Mom- And Dad-Guilt

Another saved comment: 

I think it depends on each individual's personality some, but it's probably worst for whomever perceives his or herself as the primary caregiver. Men are less likely to see themselves this way, and women more likely, regardless of parenting arrangements, because of deeply ingrained societal norms (and maybe "traditional"  biological roles, too? idk.) I don't feel a lot of guilt, but I do feel a lot of rage at the fact that I can't spend much time with my son (26 mo) because thanks to the way our society is set up on the US, I have to work a relatively high paying (based on my qualifications) full time job in order for us to afford childcare. Working part time, or any of the lower paying, more flexible FT jobs I might be able to find with my skill set, isn't really an option at the moment. he's growing so fast and I feel like I'm missing it. My husband loves him to bits and is an involved father, but doesn't seem to feel this as much.

On "The Friend Zone"

 This doesn't really relate to my life at all, but I wrote it in a comment on a post that came across my news feed, and then I realized that I write a lot of comments about things that I feel rather strongly about and then they just disappear and I never see them again. So I'm saving this one here. The post said "men talk about the friend zone a lot but something that doesn't get talked about is the pain you feel as a woman when you realize you didn't have a friend... you had a man pretending to care for you so he could sleep with you."

I said, Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, and I'm not claiming to be an expert, but I feel like the "friend zone" is a direct result of toxic masculinity--not in that men are "pretending to care so they can fuck" but in that many men raised in this culture literally do not understand how to have emotionally close relationships that do not involve sex, or even that such relationships exist. I'm sure there are plenty of exceptions, but I suspect that many of these men are not "pretending to care" --they DO care--but they think that anyone they feel that close to must automatically be a romantic partner. This causes socialization and mental health problems in their own lives, because many, many men do not have any emotionally close relationships at all, or none outside of their romantic partner. It's a much bigger problem than just "the friend zone," although obviously the friend zone is a big problem all on its own."

Context: we had a baby in 2020, my dad died this past April, I have a new FT job, life just keeps on moving.

 I pulled a sobbing Asher into my lap last night around 10 pm--he had woken up again, and again, and again, his double ear infections and congestion keeping him from sleeping--and suddenly he laid back in my arms, snuggled against my chest, and closed his eyes, sniffling and clutching Peter Rabbit in one fist, and Rainbow Puppy in the other. It's been a long time since this boy wanted to lay down in my arms, and I had to wonder...where did this giant come from? It seems like just the other day that I could cradle his entire tiny body in one forearm, and now, suddenly, I can wrap both arms around him without my hands even touching. I love watching him grow and learn, but every day it breaks my heart to see my baby disappearing. 

Where did this sunshine come from?

First of all:

Look, I know I'm late to the party, but Lizzo is so great. I just want to listen to "Juice" on repeat. I'M INTO IT.


Secondly:

This whole thing of emotional resilience is fucking amazing. I don't really know where it came from...maybe I was building the muscle while I was on Gabapentin*, and then when I dropped the med I bounced straight up into the sunshine? Like when you walk around with a heavy pack for a while and then when you put it down you feel like you might float up into the air. I can't think of another explanation but it's amazing, and I hope it stays.

Like, my godmother is extremely ill right now--she has a treatable but incurable cancer, so there's no knowing how much time she has. That is truly awful news, and I sat in my car and cried for an hour when I found out. But miraculously, I'm ok. It's a horrible thing that is happening but it's somehow not blackening my entire landscape.

I've gotten middling to bad sleep for the last week, and I had hoped this past weekend would be my chance to catch up--but (probably because of who I am as a person, or maybe because it's my Fate to never go to bed on time) it wasn't. I still averaged between six and seven hours, when I'm a person who needs eight. And then last night I'm not sure I even hit five. For most of my life, a night like last night would have had me in hysterics. But it didn't.


Guys, walking through this world every day without wearing the 1960s solid metal deep-sea diving suit that is chronic depression is like winning the goddamn lottery. It's incredible. 10/10, would recommend.















*In case I didn't cover this before (since I never write this decade), I was on gabapentin for several years to address the nerve pain I get due to an inherited degenerative neurological disease, but since Ian and I are considering starting a family, we were trying really hard to find a way for me to function without it. My nerve pain is triggered by stress, and for the last several years the prevailing theory has been that it got too bad for me to handle (without medication anyway) while my dad was in the hospital for two straight months with an infected pressure sore, and my friend went into the hospital at the same time with ovarian cancer. But then when we examined the situation further, we remembered that I had also started drinking coffee during that time period, and I decided to experimentally cut back on coffee. My pain was instantly a hundred times better, so I've (very sadly) dropped coffee and dropped gabapentin, and now I control the pain with CBD capsules and/or Lion's Mane Mushroom capsules, depending on my pain levels.

And gabapentin...I knew it was rough stuff, but man. The withdrawal made me sick for days, and once I was off of it I realized that it had been keeping me depressed and giving me pretty extreme brain fog and memory problems. Life is so much better without it, and I'm so grateful that I'm able to function without using it now.

Summer nights

Two nights ago I went walking in the woods down by the river*. There was a full moon, bright enough to throw deep shadows, but beneath the trees it was dark enough that I could only just see the faint shapes of the tree trunks ahead where they were outlined against the sky beyond, and I had to make my way along the path mainly by feel and memory. It was dark enough that the fireflies swirling around me looked like spotlights, and lit the foliage around them as they glowed.

I had the great pleasure once of witnessing a grown man's first encounter with lightning bugs, and I hope I never forget his wonder and excitement. I remembered that last night, and wondered what the first European settlers to this area must have thought of them. The whole place felt like a fairyland, with the rich warm air filled with swirling lights, and the river rushing just alongside, in the deep shadow of the woods. There was a lot of the kind of loud silence and peaceful busy stillness you get on summer nights in the South.

While I was there I noticed that a feeling of wellness, of mental health, maybe, had crept up on me when I wasn't looking. (It feels important not to look, or else it might not come at all. Like waiting for Santa, or the Tooth Fairy. I guess my perception of Mental Health is that it's a wild magical beastie that must be believed in softly, and not looked for too hard. You have to prepare for it, you have to put out the cookies and leave the tooth under the pillow, but then you have to just go to bed, and hope for the best.) I had this unexpected and gentle realization that I was ok, and life felt ok, and I wasn't afraid of it, for once. It was a perfect moment, apart from the fact that I had to leave the shelter of the trees and go home.


Last night after my shower I went out onto the deck in my towel to look out into the trees and listen. Most of the fireflies had turned in, but I could hear a few varieties of owl off away to the left, and the wind. One of my favorite things about a clearing in the woods (like the one where we live) is that you can hear and see the wind coming. In the city or in the type of suburb that's devoid of trees it usually just appears, and then stops. In the woods, especially on a high deck in the middle of a clearing, you can hear its approach from far away. The trees begin to rustle in the distance, and the rustling grows louder as the wind approaches. You can watch its exact path as these trees begin to sway, and those others remain still. You can see its height where the taller trees dance, and the lower branches remain at rest. You can watch it pass and make its way off into the night, and see what direction it takes. It always feels like I'm a witness to some great magic.

















*I was there to play Pokemon Go, if you must know. But in my defense, I started playing again so I'd be more likely to take walks like this one. I had forgotten how much I love walking in the dark. The world and my well-meaning husband are always conspiring to make me afraid of the dark and the world outside and of other people. I don't want to be too reckless, but I'd like to take those things back. I am not interested in living in fear.

General Updates

In looking back, I just noticed that I never posted again about Ian's mother.

She died. Jyl died too, by suicide, and my darling friend Aby died as well, by accidental overdose, in a relapse.

It was a hard year.


I know I've tried to write about my almost-mother-in-law's death several times, but I guess it must have just been too hard. I don't remember what I wrote or why I didn't post it. I have probably attempted to address Jyl's and Aby's as well, but I guess those words never made it through.


By some miracle--by a whole bunch of miracles really, and with a lot of help--we did manage to get married. In large part the wedding was beautiful, but looking back I have a lot of negative feelings surrounding the planning and the day that I don't want to try to dissect right now.

I have an office job, which I both like and hate. Mostly I enjoy my coworkers, and obviously the stability of a regular paycheck. But I feel trapped. I never see the sun. The sameness of my environment and my work, day after day after day, is rotting me away inside. I am starting to feel old, and empty, and (at the very high risk of being nauseously over-melo-dramatic) lately this has been leading me to ponder my own mortality in a very dark way. I am sure the awareness of one's own mortality is normal, and maybe early thirties is when it usually hits--but I am really not liking it. I was hoping to get away from the total surety that the rest of my life was going to be nothing but a long unsteady irrefutable slide down into a dark tunnel. Lately, mostly, each day has felt either the same as or worse than the last and the horizon looks dark and dangerous. I feel like I've made all the wrong decisions and now I just have to learn to live with them until I die. But maybe it will get better, right? People say it sometimes gets better.

Deep Thoughts

I just got some candy from the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Idea basket (constantly filled with delicious name-brand candy) at the front desk at work because I am stress eating, and after I sat back down at my desk and ate it, I thought,

That wasn't the candy that I wanted. (What was the candy that I wanted?) Well that candy didn't fulfill me as a human being.

...

Oh, wait.


Then my eyes rolled so hard they got stuck somewhere up by my hairline.

HOPE.

I don't visit this place very often these days, as may be made obvious by the dearth of posts. But I just stopped by and read what I'd been writing...which is awful. So I wanted to put in something nicer.

I can't say that I'm all that mentally stable these days--hormonal swings in particular still tend to grab me by the collar, slam me into a wall, and throw me on the ground. Then kick me in the gut until I wish I could die without sending ripples of pain out through everyone I love.

But luckily I don't have hormonal swings every day. And I am trying to keep talismans in my pocket for those moments--ginseng tea, deep breathing, walks to the river with Ian. It is difficult work, but I am trying to find things that help me to feel like this is all worth it. I am trying to find hope, and when I find it, I am trying to hold on. TENEZ BON, as my uncle recommended at our wedding, and wrote in what is I think my favorite guestbook entry.

I had been doing rather well, I thought, until my father ended up in the hospital for two months with a persistent infection. That was years ago, but I have felt the ground crumbling beneath me ever since. It feels like that incident that spring was the shot heard round the world, and life has just been one disaster after another. I am trying to keep my feet on solid ground. I am trying to hold on to it, to put it back.

But I have a family, and a place to live, and friends who will be there for me if I can learn to stop shutting them out. I have a sweet and caring husband. I have a job that almost pays the bills.

Maybe there is hope, even if I can't always see it. I am trying to have faith. I am trying.

Again. Still. More.

It's not so much that I want to kill myself these days, it's more that, roughly eighty five to ninety percent of the time, I find myself wishing I'd never been born.

Indecision

You know, I hate that I'm such an indecisive person, but if I weren't I probably would have killed myself a long time ago.

So I got that going for me, which is nice. I guess.

That being said, if I weren't so indecisive, I might not be so anxious and depressed all the time. It's hard to say which stems from which.



I'm sitting here in my parents' bathroom, because I stopped in here before leaving their house and I can't stop crying long enough to leave, and my parents are both on edge now and it just reinforces my belief that I have to control my emotions or else they'll fuck other people up. Which might be true, but it isn't healthy.

I was supposed to have a nice afternoon of socializing but I can't even get to my goddamn car.

Rogue One

Here's what I love about Star Wars, particularly in its most recent iteration.

In Star Wars, there's no internet.

In Star Wars, one can lose one's mind, and get it back again, and be someone who matters and makes a difference.

In Star Wars, it's okay to be a woman.

In Star Wars, nobody uses translators--have you noticed? Everyone speaks his or her or its own language, and everyone else understands. And if you don't understand, then that's your problem.

In Star Wars, people fighting for Good work together, and they give everything they have, knowing that they may never find out whether it all worked out, or whether other people would hold up their end. People do 'what they can with what they have, where they are.' They do their little piece as best as they can. As Jyn put it: "If we make it to the ground, we'll take the next chance, and the next--on and on until we win, or the chances are spent."

Rebellions are built on hope.

Predicting the future

Badly, as usual. I've realized that one reason I tend to fall so easily into despair is that I expect the rest of my life to be all downhill from here. I can't imagine taking on a new responsibility because i feel certain that in the future I'll only be more tired, more anxious, more achy, less physically able and thus less mentally or emotionally capable.

I don't want any of my problems to have anything to do with my father, but I think maybe they do. I have two wonderful parents, but growing up with a parent that has a debilitating degenerative disease will do things to your head.

This has been a really hard year.

I am a blood balloon made of eggshells and masking tape.

What matters to us?

I still remember the first time I heard a person speak about me--he was on a phone call--and refer to me as "a girl" from young life.

A what? What did he call me?

Now, let me take a step back and note that I knew I was female. I'd noticed. I'd done everything I could to prevent the onset of puberty, and I had hated puberty every step of the way. I had checked out a Star Wars comic and resolutely read it all through every health class at school. I answered every health class test question as vaguely as I could, and whenever my mother forced me to accompany her into the bra and underwear section of a department store I did everything I could to simultaneously disappear and avoid eye contact with anything that was on display.  Once when I was very young, one of my uncles told me that if I licked my elbow I would turn into a boy. I was smart enough to know that one cannot lick one's own elbow, but still, in secret, I tried. I told members of my family that when I grew up I was going to have myself "fixed," like a dog or cat, so I wouldn't have to menstruate. I was devastated when all of that bloody mess started. I lasted as long as I could without resorting to a bra. (Sweatshirts work wonders.) I heard that sleeping in a bra could stunt your breast growth, so I always slept in one. Maybe it was different when I was a toddler, but as far back as I can remember I hated skirts, I hated tights, I hated frilly frou frou anything. I never understood why or how all the other girls were so excited to grow up and be women--the idea of doing so disgusted me.

I'm not transgender. I'm not a lesbian. (Bicurious at best.) I don't self-identify as a man. But did I ever really feel comfortable as a girl? Do I feel like a woman now?

No. In fact, as an adult I still avoid referring to myself by any kind of gendered label. When I do inadvertently put myself in a corner where I must, I still always stumble over the word "woman."

In fact, as a young child, I declared war on girlhood. I took everything I could find that a person might associate with girls and I shoved it all in a box labeled "fuck that shit" and locked it, and I left it there for years. I spent somewhere between five and ten of my most formative childhood and adolescent years engaging in the highly damaging practice of defining myself only as NOT THAT. Goddamn it, you motherfuckers, I AM NOT THAT. I first started wanting to kill myself soon after I hit puberty--or rather, soon after puberty hit me. I used to have fistfights with my best friend from school, because it didn't make me feel girly. In the gym locker rooms, I always changed under my shirt. I remember the day my dad sat me down and told me that it was time I started wearing more skirts to school, and if looks could kill, I'd have become an orphan that day. Seventh grade was, I think, the year I developed my rage.

So I guess this is me telling you, whomever, that all this mess I thought I'd left in my childhood is still here inside me.

I can tell, because I've been shaking uncontrollably since the third sentence. And it's not cold in here.

What do you even call a person who just didn't want to be anything?

It doesn't matter. I don't want a label. I guess that's the whole point. I just want to be a human person.

This all started out, I started writing tonight with the intent of explaining that even though I'm...whatever I am, it doesn't matter. It isn't the most important thing about me.

And that's true, I think. But maybe it's more important than I've been telling myself.

Oh.

Yesterday I was taking care of some cats for a friend of mine who has cancer, and I got a call from Ian. Turns out his mom--effectively my mother in law--has cancer. We thought at first that she might have had a stroke, but in fact she has an inoperable brain tumor. Naturally one of the first people I told was my good friend who recently had cancer. Got on facebook before writing this and at the top of my news feed was a post from a cousin who is fighting a long battle with cancer.

Guys, I'm getting real sick of cancer.

Thanks to aspirin in her system they can't biopsy until late next week, so for right now we're basically all trying and failing really hard to pretend that everything is still normal. We're all going forward with our original weekend plans, desperately gripping the illusion that we held so easily on Wednesday morning, and watching with rising panic as it dissolves into nothing.

I cried a lot yesterday.

Everyone is trying not to think about the radiation and chemo that will start next month, right after we come back from a week of pretend vacation at the beach. I am trying really hard not to think about how she might never hold the grandchildren that she wants so desperately to meet and love. There's talk of moving our wedding forward. She wants us to make sure we visit before her biopsy next week--the unspoken reason being that she fears she may never wake from it. This is the same cancer that killed her mother.


I don't know how to act. I'm not sure any of us do.

This is problematic.

I'm not really in a good place. I'm not very interested in looking forward, and I don't want anything that seems to be coming. I'm having a hard time deciding whether I'm afraid

or just walking in a very wrong direction.

I'm spending a whole lot of time wistfully looking back, and a whole lot of time wishing I were someplace else.

Where have I gone?

I'm reading my old blog posts because I'm supposed to be doing other things, and I'm feeling too mopey. Specifically I should be applying for healthcare, which I apparently don't have. I am told (via text) that there's a message in my inbox (which I can't access without calling the Healthcare Marketplace) explaining why I don't.

Can't face it right now, so...unless I find time and space to face it tomorrow, it looks like I might just not have health coverage until I get a real fucking job. Note to self: don't get sick. (PS, I'm feeling like I might be getting sick.)

In other news, Ian and I finally retrieved my ring today from the jewelers, it having been resized. (Did I mention that we're engaged? This is a relatively new thing.)


In reading old blogs I am noticing that I used to write much nicer things. I used to spend much more time alone, watching the sky; I used to spend much more time alone, thinking and writing about the sky, and about the trees, and about my heart. Where is all that now? Though I have no desire to own my own pet, I am beginning to think that I ought to have a dog--because evidently that is the only damn way I get myself outside for walks every day. And it seems that not walking means not breathing, in an expansive metaphorical sense.

It doesn't help much that I've been living in the city, and people discourage me from walking alone at night. This doesn't mean that I don't ever do it, but when I do, I feel like I need to look purposeful. Looking purposeful cuts down significantly on meandering, and walking with my face up to the stars, and occasionally sinking to my knees in prayer, or joy, or grief. There has been none of that here, and I am missing it.



Perhaps the issue is in part that I'm never alone. I haven't particularly been feeling that "get the fuck away from me" feeling (which is probably a good sign, in some ways), but nevertheless I haven't really spent any time alone since I moved in with Ian and Sara. And yet, even when I took my mostly-solo August road trip this past fall, I still moved too fast to stop and reflect in any meaningful way. I filled almost every moment with driving, rushing, researching, audio books, and exhaustion. I spent weeks alone, and weeks distracted. I can't say I didn't spend any time in quiet reflection, but I did spend far too little.

It seems that the lesson here is that I do not only need to learn to take time alone for myself--I need to learn to utilize it for myself. Not for rushing from one destination to another, but for simply being, and watching, and appreciating the world and the blessings around me. I need to feed and soothe and caress the quiet, expansive thing in me that is my spirit--the quiet presence that will so easily shrink and defer to the frantic, purposeless demands of whatever stupid whim happens to be yelling at any given moment. I've been spending all my time rushing around in vain attempts to quiet those endless whims, and forgetting that attention only makes them louder. That the only peace I'll ever find is inward.

Adulting

Just now I changed into real clothes* (it's almost 9 pm as I begin writing this) so that I'll have something to change out of in a few hours. I'm only now changing because I've spent the entire day alternating between studying for a ProveIt test, taking breaks from studying for said test, and feeling like shit (wait, can I say that here? I haven't written in a semi-private forum in so long that cursing "aloud" feels weird) because A. my period isn't quite over and needs me to know it's still around and B. I worked out a bunch yesterday and now I'm sore. Feel sorry for me.

I've spent rather a lot of time recently with a very wise and very generous friend, revamping my resume and writing a skeleton cover letter in preparation for applications to "real adult" jobs...but I forgot, during this whole process, about ProveIt tests.

It's really easy to say things like, "yeah, I'm familiar with the Microsoft Office suite," and then figure that shit out on the fly (initially mistyped that as "on the sly," which is also appropriate), but it's a lot harder to, you know, pass a test on said Office programs. Particularly Excel. Fuck Excel.

Also, apparently ten-key is a thing? I'm a pretty great typist, but not at ten-key.









In other news, I'm good. I mean, the holidays were insane. Absurd. Among other things, an uncle had open heart surgery just before Christmas, and my car bit the dust, and around 11 pm Christmas eve I ran over a dead deer in the middle of an empty highway in a borrowed car, which was totally not stressful at all.

But I got through it, we all got through it (except for my beautiful car), and then. And then on new years' day, Ian proposed on a walk in the woods. So that was lovely, and we're engaged now. And having a wedding and a car to pay for, I've come to accept that the time has come for me to acquire a "real adult" job--the kind with regular hours, and regular pay, and maybe even sick days and PTO and health insurance and company holidays.


I've been considering several companies, and I've applied to three positions at one as well as having my resume forwarded to a company recruiter, and now they've sent me this GD ProveIt test. So here I go.























*I just realized that I'm missing a skirt that I like a lot. A burgundy one from H&M. I'm really hoping that it's in the dead Saab.

Oh, that

God, I am way more of a suicide risk than anyone realizes. Most (?) of the time I'm fine, but it takes about three seconds for me to go from functional to about-to-throw-in-the-towel. And it happens a lot. Maybe most days. Maybe a couple of times a week. I don't know.

That sounds so extreme. I'm not saying that I've got elaborate plans or anything, letters composed, anything like that. I just wish dying didn't feel like such a good idea. Like a fantasy vacation I don't ever have to come home from.

Post-wallow

Update: getting the fuck out of bed made me feel quite a bit better. And somehow today (or at least this evening) I've been doing a better job of not withering under the weight of all the scary things in my life that I can't control. Hard to say whether that's health or denial, but for now I'll take what I can get.

On another note, this just happened.

Marie: I am lying around in a towel and I just found a spider crawling on my inner thigh. Sweet dreams.

Ian: I just drank a gnat with my medicine. Saw it right as I was gulping.

Marie: high five.