Have a Great Vacation
I.
There’s a joke mothers make: mental stability is overrated!
A month at a psych ward sounds like a vacation!
It’s not that mental illness is a laughing matter, but a joke
in bad taste
sometimes feels like the only way to say motherhood
makes a psych ward sound fun.
II.
The gaslighting of men:
How hard can it be
How was your vacation? (maternity leave)
A c-section isn’t really giving birth
Of doctors:
It’s just anxiety
It’s just in your head
You need to calm down
Of the generations that came before:
It was harder for me
You’re ungrateful
You’re not doing it right
Of silence
When you cry out.
III.
When my baby was new I held him to my breast and he cried
and cried
and cried
I couldn’t cry, but it was ok
he cried for us both.
One night, I found myself alone
at the top of the stairs, and an idea like a little bubble of clarity
popped!
in my mind and I thought,
what if I jump down these stairs?
IV.
I heard on TikTok
A pastor (the kind I used to listen to)
say how men biologically have far greater endurance for physical
labor and an impressive ability to cope with extreme stress.
V.
Some time–I don’t know, after the Enlightenment maybe–
after God became Male and White, they plucked the birthing bodies from
their midwives
and their mothers
and their sisters
and their aunts, to lay on sterile hospital tables and they said
when I say go, push for ten.
And then they sent them home with tiny
black holes of need
(the babies)
But! But! But!
The mothers’ own selves were black holes of need.
VI.
I heard on TikTok
A pastor (the kind I used to listen to)
say how men biologically have far greater discernment and rational thinking
making them more capable of leading than women who have less
discernment and rational thinking.
VII.
But I wonder how many men have sat inside a house
with people they have grown in their bodies, and kept those people living
crying
struggling.
While their own minds implode on them.
VIII.
There’s a terrible joke mothers tell and in the way that
all the best jokes have a kernel of truth inside and let us say the
things we can’t say out loud, this joke begins:
a month at a psych ward sounds like a vacation!