Unlike Me

Life with children is living with the greatest love. When we were trying to adopt a child, it seemed to take years to reach the adoption council after being taken from the court to the police station where we were fingerprinted, then taken to the doctors for checkups. Dear God, were biological parents also tested this much? The psychologist bombarded me with questions for as long as I could remember. Each time we returned home, we were even more heartbroken than before. I wanted to say that we all experience heartache; if our grief were to be exposed, it would make a sea of tears flow because the hardships can be followed by the beauties of motherhood.

I couldn’t have felt more right as I carried my baby in my arms for the first time. The first night we slept with our little baby, there was a strange fear and anxiety; we put him in our bed, and I kept looking at him until the morning. Was he breathing? I kept telling him not to be thirsty, not to be hungry; how anxious I was. I didn’t sleep until morning. 

Motherhood, even with all its difficulties, brought a joy that can only be described as sweet and lovely. In fact, I quit my job to be with my son more. There was always work, and I could go back to work in two years. But children grow up very quickly and change every moment, from their appearance to their speech and games.

I am a mother. No one forced me to be a mother… I know the meaning of sleepless nights: to learn to hide the pain behind the volume of silence that is sometimes called self-sacrifice. Knowing that my child is smiling can be the miracle of my life. To me, nothing mattered: not heaven, earth, or sky. To me, my child’s laughter sounded like music. My family was all I needed despite the world’s noise. My days, hours, and seconds were spent holding onto the memories of my childhood as I moulded the future of mankind.