Yesterday I found a milk trail leading from the bathtub to the toilet.

I spotted the circles on the floor and immediately jumped to the “Blame The Husband” portion of my brain, then I examined the scene closer and realized I was to blame. I often leak after showers and baths, and I often pee, and when you do that little math equation, you get me + milk = gross.

Sometimes, in my most melodramatic moments, I don’t know who I am anymore.

A couple of years ago, I was walking to work every morning in New York City. I bought my coffee from the street vendor, who knew my order by heart. The drycleaner downstairs bellowed my name in a joyful Korean accent. I had a favorite table at the neighborhood wine bar. My roommate and I had a Standard Hangover Delivery Pack from the corner diner. My then-BF and I faced monumental weekend decisions like whether to stay in the neighborhood for dinner or venture a cab’s drive away. People referred to me as “doctor.”

Now? Well, cut to me yesterday pacing the floor with The Kid screaming in my arms and me sobbing back at him, “I don’t know what you want! I just DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO FOR YOU!”

Dear God. What has it all come to?

Yesterday was a bad day. TK spit up what appeared to be bucketfuls of liquid, soaking bibs and burp cloths and all the other accoutrements of our new life. I walked around, a vomit-drenched zombie, cursing people from the neighbors to the President for being alive, wondering if I’d ruined my own life and why I suck so badly at this motherhood thing. TK went from breaking my heart one second with his screams to pushing me toward insanity the next (not a far trip these days). I thought six weeks was supposed to be a turning point, I thought, cursing the people who had told me that, and wondering if my turning point looked like the edge of a cliff. The Husband arrived home to what looked like a crime scene, or what was dangerously close to becoming one, me all glazed eyes and tears and TK now pulling the asshole move of sleeping like an angel when seconds ago he had been screaming as if receiving surgery minus anesthesia. TH took TK and we all sat down on the couch (once I grabbed a glass of wine), and I tried to explain: No, I am not going to work every day. Yes, I can wear pajamas from dawn to dusk and back again if I want. Yes, I can even turn on the TV or put in a movie at times. But what I’m doing here? IT’S NOT A VACATION. Imagine, I told him, that a client came into your office and needed something from you desperately, but instead of saying what it was, he just screamed. And screamed. And refused to stop screaming. And then took a massive shit on your desk, then threw up on top of it.

TH laughed. Then he said, “Sometimes it feels like that’s what happens every day.”

I’m not sure what happened next. All I know is that when I woke up, my fist was bruised and all of TH’s teeth had been punched out.

We joke about it, TH and I, that we’re in a competition for whose days suck worse. And as I look around, I see that we’re all in our own little wars: working moms vs. stay-at-home moms, husbands vs. wives, adults vs. children. But my biggest battle seems to be with myself: fighting for the truth vs. letting the lies get the better of me. The truth: that I don’t suck monumentally at motherhood because my baby cries. That a bucket of spit-up doesn’t wash away every good thing. That the story of our life now is not a departure from the one told in New York, or even pre-TK, but a continuation of it, and it is not represented or summarized or concluded by one terrible day. That this, too, shall pass, but for the moments when it won’t? As shit-stained and spit-soaked as they are, one day I’ll look back at them and they will somehow be gilded and glowing. So why not let some of that light in now?

Also, The Sis is coming over later, and TH will be home tonight, and there are wine and baths and grace. And for now, TK sits beside me in his bouncy seat, making baby noises and looking unbelievably, unendingly, endearingly cute. When he cries, I will remember how much I love him right now. And I will pray for grace that is as real–no, more real–than everything else.