The Parts of Me I Put on Pause by Oladoyin Amoo

I have forgotten my earrings more times than I care to admit.

Sometimes I get to work and only then realise I rushed out without doing my hair properly. At this point, I’ve resorted to wearing turbans.

One morning, I got to work and the security man pointed out that I had nothing on my head and that my hair was rough. He said something I’d rather not repeat, but I was embarrassed enough to just rock it and pretend I had planned the whole thing.

The funny thing is, I wasn’t always like this.

Before motherhood, I had time.

Not necessarily an exciting social life. Not weekends packed with parties or endless plans. I simply had time that belonged to me.

I could take my time getting dressed. I could make my hair. I could put on earrings and actually remember them. I could watch a movie from beginning to end. I could sleep. I could take myself out. I could take a course because I wanted to learn something new and actually have a chance of finishing it. I could just lie down and do nothing.

I didn’t realise how valuable that was until it disappeared.

Now, my mornings have a different priority. Before I think about whether I look put together, I’m thinking about what my baby needs — what she’ll eat, what she needs for daycare, whether everything is packed and whether I’ve forgotten something.

And somehow, by the time I’ve taken care of all of that, I have forgotten myself.

I don’t mean that I stopped caring about myself. Somewhere between motherhood, work and everything else that needs to get done, my own needs became the easiest things to postpone.

“I’ll do my hair next week.”

“I’ll take that course when things settle down.”

“I’ll watch that series later.”

“I’ll rest this weekend.”

Except later doesn’t seem to come.

Work takes my week. Eniola takes my weekends.

And the little pockets of time I used to have at night disappeared somewhere between exhaustion and trying to get through the next day.

My beloved series are now a distant memory.  Movies? Where?

I can barely watch anything on my phone without a little person screaming, grabbing it or deciding that the laptop is suddenly the most interesting thing in the entire house.

Sometimes I laugh about it. Sometimes I genuinely want to cry.

Because I don’t just miss watching movies. I miss having the freedom to do something simply because I wanted to.

That’s the part I didn’t expect to miss so much.

I miss quiet. I miss peaceful weekends where I could rest, do my chores slowly and not feel like I was racing against someone else’s needs. I miss sleeping properly. I miss having enough space in my head to think about myself.

I still have things I want for myself. I want to learn new things. I want to grow. I want to improve myself. I want to become better at what I do and create more opportunities for myself.

The ambition didn’t disappear. The time did.

And that has been one of the hardest things for me to explain. Sometimes I wonder how I’m supposed to do everything I want to do when I barely have enough time to recover from everything I’m already doing.

There are days when work needs more from me, including weekends, and I simply don’t have someone to help me with my daughter. That’s one of the things I’ve struggled with since becoming a mother.

I want to show up at work. I want to be dependable. I want to earn more. I want to grow. And I also have a child who needs me.

Sometimes it genuinely feels like both lives are asking for the same piece of me.

I know I’m lucky to have people around me who support me. But support doesn’t always mean having someone who can simply step in whenever you need them. Sometimes you’re still the person who has to figure it out, and sometimes there is no solution that makes everybody happy.

Motherhood has taught me that I can love my child completely and still miss parts of the life I had before her.

Sometimes, I want parts of my old life back.

There. I said it.

I want the sleep. I want the quiet. I want the weekends. I want to make my hair without calculating how much time I have. I want to dress nicely for work and remember my earrings. I want to watch a series and actually finish it. I want to take a course and stick with it until the end. I want to have time to learn, grow and pursue the things that matter to me.

And none of that means I want my daughter any less.

I don’t want to go back to a life without her. I just miss having more of myself in my own life.

It doesn’t mean I am ungrateful. It just means that I am still a person outside of being a mother.

Maybe that’s the part of myself I’ve been putting on pause.

Not my ambitions. Not my personality. Not even the woman I used to be.

Just me.

The woman who wants to take her time getting dressed. The woman who wants to learn something new. The woman who wants to rest. The woman who wants to grow and still have dreams that belong to her. The woman who sometimes just wants to lie down and watch nonsense on Netflix without anybody needing anything from her.

I’m not trying to become the woman I was before motherhood. That woman had her own life, and I’m building a different one now.

But I don’t want to disappear completely inside this new life either.

I love being a mother.

I just want to remember that I’m also me.

And maybe, for now, that’s the part of myself I’m ready to put back on the list.