When you want to just walk out the door: Mourning your old life

Author’s Note: I have been sitting on this blog entry for a while now (about a month). I wrote it back when Zoe was three months old, and things were getting tricky. I didn’t post it due to time and also a bit of apprehension- I didn’t want people to think I was winging or ungrateful. Things have since gotten a bit easier with Zoe, and I felt that even though for the most part I am coping, I still have days where what I have written below is very much true. I spoke to a few other women about it, my mum, my sister, and a few other mother’s I know, and I felt that this post needed to be published. All of the women that I spoke to said that they felt the same at some point in their motherhood, and that the issue isn’t spoken about enough. So I decided that I would post this up, to be a public (if not small) voice on the issue.

Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s Househas always been one of my most favourite plays. Ever since reading the Naturalism performance in high school it has always resonated with me. For those who are unaware of the plot I’ll do a little summary.

Set around Christmas time in a Norwegan town in the late 1800’s, Nora is an affluent housewife and mother of three young children. Throughout the play she is depicted as naïve, airy-fairy, childish and vapid. Her husband, Torvald, is a newly promoted bank manager who recently had been under a lot of stress. So much stress, that the doctor prescribed a holiday to improve his health. Watching her husband suffering, Nora, unbeknownst to Torvald, decides to take out a loan from the bank (a biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig no-no back then!) so they are able to go on holiday to help heal Torvald. Once back from holidays, little by little, Nora secretly starts paying back the loan by using the pocket money she is given by Torvald each week. She only has a little left to repay, when one day, Torvald comes home and, through describing his day, reveals to Nora that he has had to fire one of his workers, Krogstad. Krogstad, however, is the worker who approved Nora’s loan. Krogstad then proceeds to blackmail Nora, claiming if she does convince her husband to re-employ him, he will tell her husband of the loan and secret. Long story short, the loan is revealed and Torvald loses his shit.

When Torvald finds out about Nora’s deception, he basically goes ballistic. He calls her a dishonest and immoral woman, saying she’s unfit to raise their children. He basically says he doesn’t love her anymore, and that their marriage will only be for appearance’s sake. Though a very quick turn of events, Torvald is informed that Krogstad takes back what he has done, and therefore there is no need to be mad with Nora anymore. Exuberant, Torvald tries to put it all behind them, chalking it up to Nora’s feminine foolishness, but the damage has been done. Sick of being treated as a child, disgusted with the way her husband has spoken to her, realising that her husband loves himself more than her and frustrated that he could not see what Nora did to save him, she finally snaps. She has a wonderful monologue about how she is not a little doll, a little play thing to amuse him, and that she cannot live in the same house as a man who fails to see her as a human being. She gets up, leaves her wedding ring on the table, and walks out the door, leaving her husband and three children behind.

Stef Smith’s modern adaptation, Nora: A Doll’s House, which premiered in March 2019 at Tramway in Glasgow.

Even though Ibsen never intended the play to be a feminist classic, it has been loved by many feminists all over the world for the clear message of female oppression throughout it. The sound of the door slamming shut at the end of the play is something that has resonated and echoed with women all over the world. When I was younger, the image of Nora walking out the door had more to do with a woman breaking off the shackles of her oppression and finally having the courage and will to start a life of her own. But the question always was, how could she bear to leave her children? Throughout the play she expresses so much love for them, yet she leaves without saying goodbye.

And now I get it. How many times these last three months I have wanted to walk out our front door. Just open the door, walk down the street and not come back. And it is not because things are bad at home. On the contrary, things are great. I am lucky enough to have an amazingly supportive husband who is nothing like Torvald. But when you’re holding your child, who is screaming the house down for no apparent reason, that door looks so enticing. To just walk through it, back to your old life, where you weren’t up at 4am changing nappies, when you weren’t covered in puke, when you didn’t have to schedule your life around 45 minute naps. The reason I say this is because I cannot be the only woman who feels, or has ever felt, this way. And we are made to feel very guilty about it. How dare we want the comfort and familiarity and freedom of our old lives when we have a baby whom we love and needs us?

Don’t get me wrong- I adoremy daughter. She is the absolute light of my life, and I would never in a million years ever leave her for anything. For all intents and purposes, she is a pretty chill baby and I am very lucky to have a baby who just goes with the flow as she does; I wouldn’t say that she is “hard”. But what I would say is that “hard” is not the right word. Raising her is not hard. Raising her is time consuming. Raising her is tiring. Raising her is frustrating. Raising her is isolating. Hard suggests that it is something I cannot do- like rocket science. But I can raise her, there is just never, ever, a break from it (as all parents would know). When the only break you have is sleep, can you be blamed for wanting to walk out the door- back to a life where you could go where you wanted when you wanted without having to really think about it.

Nobody ever really discusses the issue around mourning your former life, and that’s what I wanted to do here in this article. We are made to believe that with children our lives will be more fulfilled and we reach a lever of higher being, and at times I feel that. But there are many many times where I don’t. There are many times where I feel like my life is so much more difficult and complicated now I have a baby, and wouldn’t it be great to just not have kids? And we are allowed to wish we didn’t have kids sometimes, we are allowed to wish for the stability of our former life. Because what we are reallywishing for is the comfort of familiarity and the routine we had before kids. It does not mean we don’t want or love our children, and it does not mean we are “bad mothers”- it just means we are human and sometimes we want what we can’t have, and sometimes we look at the past with rose-coloured glasses.

We all know that it will not be like this forever- the light at the end of the tunnel gets larger and larger as we get closer to more freedoms where our children can join us along the way. But we are allowed to mourn what was, so we can move onto a happier “what will be”. I think that not allowing mothers to mourn their past lives is a big contributor to post-partum depression for a lot of women. Not many people tell you that it’s OKAY to feel like you want to leave and never some back. Most people say is “enjoy this time you’ll never get it back” or at the very least “we’ve all been there”. I feel like this is a conversation that needs to be less taboo (just because you feel like leaving, doesn’t mean you will) and spoken about more openly. Perhaps that will help more women and new mothers find their voice and not be afraid to speak up about missing their past lives, their past relationship, their past selves. It will also help alleviate a lot of the mum guilt I think! Just because we are now mothers does not mean that is ALL we are. We are still the same person we were, and at times it hard to remember that. Your identify gets lost and morphed into this mould that society has created as to what a “good mother” should be. Even though that front door can be very enticing some days, it’s important to remember that it’s okay to acknowledge that feeling of wanting to leave, and then allow it to pass. Do not feel guilty for missing the ease of the life you used to have.

For people seeking help out there with how they are feeling, but don't feel the need to reach out to institutions like PANDA and Beyond Blue, I have found the following helpful for me. The instagram @_happyasamother has fantastic infographics that have helped ground me while mindlessly scrolling in order to escape.

Additionally these links on Matrescence and what it means to be a new mum by medium.com are excellent reads!

Love, The Feminist Mum