Yesterday I was invited with some other poets from DC Poets Against the War to read at the School Without Walls, a high school in downtown DC. It was a real honor to be asked, and I was excited to do a non-mommy thing (though Sami came with me).

It was a mixed experience. On one hand, the reading was fun, the kids were engaged and asked questions. I was so impressed. The library was covered with antiwar posters!! I really liked seeing that kind of freedom of expression in a school.

On the other hand, I just felt weird. Weird about having the baby there, weird when he had the inevitable meltdown, weird about my mom self and my old self, the poetry self, colliding.

Then the librarian asked if I breastfed the baby, and I almost cried.

I just don’t know how to integrate all my parts. I feel like a freakin’ Sibyl with my fractured selves running about. Right now my Mommy self is firmly in charge, cracking the whip over the Writer self, the Activist self, Buddhist self, and all the little sub-selves… All these selves that are ultimately illusory, but so solid and real-feeling right now.

I feel my ambitions crashing up against my mediocrity. I don’t want to believe myself mediocre, but my mind keeps telling me that I am. That I will never amount to anything much. I am directionless, lazy, unfocused, a failure. That is the greatest hit playing over and over in my head.

I am on one hand ridiculously happy, and on the other hand desperately afraid of being “Just a Mom.” I feel this life of meetings with moms, visits to the park, lunches out, shopping on the internet to be too cozy, too safe, too easy. I almost feel guilty about my happiness as a stay-at-home mama. I feel like I have let feminists down.

I know Sami is still so young, and I am still reeling from this life change. I will rebuild…and find my direction.