to be. It has also added a different dimension on who I am, more than just a wife and a mother.