There's one thing I hate about being a mom. It's probably not what you're thinking, but I have a feeling you might agree... It's not the fact that I have only slept 6 hours straight, 4 times, in over two years. It's not all the poopy diapers that can sometimes totally gross me out. It's not the endless laundry that haunts my limited sleep. It's not the constant question of  "what the hell is my toddler going to decide he is willing to eat today?" (Although it might be a close second) It's not getting my kids in and out of their car seats with the stupid buckles that I fight with Every. Damned. Time. It's not even that parenthood exacerbates all of my weaknesses, like my lack of time management and organizational skills. And it's not because I have little to no "me time" despite my best efforts to make it happen. Nope. It's none of that.

It's something I never even considered before becoming a mom

The one thing I hate about being a mom is something I never saw coming until the day my first son was born and it hit me like a cannon ball smashing into a wall of soft, squishy, teddy bears, also known as my gut (physically and emotionally) and it ruined me forever.

It's called "vulnerability"

And what's worse is that this vulnerability is something from which I will never, ever recover. The day I became a mom, my heart was exposed to this terrible, horrible feeling of vulnerability and I am no longer who I was before, much to my dismay. The vulnerability that comes with being a mom and loving a child is beyond agony. Knowing that one tiny person has the ability to make your heart explode with pride or suffocate with pain is almost unbearable. It's equally beautiful and horrifying beyond words.

Being a mom makes that area behind my eyes hurts, almost daily

Whether it's because I am overcome by their cuteness, or because they say or do something that overwhelms me with pride. Whether I'm about to totally lose my shit while trying to reason with a stubborn toddler, or because I am questioning my ability to raise either of them successfully-- the tears well up and I become that pile of soft, squishy, teddy bears that have just been pummeled by a sphere of cold, hard, lead.  And it sucks. Fortunately it doesn't consume or paralyze me, but I am constantly aware that my two little beings have the ability to make me-- the logical, rational, data-driven human with the emotional expression of a robot, live in fear, knowing that if anything happened to either of them, my whole world would fall apart.  Being that vulnerable is the most terrifying feeling ever, only made worse by knowing that it can never be undone. But I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.