ConfessionsAnonymous

11 Sept 3 min read

I Sometimes Wish She Wasn't Mine

She wasn't always this loud in my head, the wish that keeps returning whenever the storm passes. My daughter is eight, and she is autistic, and when the meltdowns come, they come with her whole body — hitting, kicking, biting whatever part of me is closest. In those minutes, I won't lie to you, love feels very far away. What's close is pain, both the kind on my skin and the kind underneath it. I remember the first time I caught myself thinking it: someone else should be doing this. Not me. Let another person carry this weight, because surely they'd have more patience, more strength, more of whatever it is I feel like I'm running out of. The thought came and went so fast I almost convinced myself I hadn't really thought it. But it came back. It kept coming back. Here in Nigeria, nobody prepares you for a child like mine. Aunties will tell you it's spiritual. Neighbours will tell you it's stubbornness that a good beating would cure. Even people who mean well will ask, "Is she still like that?" as if there's a version of her I'm hiding somewhere, waiting to arrive. So when the bruises show up on my arms after a hard afternoon, I don't always explain them. Who would understand that the child who left them is the same child I would still walk through fire for? Both things are true at once, and that's the part nobody warns you about — the guilt that follows the wish, quick and sharp, like it's punishing me for even thinking it. Because after the meltdown ends, when her small body finally goes still and her breathing slows, something in me softens too. I look at her and I see exhaustion, not malice. She isn't trying to hurt me. Her body is doing something her mind can't yet control, and mine is doing something similar — reaching for resentment before it reaches for compassion. I've learned not to trust the wish as truth. It's a symptom of tired, not a verdict on my love. Some days I say it out loud to nobody in particular, just to release the pressure: "I wish this wasn't mine to carry." And then I go back inside and make her favourite food, because wishing and loving are not opposites, no matter what shame tries to tell me. I think of other mothers I've met online, in quiet groups where nobody uses their real name. One woman said something that stayed with me: "I love my son and I am also allowed to be tired of loving him so hard." That sentence gave me permission I didn't know I needed. There is no certificate for this kind of parenting, no WAEC exam you pass to prove you're doing it right. There's only today, and getting through today, and maybe tomorrow being a little easier or a little harder, you never know until it comes. If you're a parent carrying something like this, hear me: the wish that someone else had this responsibility does not make you a bad mother. It makes you human, stretched thin by love that asks more of you than you knew you had. I am still here. Bruised sometimes, tired often, but still here — because underneath every hard moment is a child who needs exactly the mother she has, wishes and all.