Last Place You Look

Chapter 64

Being a parent is fucking hard. Skylar was a really good baby. She didn't cry a lot, but when she did, it was fucking loud. Niall called it ear piercing and Kimmy rivaled it to Mariah Carey whistle tones. The first year with her was the hardest year we spent together.

The first few months were exhausting and I struggled a lot. My biggest fear came true and I was blessed by the postpartum fairy with a fresh case of horrible depression. It was hard to want to get up and take care of Sky. I did it because I had to, because it was an obligation, but not because I wanted to. Taking care of her was harder when Harry wasn't home and I couldn't just pretend to be busy so he would have to get her. I had four months of leave from work so I could be home with her, but Harry didn't have that luxury. He had a business to run.

He spends as much time as he can at home, but he's usually gone between breakfast and dinner, leaving me to be her main caretaker during the day. I tried to tell Ryan that I could work from home at night, but he pulled all the manuscripts I had when I went into labor and gave them to other people. I missed work a lot and wish he would have let me at least do one at a time. 

I spent my days feeding and changing Sky, cleaning up the messes we both left behind, and trying to have a few minutes to close my eyes while she napped. Harry came home during his lunch when he could so he could give me a break, but it was never enough. I was physically and emotionally exhausted. I just didn't want to do it anymore. Harry came home after I'd put Sky to bed one night and found me having a breakdown on the bathroom floor. I hadn't showered in days and I just wanted to feel clean, but I couldn't get the water to the temperature I wanted and that was my breaking point. Something so small pushed me over the edge.

I felt a like a shit mom every time she cried and I dreaded feeding her. It was my job. I was her sole source of food, but all I wanted to do was lay in bed in silence. The sound of her crying became my least favorite sound and not because I hated seeing her upset. As sick as it sounds, I understood the stories of the moms I'd read who just broke and hurt their kids.

It's fucked, but I understood now. And I felt like the worst mom in the world for admitting that I understood.

I struggled to look in the mirror even more than I did when I was pregnant and gaining weight every day. Now I had all that weight and it didn't just go away because she'd left my body. I went back to picking apart how I looked. I poked at my stomach, feeling over the extra skin and stretch marks left behind. I hated looking at them, but I just couldn't stop. I tried to learn how to appreciate them. I got them while I grew a person. My body had the luxury of being able to do that and I should have felt lucky that I could when so many other women couldn't, but I just couldn't find it in myself to feel lucky or grateful. I just felt tired.

I started wearing baggy shirts again and keeping as much skin covered as possible. I didn't want to see it and my brain convinced me that Harry didn't want to see it either. He tried. He tried so hard to make me comfortable around him again, but I'd reverted back to those first few months we were together where I'd let him touch me, but never without clothes on. If I felt sick looking at my own body, how could I expect another person to not feel sick looking at me too?

"I don't see you the way you see yourself. I don't care how your body looks, Charlie. It changed because you lent it to our daughter. I'm glad it changed so we could get something so beautiful out of it. I'm going to love you no matter what your body looks like."

"That doesn't change how I feel about myself, Harry." He wrapped his arms around my waist and I tried to push him away but he was stronger than me and his grip was made of iron.

"Don't do that. Don't push me away right now. Let me love you. Please just let me love you. You do so much for both of us. I just want to hold you." He put a hand on the back of my head and I broke down in his arms at his pleas.