21
" Nightbitch resolved to demand things- all sorts of things. To ask. To not assume she had to cook the dinner and do the night-nights and clean the house and pay the bills and buy the presents and send the cards and schedule to appointments and keep track of every last thing all by herself. This was, after all, a partnership, wasn’t it? This was, after all, the modern era, empowerment and feminism and all that, and she had not been taking advantage of any of it because, she discovered as she thought further, she did not have a job. Or, rather, she did not have a job that paid any money whatsoever; in fact, it was a drain on money, represented negative money, this mothering job. Because her husband paid for their lives, paid for the privilege she had of staying home each and every day devoting herself completely to motherhood and nothing else, she had felt, ever since she stepped down from her position at the gallery, that she was in no place to demand anything, He worked all week, and she felt it was too much to ask him to lift a finger on the weekend, because she had automatically devalued her work from the start. She had been, she saw now, inculcated by a culture that told her, Look, it’s cute you’re a mom, and go do your thing, but, honestly, it’s not that hard; you’re probably not all that smart or interesting , but good for you for feeling fulfilled by mothering. "
― Rachel Yoder , Nightbitch
28
" What she did know was that he had little time for feelings, a condescending patience for intuition, and scoffed openly at talk unsupported by peer-reviewed scientific studies or statistics. Still, he was a good man, a caring man, whom she appreciated very much, despite everything. She was, after all, prone to indecision, doubling back on things she had once felt but had since come to feel differently about. She was prone to anxiety, to worry, to a sensation in her chest that her heart might explode. She ran hot, She buzzed. Either she needed to keep busy or else she needed to lie down and sleep. Her husband, on the other hand, needed nothing whatsoever. No wonder then that they deferred to his judgment, his good levelheaded judgment, his engineer’s evenness. "
― Rachel Yoder , Nightbitch
30
" Her problem was that she thought too much- “toxic thinking” and so forth- so she tried to stop, but a physical sensation of exertion remained.
Was it her fault that her husband made more money? That it made more sense for her to quit her job than for him to quit his?
Was it her fault that he was always gone, rendering her a de facto single mom for the majority of the week?
Was it her fault that she found playing trains really, really boring? That she longed for even the smallest bit of mental stimulation, for a return to her piles of books, to her long-abandoned closet of half-formed projects, to one entire afternoon of solitude and silence?
Was it her fault that, though she longed for mental stimulation, she still found herself unable to concoct a single, original thought or opinion? She did not actually care about anything anymore. Politics, art, philosophy, film: all boring. She craved gossip and reality TV.
Was it her fault that she hated herself for her preference for reality TV?
Was it her fault that she had bought into the popular societal myth that if a young woman merely secured a top-notch education she could then free herself from the historical constraints of motherhood, that if she simply had a career she could easily return to work after having a baby and sidestep the drudgery of previous generations, even though having a baby did not, in any way, represent a departure from work to which a woman might, theoretically, one day return. It actually, instead, marked an immersion in work, and unimaginable weight of work, a multiplication of work exponential in its scope, staggering, so staggering, both physically and psychically (especially psychically), that even the most mentally well person might be brought to her knees beneath such a load, a load that pitted ambition against biology, careerism against instinct, that bade the modern mother be less of an animal in order to be happy, because- come on, now- we’re evolved and civilized, and, really, what is your problem? Pull it together. This is embarrassing. "
― Rachel Yoder , Nightbitch
31
" Was this boring? Yes, she knew it was, and she wanted someone, anyone, to understand the monotony, the mind-numbing routine, the way in which her mental activity began to slow the moment she woke each morning, beginning with high hopes, thoughts of art projects and energy, a sunny day and happy boy and goals fulfilled, and the slow yet steady grinding down of hopes to rote considerations of what to eat and what to clean, the slow agony of The Schedule- time for breakfast and time for a walk and time for lunch and time for nap and time for snack, time for pooping, time for dinner- this and then that and then this again, until every single thought had been emptied from her head and left in its place only the physical sensations of exhaustion, a pain in her lower back, greasy hair, a bloated feeling from eating too many fish-shaped, sodium-laden crackers. She spoke in toddler talk and was constantly asking different questions about poop. "
― Rachel Yoder , Nightbitch
34
" And what of that person, her most beautiful boy? He opened his eyes each morning , and the first word from his mouth was Mama. He needed to be lifted from bed, for he was so tiny and so sleepy, then dressed, fed, bathed, played with, sung to, tickled, swung high in the air, chased. He needed her to watch me, Mama, nearly every second of his waking life. Sometimes he took his soft little hand and put it on her face, moved her head to where he wanted her to look. And it was in this gesture she saw and entire impending future, one in which all things of this world revolved around this boy: when she woke and when she slept, where they went and what they bought, the very direction of his mother’s gaze. If she was not careful, he would come to know the world as a place that bent to his every whim, for she did indeed want to bend, because she loved him, but in the hardest moments- the moments in which, for instance, she held the limp body of the cat in her bloody hands- she grew resentful of this innocent little soul, whose life would be one of ease, one of knowing that he was taken care of and could have whatever her wanted, that the world was in a very real way his. She didn’t want to deny him things, to make his life harder, but already she felt this pull inside her, to make him responsible in a fundamental way, to tell him no and no and no, and, sure, she was trying to train him against what the entire world told him, was trying to say, Look, I am not all yours, I am not only here for you, but of course, ultimately, she was his, all of her. "
― Rachel Yoder , Nightbitch
37
" You light a fire early in your girlhood. You stoke it and tend it. You protect it at all costs. You don’t let it rage into a mountain of light, because that’s not becoming of a girl. You keep it secret. You let it burn. You look into the eyes of other girls and see their fires flickering there, offer conspiratorial nods, never speak aloud of a near-unbearable heat, a growing conflagration. You tend the flame because if you don’t you’re stuck, in the cold, on your own, doomed to seasonal layers, doomed to practicality, doomed to this is just the way things are, doomed to settling and understanding and reasoning and agreeing and seeing it another way and seeing it his way and seeing it from all the other ways but your own. And "
― Rachel Yoder , Nightbitch
39
" ...she did not have a job that paid any money whatsoever; in fact, it was a drain on money, represented negative money, this mothering job. Because her husband paid for their lives, paid for the privilege she had of staying home each and every day and devoting herself to motherhood and nothing else, she had felt... that she had no place to demand anything. He worked all week, and she felt it was too much to ask him to lift a finger on the weekend, because she had automatically devalued her work from the start. She had been, she saw now, inoculated by a culture that told her, Look, it's cute you're a mom, and go do your thing, but honestly, it's not that hard; you're probably not all that smart of interesting, but good for you for feeling fulfilled by mothering. "
― Rachel Yoder , Nightbitch
