When We Can’t Afford The Long Haul
It’s not a character flaw
I’m a 28-year-old single mother on welfare. My kid is turning three soon and a spot in kindergarten is nowhere in sight.
In Germany, this is just the way it is, and has been for years: if parents don’t bust their asses leeching up to twenty different facilities when or even before the child is born, they can basically kiss all hopes of preschool goodbye.
I knew this. At least, I was aware. But I didn’t do what they said I should. I thought I’d rely on my previous “experience” in “just kinda winging it when the time comes”.
Obviously, this hasn’t been working too well.
Two years ago, I moved back in with my father. With my then-boyfriend and our then-nine-month-old baby.
Living in Berlin, where I had spent the previous seven years, had turned out to be unfeasible for me soon after I gave birth. My tiny apartment left both of us running on a tank of negative energy. We were poison to each other, yet we couldn’t break free of our newly established prison cave.
I had spent two months before moving at my senile grandmother’s house with her caretaker, my dad and frequent visits from my mother. Two weeks had been planned, a little break from the deafening monotony of new and lonely motherhood.
After a mere two days, I realized I was breathing in a way I hadn’t since my son came out of my body a few months prior: there were people around that cared.
I took somewhat regular showers — alone. Sometimes, I ate — without a baby sucking on my breasts. I took walks — in the woods. When I needed a minute alone, someone would play with the baby — without telling me to hurry up or making exasperated sounds.
I felt supported.
So I stayed, as long they would have me.
When my father mentioned that it might be a good option for us to move into his newly renovated attic “temporarily”, I pounced on the idea. I saw no other option to go forward without succumbing to psychosis.
And suddenly, we were here.
But something strange happened: our situation didn’t improve. I wasn’t breathing easier. If anything, I was having an even harder time catching my breath. There were more people implicated in our little family soap opera now. A larger household to keep. My boyfriend was depressed, at least that was his excuse for still being jobless after three months in this new place.
By now, I believe him. But back then, it was so fucking hard. I was breaking my back every day taking care of a baby non-stop, breastfeeding, cooking for five, cleaning — doing everything in my power to prove we weren’t a burden in my father’s place, we weren’t being rescued by daddy, no, no, we were grown-ups, after all… My boyfriend spent his days on the couch.
I knew it was high time I look for childcare. But my head was so full of worry and drama, so tired from just getting through one day and then the next, that when I had twenty minutes to myself, I either sat and stared at the wall or poured my bitterness at the situation and everyone around me into my journal.
It was only when I’d finally had it, when I breathed out the fire that had been building in me for so long, kicking him out, that I began drawing real breaths.
Fast forward one point five years. While my internal life has experienced massive upheaval, nothing about my external circumstances has changed:
- I still live in my dad’s attic.
- I still don’t have daycare for my son.
- Ergo, I don’t have a job.
- So I don’t have income.
- And no money to move into a place of my own.
I spent the past two years powering through mornings and afternoons — or barely making it through without sustaining major head injuries — working towards naptime and bedtime.
Then, I would either chip away at the foundations of something resembling a career, or recuperate from my day with the toddler and prepare for the night of ceaseless nursing ahead.
The reason my son still isn’t in daycare is this: every time I “finally” gathered the energy to take care of that one, looming, always-present issue, I treated it as an emergency. Because it was.
So, instead of putting in steady energy to unlock the goal of having half the day to work sometime in the future, I bustled with desperation in spurts of two or three days whenever I hit yet another “point of no return” in caring for my son all alone.
Over the past year, since I first actively began looking for daycare with urgency, for now, I learned a grim lesson: So many times, when we think we’re taking a shortcut, we’re lengthening the journey immeasurably.
Had I started looking last year for this year in the first place, I probably would have daycare now.
Probably since August. Probably, I would have a job now. Probably since last month. Probably, I would have my first paycheck by now.
And probably, I would be apartment hunting.
But what I realized now is much more important than doing things “right”, a.k.a. for the long haul — as I knew from the start I should have, but couldn’t muster the willpower to do.
I realize now that back then, I didn’t have the capacity to think forward two years and actively plan towards that place.
I had no space in my brain for matters of the future. I couldn’t even plan two months ahead.
My mind was completely hijacked by the drama of my everyday, exhausted from masking undiagnosed autism for over two decades and trying and failing to live up to societal expectations of being a functional adult.
So, expecting Past Me to live up to the knowledge I now have, in the space I have now shoveled free in my mind, to that trope of the determined entrepreneur putting in hours of pure resolve day after day for years without hope of short or even middle-term success … is being unbelievably unkind to the desperate mom of — let’s face it — two kids I was two years ago.
It’s not useful to tell myself I should have thought and planned long-term when I know I couldn’t have: I was close to bursting every minute of every day.
Now, though— I’m it for the long haul. I’ve learned my lesson. I’m even somewhat glad my dream of uninterrupted daily time to myself hasn’t come true yet. What has happened in the meantime and how I’ve grown makes it completely worthwhile. Worth all the discomfort, the frustration, the repeated defeatedness.
I know I’m making progress, whether it’s apparent on the surface or not. I had a few false starts, but still, I observed my way into a truly trusting, positive and joy-finding mindset.
So that’s where I’m starting, now: with trust. With a new sense of peace. Sans addiction to those daily doses of drama. Fostering tranquility and faith.
I’ve made it through till here, three years of mothering this child almost single-handedly. So even if a few more months or (gulp) a full year still feel like a slap in the face, I know I can do it.
I kindly asked the kid’s father to help with the search for a spot in kindergarten. I applied to all fifteen preschools in the area. I made a handy spreadsheet to track our progress. I said goodbye to all hopes of a random stranger making something happen to lift me out of my misery.
I’m choosing to put my spare energy into making use of my past instead of mourning it, instead of kicking it in the shins.
I’m choosing love.
Before you commit to a long-term project, forgive your past self for not doing it sooner. You were younger. You lacked experience. Your mind was full.
Be kind to yourself. Have compassion.
You were doing the best you could — maybe that’s why you couldn’t see it.
