Selfish Days Gone By

I miss being selfish. Those fabulous trips to the bookstore when I would spend two hours perusing the new titles while sipping a Grande-sized coffee drink then eventually leaving with a minimum of $50 worth of shit that I didn’t need. Selfishness is one of those double-edged swords. Our society supposedly looks down on the selfish, yet the most selfish people grace the covers of nearly every publication on the newsstand.

I’m not a selfish person in general. I would go out of my way to help anyone, and my husband bitches at me on a regular basis for donating to various causes. However, when I decided to have a baby, I never thought about the fact that I would be turning in my ability to be selfish. Whether it was the purchase of useless crap at a bookstore, or getting to sleep in until 11:00 am on a Sunday, I was able to do what I wanted. Not anymore!

I learned about the sin of being selfish after becoming a mother from my own mother. When I was in the second grade, I befriended a wonderful kid with a big smile. His name was Christopher and he had two younger sisters. All three kids always looked unkempt from their tattered clothes that never quite fit right and were probably purchased at second-hand stores or garage sales, to the hair that was constantly disheveled. The only reason Chris was popular was because he was nice. As a rule in grade school, if you were a poor kid, you were most certainly unpopular. His mother, on the other hand, was always dressed to the nines. She got her hair done at a salon, walked around in a white, rabbit’s fur jacket and had her nails done weekly. These were the days before Vietnamese nail salons when it was an expensive luxury. My mother always took every opportunity when she saw Chris’ mother in public to trash her to me quietly. She thought it was awful that any woman would outfit herself at the expense of having her kids look like “ragamuffins”. My mother would regularly forego her own wants in favor of using the minimal resources at her disposal for us kids.

Even now, I still apply my mother’s selfless philosophy when it comes to my daughter. She gets everything she needs first, and I don’t feel all that bad about giving up my financial selfishness. Given the unpleasant size of my ass, I would rather buy a cute outfit for her than spend one minute having to try on clothes in front of a cruel and unforgiving tri-fold mirror. I still make the occasional excursion to the bookstore when I find myself ready to take out my entire household, including the dog, execution-style, and the only thing that stops me is the episode of Law & Order I watched the night before. Although I enjoy the latte, but usually leave empty-handed, and that’s okay by me.

What I find myself missing the most is my selfish time. I remember when a plane ride used to be a pleasant and peaceful time when I could catch up on some reading, now it’s Toddler Wrestlemania. The worst part is watching my husband, when he’s not too much of a coward to travel with me and my daughter, sitting in the seat beside me reading and sipping his coffee while I make a guestimate on how many bruises her little Striderites are going to leave on my thighs. Again, I keep that episode of Law & Order in mind. I miss sitting down at a restaurant, of my choice, with a cartoon character nowhere in sight, and having a leisurely meal. Morning sex has now become one of those memories from my former life as a childless, sexy woman when I would rock my husband’s world before fixing breakfast. Now we lay there like lumps, both slightly awake when my daughter calls for us from her crib, eventually one of us gives in and walks down the hall to get her. We bring her back to our room, putting her down in the middle of our king-sized bed where we lay fully clothed. She watches Noggin and sucks down a bottle, kicking me in the side with her foot and slapping Jeff in the head with her stuffed bear, while we scramble for a few more minutes of precious sleep.

In burying my selfishness, I’ve also had to let go of the fact that I can no longer exist as a single entity anymore. I am now the mother and wife in a family. I can’t just quit my job, break up with my boyfriend, move to Europe and backpack around living off my wits and charm. Despite the fact that I would never throw that much caution to the wind, in the back of my mind there was a wonderful comfort in knowing that I could. If I wanted to, I could be 100% selfish just leave everything behind and go off on my own. I can’t do that now, and sometimes I find myself wondering why I didn’t do that when I had the chance. I sit around questioning whether my life would have been better had I kept myself solo, and if I would be doing something more exciting with my days than changing diapers and fixing dinner.

In my yearning for the loss of my selfishness, like thunder erupting in my brain, my subconscious reminds me of my lonely life prior to Jeff and Rachael. When I would sleep alone in bed at night wanting desperately to feel another body laying beside me or watching women snuggling their chubby, little babies wishing I had someone cute to call me “mommy”. The fact that life seems to be one big series of trade-offs is such a hard realization to come to. You read all of the time about those budding actors or musicians who suddenly become famous, and end up nearly suicidal, because no one ever told them that there was going to be a downside.

For now, 99% of the time, I’m cool with foregoing my selfishness, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have to long for it, especially when I’m trying to cop a squat in the bathroom and there’s a toddler sitting on my lap unrolling the entire roll of toilet paper.