Sometimes I Fear I Wasn’t Meant To Be a Mother

Just typing those words leaves me feeling empty and scared.

I know I will be judged for them by the childless, the sanctimommies, and the empty nesters that say with a hand over their heart, “But it goes so fast!”

As I sit on my couch trying to think my own thoughts, three tired children who went to bed way too late last night creep next to me to peer over my shoulder at whatever it is I’m trying to work on, and muster the tiresome words I’m sick of hearing, “I’m bored.”

I groan inside feeling guilt that I should be the one entertaining them while simultaneously feeling resentment that I can’t even focus without interruption long enough to write a sentence. I don’t want to play with the four-year-old who begs me to play with him relentlessly, and I wonder if my personality was really meant for motherhood.

As a young girl, I always pictured myself as a mother. Doing better than my own mother did, of course. Ridiculously, I even pictured myself as a mother of eight children at one point in young adulthood. I felt confident that I would be patient, and never let them eat sugar, and love cooking and taking care of a house. It’s all I wanted, really.

But, as I feel suffocated by the push and pull of motherhood, I wonder if I was meant to do this. If maybe motherhood…