Enough.

I’m trying to find ways to be more authentic.  For my whole life, I’ve had the sense that it isn’t good enough to be myself - or at least, not just myself.  I have to be more.  More interesting, more brilliant, more witty, more pretty, more outgoing, more ambitious, more articulate, more confident, more ruthless.  Less interested in silly things like flowers and stationery and Pinterest and baby clothes and more interested in things like The Future of Digital and Leaning In and How Women Can Get Ahead At Work.

I kept myself awake one night a few weeks before Mila was born, worrying about waiting lists and lead times for full-time infant daycare.  I thought about my sweet little girl, sleeping innocently in my belly - and about how within a few short months she’d be unceremoniously expelled from her safe haven and deposited at some daycare with a 1:3 caretaker ratio, never to see me except on weekends and for a few hours on weekdays, while I went off to Lean In.  And I fucking lost my shit.

Losing Mila broke something in me.  I don’t think I can keep living like that, trying to project something that’s not quite me.  It’s hard enough being someone who carries around the memory of her baby daughter; who is trying to take care of and grow her family; who really just likes flowers, stationery, Pinterest, and baby clothes.  That is enough.  I’m not sure who I was trying to prove something to in the first place, but I feel less and less like I have to prove it.  I know that there are things that I have to do, as a person who lives in the world and pays rent and feeds herself.  But I’m making an effort to recognize that they are secondary, and I am trying to limit my emotional and temporal investment accordingly.  I have to save up for the important things.