Quantifying Love

I have known my husband since I was 15, and for 15 years, until age 30, I believed I loved him more deeply, more desperately than I could ever love anyone else and more passionately than I ever had loved anyone else in my life. My love for him defined me, guided me, and informed my behavior, my decisions, and my dreams.

And then Lizzy was born.

In one of the first letters I ever wrote to Lizzy, I tried to describe to her how her birth had completely shattered and rebuilt my definition of love. In growing up, we tell children that they will understand the concept of falling in love when it happens to them and not before. How much more so must we now tell young women that they will understand the concept of love when they give birth and not before?

The weeks after Lizzy’s birth were marked with a euphoria I can barely describe. I was so blazingly, insanely in love with my baby that I could not keep a smile off of my face. She brought me to levels of wonder and delight that were beyond anything I had ever experienced.

Each new phase of development, each new behavior that Lizzy displayed brought me such joy. I took countless pictures. I could not wait to do all of the things with her that I had dreamed for so long of doing with the children I had one day hoped to have. But I told myself over and over to appreciate and rest in the beauty of each stage of Lizzy’s development, to not take it for granted, because every part of her life was beautiful. I believed there would be time enough to do all of the things with her that I dreamed.

And how that child made me dream. Lizzy’s birth, her sheer presence on this planet, made me believe that together, we could do anything, be anything, and accomplish any dream. Thereby, my dreams grew and evolved, without limitation, because I knew that since she was here, anything was now possible; together, we were unstoppable.

When Lizzy was three months old, I remember remarking to my husband that all of the fear and insecurity I had previously felt when dealing with my peers or during general social interaction seemed to have evaporated with Lizzy’s birth. That in becoming a mother, in being so intimately hers and having her be so intimately mine, I had developed a self-possession, a self-acceptance, and a resting in myself that I had been searching for since adolescence. I believed that Lizzy had given me myself more fully than anyone else in my life, and that through being her mother, I had found my identity–that she had finally made me into the person I was born to be… and that she had done this effortlessly.

But it wasn’t just becoming a mother that had made me into the person I was always meant to be. It was being her mother. There was so much pride, so much delight, so much wonder that this remarkable, luminous little miracle of a person had chosen me.

Bonding with Lizzy required little intention or effort; we were both helpless to the bond that we developed. And yes, we breastfed and co-slept and did all of the things to increase bonding. But how I love Lizzy is because of how deeply Lizzy she is, and not just because of the concrete things we did to ensure that we would love one another.

And so now, when I speak about how I loved my husband, or how I love my family, the reality of the way that I love is that my love for them is like standing beneath a shower as the water pours over you, washes you, and cleanses you. But the way I love Lizzy is like standing beneath a torrential waterfall, struggling to stand with the sheer power and weight of it, feeling its force in every cell of skin, every gasping breath. It’s a love so strong that you know you could drown in it. And although it resembles the love I’ve felt before, for other people, at different times and different places, the love that I have for my child is stronger, more powerful, and more enduring than any other love that I’ve ever known.

My husband and I separated in December, when I was four months pregnant with Cecilia. Perhaps I would feel differently about love if my marriage hadn’t been dissolving and eventually ending during the two short years of Lizzy’s life. Perhaps, if I hadn’t become accustomed to a slow disintegration of my ability to believe that I was worthy of love from a husband or that a marriage could provide safety, security, and belonging, then I might feel that love for a spouse could rival the love for a child. But I don’t think so.

Because even shortly after Lizzy’s birth, when my marriage wasn’t dying, how I loved and grew to love Lizzy wasn’t just part of how I loved my husband–wasn’t just fruit, bounty, and beauty of how we loved one another; rather, my love for Lizzy transcended that love. It was deeper, more real, more lasting, more helpless. I had no choice but to surrender to it and be swallowed by the irresistible force of it.

And so when I say that the most important person in my life was taken from me, this is what I mean. There was no one else in the world who I loved more than I loved Lizzy. There was no one else in the world who I needed more than I needed Lizzy. She and I belonged to one another, spent every single second together, slept together, ate together, played together. Living without her is like living without lungs. It makes no sense. I don’t know how to do it.

And I don’t believe that this level of love or need is just because Lizzy is my baby, or because my marriage is over, or because she was my firstborn. It’s because no one else can ever be Lizzy for me. Her radiant little soul, her bright little self, her body, her personality is utterly, totally, irrevocably and forever… irreplaceable.

And irrevocably and forever gone.