I never expected motherhood to cost me myself

I don’t talk about this out loud because mothers aren’t supposed to think like this. We’re supposed to glow, to adore, to overflow with some maternal instinct that magically fixes everything. But I don’t glow. I survive. And most days I feel like I’m doing motherhood the wrong way, even when I’m trying my hardest.

I love her. God, I love her so much it hurts in places I didn’t know could hurt. But there’s this version of me that came with motherhood, and I don’t recognise her. She’s tired, she’s stretched thin, she’s always needed, always interrupted, always responsible. She’s never enough and always too much at the same time. I don’t hate her, but I miss the woman who existed before her.

Sometimes I stare at my daughter while she sleeps and I feel the guilt before I even have the thought. The guilt for wanting silence. The guilt for wanting to disappear for a day. The guilt for dreaming about a life where I don’t have to be strong every second of the day. The guilt for wanting something that’s mine that isn’t motherhood.

No one tells you how lonely it is. Not the kind of loneliness you feel when you’re alone, but the kind that hits when you’re surrounded by people who need you but don’t see you. She sees me as “mum”. He sees me as “the one who holds everything together”. The world sees me as someone who’s supposed to cope. I don’t think anyone sees me as a woman anymore.

And the thing that scares me most is the fear that my daughter will one day grow up and feel exactly how I’m feeling now. That she’ll disappear inside a role that’s heavier than she expected. That she’ll forget who she is in the process of loving everyone else.

I want to teach her to choose herself. To not shrink. To not apologise for wanting space or ambition or peace. But how do I teach her that when I haven’t learned it myself yet.

I don’t regret becoming a mother. I regret losing myself in the parts of it no one warned me about. And maybe one day I’ll find my way back to the woman I was before her. Or maybe the truth is simpler. Maybe I have to become someone new instead.

Someone she can look at one day and think she didn’t break even when she wanted to.