The End is Where We Begin by Maria Goodin (open ebook .txt) 📕

“How the heck should I know?” I shrugged, bitterly.

Despite the communal living arrangement being Hellie’s idea, I hadn’t seen her since yesterday morning. She’d suggested living like this would be easier for now, and given that my mum had moved out and Laura’s bedroom was empty, it seemed to make sense. But it was starting to become clear that moving out of her own home and into ours had more to do with irritating her parents than any ideology about sharing the early months of parenting. Two weeks after the baby came home, she’d started going out for long stretches of time, and six weeks in, she was staying out overnight without bothering to inform anyone of her whereabouts. I felt angry, trapped, exhausted, overwhelmed and desperate, and I couldn’t handle it anymore. The baby didn’t seem to like me or Hellie or my mum or Laura or anyone who touched him apart from my dad, who was the only one of us with the peace of mind to settle him.

“You know, son,” said my dad, removing his glasses and leaning back in his tatty office chair, “you need to do this yourself.”

“I can’t do it myself!” I snapped. “I’ve spent the last frigging hour trying to do it myself! He hates me! I’ve tried everything and all he does is scream louder!”

“He’s trying to tell you something.”

“He’s not trying to tell me anything, he just likes screaming for the hell of it!”

“Try and listen to what he’s telling you.”

“Oh, come on, Dad! I can’t do this.”

My dad nodded. “Yes, you can.” Then he put his glasses back on and returned to his tinkering.

“You have to be kidding me!” I shouted, slamming the door behind me so hard that the whole workshop shook. I stormed back towards the house, the dark clouds and pouring rain making it easy to forget that this was summer.

I scooped the baby off the floor, holding him away from the wet fabric of my T-shirt, jiggling him a little too frantically. The noise of his screaming drowned out any ability to think.

“Shh, shh, shh, SHH, SHH!” I told him with increasing frustration.

“WAHH! WAHH! WAHH!” he screamed, his little red face scrunched up and angry.

“Oh my God, will you just shut up,” I whispered. “Please, please, please, just shut the hell up.”

I walked him around the house, into my room which looked more than ever like a bomb had hit it, into Hellie’s room which was now a strange mixture of the punk-rock posters that Laura had left behind and Hellie’s expensive perfumes, floaty scarves and pieces of silver jewellery, into my parents’ room, where my mum’s bedside table now sat bare. I had a sudden image of opening my parents’ window and throwing the baby down onto the drive, knowing that the blessed relief of silence would follow. I could feel my body yearning to make the necessary movements, my left arm itching to take the baby’s weight, while my right arm reached out for the window latch…

I fearfully shook the images from my mind and turned away, only to be faced with the sight of myself in my parents’ full-length mirror. My hair was dishevelled, I had a stain down my T-shirt, my face was strangely grey, my eyes were puffy and bloodshot… I’d looked like this last year, when I “lost my way” and started drinking until I was sick. But this time there was no fixing it. I was helpless and there was no way out.

I felt a sudden surge of rage at my mum for not being here anywhere near as much as I’d expected. And then an even bigger surge of rage at my dad for being here and refusing to help. And then at Hellie for being useless. And at Laura and all my friends for being free…

“WAHH! WAHH! WAHHH!”

My chest started to feel tight, like I couldn’t get air into my lungs, like there was a belt around my ribcage being systematically tightened. I felt my heart rate accelerate as I started to panic. I tried to inhale deeply, to drag in some air, but I couldn’t quite catch my breath. I thought about my dad down the bottom of the garden, how far away that was.

I walked back into my room, craving the familiarity of my stuff, my environment. I jigged the baby up down up down, trying to prevent my fingers clenching around his tiny limbs, trying to ignore the need in my arms to hurl him away from me.

I slumped down on my bedroom floor, surrounded by bits of my clothing, the baby’s clothing, a maths textbook, a packet of baby wipes, a calculator…

The baby screamed on my knees.

I clenched my eyes shut and tried not to cry. No one could help me right now. I needed to calm myself down.

I needed to focus on my breathing, but the constant screaming wouldn’t let me, so I needed to make the baby quiet, but I didn’t know how the hell to do that!

He’d had milk, he’d been changed, he’d been winded. He had a Babygro and a cardigan on, so he had to be warm enough. I’d been shocked by the stifling temperatures on the maternity ward, the fact that even in that kind of heat the babies had all been forced into cardigans and little beanie hats. But, apparently, keeping small babies warm was essential, especially ones that had been born a bit prematurely like ours. We’d been subjected to a scolding by the health visitor when she came for her first home visit last month.

“Baby should have more clothes,” she’d said sternly, handling him like he was no more than an aubergine in a greengrocer’s. He was wearing nothing but a nappy, a doll-sized T-shirt and a pair of blue socks.

“I put a cardigan on him this morning,” Hellie had said, playing the angelic mother and glaring at me. “I don’t know why you took it