@stillbecomingmama: i want to talk about the windows. specifically the dark ones. specifically what you do in the middle of a night feed when your eyes go to the window the way eyes do when they need somewhere to go that is not the ceiling and not the baby and not the inside of your own head. you look at the windows across the street. and they are dark. and the windows three houses down are dark. and the ones past that, as far as you can see from where you are sitting, dark. and you receive this information without deciding to receive it, without choosing to draw the conclusion it is offering, and the conclusion arrives anyway fully formed and certain. everyone is asleep. not just on this street. everywhere. the sleeping world extending outward from your window in every direction until you are the only lit room in an infinite dark and the baby is the reason for the light and the light is the proof of your aloneness. and i did not know until the map that the windows had been lying to me this whole time. not maliciously. windows can only show you what is in front of them. and what was in front of them was the outside of houses, the dark glass, the unremarkable face that houses show the street when the people inside have moved away from the windows to feed their babies in the inner rooms where no light reaches the glass. the light was always in the houses. it was never in the windows. and the map showed me the light that the windows could not. every house with a mom in an inner room with a baby and a light that never reached the glass. they were never dark. we were never alone. #postpartum #newmom #postpartumsupport #momtok #momlife
