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Family-avoidance interlude

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As I’ve alluded to before, there are things I haven’t been mentioning on the blog, in part because my [...]]]> Dear family: please stop reading. Auntie (!!!), and SIL, and brother, and mom, and dad, this means you. Really. Please. Stop. If you want me to keep blogging, ever, stop reading, right now.

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Family-avoidance interlude

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As I’ve alluded to before, there are things I haven’t been mentioning on the blog, in part because my family reads here.

When I’m not saying anything about those things, I find it hard to say much of anything at all. Which can, without exaggeration, drive me crazy.

So here they are:

I’m trying to make a book. And we’re trying to make a baby.

I have, in fact, conceived the book (the one I alluded to recently, Martyrdom Not Required: Attachment Parenting in the Real World). And I did, in fact, conceive a pregnancy.

The book might yet, if I am very, very lucky (and very, very diligent), make it to fruition.

The pregnancy did not.

It was not, you might be surprised to hear, the most recent cycle, nor the cycle that I missed blogging about. Nor was it the cycle where my back went out. No, it was the one before that, and it was so very, very short that I hardly feel justified in calling it a miscarriage. We never had a chance to fully confirm, much less celebrate, even privately, before there was nothing to celebrate, and the confirmation was a resounding “not this time”.

This was not the first miscarriage I’d ever had — not even the only I’d ever known about.

I was seventeen, The Man was nineteen, and I was known for having long, heavy, irregularly timed periods. But one was later still than my unusual-usual. I didn’t suspect anything — I had no particular reason to, and I was as bad about tracking my periods as my body was at regulating them. But when I bled, finally, it was harder than anything before. And there was… something. Something very, very small. Maybe the size of my pinky fingernail, in memory. Probably even smaller than that, if we try to factor out memory’s magnifying focus. But there was something unusual, something unexpected, something I hadn’t seen before nor since, resting atop the plastic pad, when all the rest of the blood and serum and fluid had soaked in.

I didn’t tell anyone, not for years. I still answer “one” when filling in number of pregnancies on medical forms. After all, I don’t “know”. There was no stick with multiple lines, no disturbing, distorted black and white films from an ultrasound, no diagnoses scribbled near illegibly in an official medical chart somewhere. I don’t “know”. Just as I don’t “know” this time, this so much earlier time, with even less physical evidence for support.

But I know.

Three times now, my body has been home, temporarily, to DNA that was of me but was not mine. One became a baby, now a bubbly, blond, aggravating, adorable child. Two… didn’t. Once, over a decade ago, it was a strange, spikey knowledge — something unasked for and unwanted disappearing, without my having to do anything about it. This time, it was pain I didn’t let myself feel for a month, when finally, bleeding again, I sobbed on the floor in part from pain in my back and in part because I was surrounded by fecundity, by women with proven fertility, and I should have been one, I should have been like them, I so wanted to be and almost was like them and it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair, and it hurt so much. And so I cried, and sobbed, and gulped for air and breath, and keened with anger and grief and fear and envy and so many kinds of pain.

But everywhere else, with all but a very small few, I was silent.

I don’t know if I can explain my silence, because I’m not sure I understand it. About everything else, I am vested in full disclosure. I’ll write about craziness, self-injury, pelvic organ prolapse, the -isms I am infected with. I’ll write about mundanities and profanities and even, if you ask nicely, the time I talked to Jesus. But this? This desire for baby-baby-now? This trying and trying and waiting and trying and the interminable months of failure? This I have a hard time disclosing.

I think I want to present a fait accompli — I don’t want the kibitzing and second-hand second-guessing along the way. I want the congratulations — I don’t want the commiserations that it takes us so damn long. I want, in one area of my life, to not be made to feel that I am damaged, deficient, that nothing will come easily to me, or for me.

Neither do I want to publicly perform pious self-pity. I don’t want to be anyone’s maybe-baby show. I don’t want to declare woe-is-me when so many have it so much worse, require hard-to-access technological intervention in order to reproduce, or are not able to at all. What right have I do bemoan my circumstance when odds are decent that, eventually, a pregnancy will stick, virtually free, and societally approved?

I think also that I don’t want to have to explain or defend or justify my desire or my timing or any other part of this. I don’t want to try to explain to the childfree what this compulsion feels like, nor defend from the childless my grief over the loss when I’ve already had a baby, nor justify to the environmentalists or the anti-child feminists the decision to try to bring yet another person into the world.

With both the baby and the book, I think I want to be able to quit quietly. I want to be able to fail, without failing anyone. I want to be able to give up, without being seen to. I want perfection — mission accomplished, see what I made! — or to pretend I never wanted it in the first place. (I admit: as coping mechanisms go, I could perhaps find healthier.)

And I really, really don’t want my family to say one damn thing to me about it, good or bad or anything. (If you’ve ignored my previous warnings, family dearest, you’ve only yourself to blame.)

Yet… I’m tired of silence. I’m tired of Not Talking about something that matters to me. I’m tired of not being able to write because I’m not writing what’s most pressing to me. I’m tired of my desire for privacy from my sometimes-draining family blocking off the soul-sustaining support of my friends (whether I’ve been blessed to meet you in person yet or not). I don’t want this to become a baby-making or book-hocking blog, but I don’t want to have to censor every impulse I have to mention a major undertaking — which informs almost every area of my life — either.

So that’s it. Baby, book: gimme. I don’t know how I’ll manage, I don’t know whence the time and energy and space in my life will come, but I don’t care, because I’m doing it anyway. And I’m not going to keep it a secret any longer.

Except from my family.

She was not a writer. Or rather, not the kind of writer I am — writer by requirement. [...]]]> Someone asked me the other day how I remembered to update the blog regularly. My mouth flapped open, and stuck that way, as my brain tried to understand a question for which it had no frame of reference.

She was not a writer. Or rather, not the kind of writer I am — writer by requirement. Vocation, not avocation. Payment doesn’t matter; this is a lifeline, not a hobby.

Words? Are not optional for me. They are as required as water, as food, as air.

Or more germanely — as required as sleep. Go too long without either, and there goes any semblance of stability, of sanity. I might live, but I wouldn’t be able to continue my life. So, because this is how much the universe hates me, my life is structured such that more of one requires less of the other. And I don’t always get to pick which will happen. And sometimes, neither will, and there’s the conditions for a flash flood of crazy.

I am drowning.

*****

Four days ago: the words would not stop. Post after post, perfectly composed, popping into my head, long after I was done for the day. Lying in bed, begging for respite, for sleep.

Three days ago: Stay up, waiting for words, they don’t come. Shrug, go to sleep… eventually.

Two days ago, I would have asked The Man to stay home so I could write — but he was (is, forever will be I fear) on mandatory overtime, so I couldn’t, and didn’t. So I said screw the sleep, and stayed up.

And they didn’t come.

All day — driving, in appointments, in class, while parenting, parenting, parenting — neverending words, a torrent of words, a flood of words, brilliant thoughts, important points, cleverly composed. But no time to stop, no time to sit, no time to get them down.¹

And later, when everyone else is in bed, when I stop, sit, wait — silence. Or nonsense.

What do you do when the two things required for sanity are denied to you? Why, go crazy, of course.

You know what’s not crazy? Heavy traffic. Crowded grocery stores. Hyper children. Chaotic playgrounds. Inconsiderate or reckless drivers. Overwhelming course loads. Racist or sexist bullcrap. (Though, if you’re like me, those all might drive you crazy.) “Traffic/the store/those kids/the playground/that driver/this semester/that new law is crazy!” is as linguistically lazy as it is offensive. I am not your metaphor. I am crazy. I am not heavy-crowded-hyper-chaotic-inconsiderate-reckless-overwhelming. Stop it.

Not a fun night-on-the-town crazy. Not a productive crazy. Not a foreshadowing-visions crazy.

Crazy like this: Twitching twitching, chest constricting. Breath coming fast or not at all. Thoughts circling: out out out no no no. Losing it because I couldn’t lose it because there’s a child in my lap and he won’t go to sleep — until I dump him on his sleeping father and run away and we both cry for an hour.

*****

This is a minor wobble, as these things go (…I hope. I think.). It seems self-indulgent to go on about it, but it’s this or even less healthy coping techniques, and I can afford a concussion even less than I can afford the night of sleep missed thusly.

I worry that I’ll lose you, my readers. “Didn’t she write that gone-crazy-back-soon post a few months ago?” Well, yeah. But this is life for me. Mostly fine. Sometimes… this. It doesn’t go away. Not ever, not completely. As tired as you, hypothetical bored reader, might be of these repeats, I promise I am a thousand times more so.

*****

Sometimes, I know where it comes from.

Sometimes it’s my choices.

Sometimes it’s my circumstances.

And sometimes? It just sneaks up on me. Sleep eludes me. Words scramble into garbage. I don’t know why.

Sometimes I don’t know where it comes from, I only know it’s coming.

I feel its hot breath on my neck. My hands twitch at its groping touch. My breath is shallow, my belly tight, anticipating its presence. I am running from it — yet it is the running.

Did I cause it by trying to avoid it? Could I have breathed more, shut down the computer sooner, laid wide-eyed in the dark longer? Did I tempt it by rejecting the words offered? Was my error to think I could write in the first place, could have some success and stability?

All the answer I can bring forth now is the equivocating maybe.

*****

I don’t know if I’ll ever be “successful”. I don’t know if these mood regulation glitches, these writing/sleeping imbalances will let me do the things I long for — have I told you about my book idea? Martyrdom Not Required: Attachment Parenting for the Real World ‘Cause I’m obviously so damn skilled at this parenting-life-balancing-gig – but they are a part of my life. They always will be. As much as I hate this — and oh, right now, I do — I don’t hate my life. I can’t hate me, as much as I curse my brain at times. And so I deal.

*****

I don’t have a witty conclusion. There’s no insightful point, no cue for you to nod your head and declare “That’s so deep.” There’s just me, exhausted, face salty from sweat and tears, wrung out, done — yet knowing I have to get up in the morning, to the chirp of “Where’s my dad?” and answer “He’s at work again, little one, but I’m here with you again” alone with you again, make it through the day, no time to break down, no time to stop, no time to be and be drained and be done and have that be enough. There’s just me, thinking this will have to do — not enough writing, not enough sleep, but if I make do with this, I can get just enough sleep to make it through.

Wish me luck.

*****

* You know what one of the risk factors for atherosclerosis1 is? Burning proteins and lipids for energy. You know one of [...]]]> * Knitting as a method of self-soothing and to avoid the temptation to slap one’s classmates and/or teacher sort of backfires when one finds oneself contemplating the garotte potential of circular knitting needles. Ahem.

* You know what one of the risk factors for atherosclerosis¹ is? Burning proteins and lipids for energy. You know one of the times that happens? When your body is starving. Such as, I dunno, from severe calorie restriction in the hopes of losing weight? AKA dieting? But teh death fatz is bad for you! So you better start dieting!! …right.

* Listening to people go on and on and on about how much life must SUXORZ if you have diabetes or Crohn’s disease or hypothyroidism makes me go all stabby. Or garottey. At least in my imagination.

* Everything can be blamed on obesity, apparently.

* If you’re unhealthy in any way whatsoever, it’s because you’re making bad food choices. (And, of course, you have ultimate control over what you eat. Even if you don’t actually have a farmer’s market, grocery store, produce stand, or farm anywhere within walking or busing distance of you. Or the money to shop at such. Or the time, skills, energy, or spoons to do anything with said foodstuffs.)

* The United States of America doesn’t have an official national language, but if you want to be a licensed massage therapist in the state of Oregon, you fucking better be literate in English. Right in the Statute regulating the profession of massage in Oregon, it reads: “the examination shall be administered in the English language”. Not just “yeah, we’re gonna give it in English because we’re Anglocentric and don’t care enough about brown people and immigrants to bother offering it any other language”, no, it’s in the fucking law. And yeah, massage therapists need to be able to communicate with their clientèle in some fashion, but y’know what? That means that monolingual I cannot be a good LMT for a large portion of the population. Because I am only fluent in English. But heaven forbid we allow people who are monolingual in any other language (or multilingual in a whole variety of languages none of which happen to be English) to become LMTs! Who knows what they’d gossip about when they know we can’t understand them?? Or something.

* One may be disallowed from practicing massage in the state of Oregon if one “Has a physical or mental condition that makes the licensee unable to conduct safely the practice of massage.” If you can’t safely do massage, you can’t safely do massage, and I don’t have a problem with the Board doing its job and protecting the public from that. But that “has a physical or mental condition” clause scares the shit out of me, given the culture I live in and what stereotypes some people actually believe about things like bipolar disorder (that’d be me!), schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, and so on. Why “has a condition”? Why not “is unable to conduct safely the practice of massage”? My answer? One word, starts with “able” and rhymes with “ism”. Bet you can’t guess it.

* I have knitting skilz. Not just in the refraining-from-murder-with-craft-supplies department, but I can, while simultaneously taking notes, participating in discussion, fighting fatphobia, (and refraining from murder), provisionally cast on 40 stitches in the round (without making a mobius), make a picot edged drawstring casing (which is harder than it sounds), flawlessly pick up the provisional stitches using a second 60″ circular needle, and (three inches of mind-numbingly boring stockinette stitch later) kitchener stitch the bottom closed. Without a pattern. Or reference to stitch guides or tutorials. Because I rock like that.

So what did you learn this week?

The Man is in his fourth week of mandatory overtime, and I’m very very tired of him being very very tired and us having no time together, but that wasn’t why I was grumpy.

The kid has entered the most aggravating contrarian phase, where he automatically disagrees with whatever we say, even [...]]]> I was really grumpy today.

The Man is in his fourth week of mandatory overtime, and I’m very very tired of him being very very tired and us having no time together, but that wasn’t why I was grumpy.

The kid has entered the most aggravating contrarian phase, where he automatically disagrees with whatever we say, even if it’s “Hey, let’s go get some ice cream now!” But that wasn’t why I was grumpy.

The house is a wreck (in large part because of the two above points), and I can’t cook simple fried eggs without having to stop and clean a pan, but that wasn’t why I was grumpy.

I’m menstruating and cramping and exhausted and brain drained, but that wasn’t why I was grumpy.

I was grumpy simply because I was grumpy.

The things I listed above don’t exactly lend themselves to an effortlessly joyful mood, and they might be enough to challenge even the most calm, zen-like person, but they didn’t make me grumpy, because they can’t make me anything.

I just went with it. I was grumpy, nothing was going to make me less grumpy (because nothing was making me grumpy to begin with), and that was that.

No, this is not the story where I submitted to the suckitude and suddenly everything became rainbows and kisses — but it is the story of a day I survived, and it didn’t even feel like a big deal. I took the kid to the park, and didn’t yell at him once. We went grocery shopping, and I didn’t abandon him in the cart. He punched me, and I didn’t punch him back. I didn’t even really consider it. Because I was grumpy, and that’s just how it was, and it wasn’t his fault, and that was OK.

And that? That I simply didn’t care, and wasn’t attached to any particular outcome (such as happiness, or lack of grumpiness)? That meant that today was a pretty good day. Challenging, sure. Not the most fun I’ve ever had — but there was fun. There were kisses. I didn’t see any rainbows, but we baked sweet potato fries together, and that was pretty darn cool.

We have this belief in the culture I live in that our moods are always to blame on something. Either something external (we need x and y and z to be happy — so why are people with x and y and z still not happy?) or internal (we just have to think our way to happiness, and have only ourselves to blame if we “fail” — how can anyone be happy with all that pressure?). While I am all for choosing joy, as much as we are able, I also think that we are setting ourselves up for misery if we think it is possible, much less if we expect, to be 100% happy 100% of the time.

It’s just not gonna happen. Take it from someone with a mood disorder¹: moods, sometimes, just happen.  Yeah, if your lifemate dies, you’re going to grieve, and it might look a lot like depression (or it might trigger full-on depression), but being depressed doesn’t “require” some catastrophic event. Sometimes it just happens.

Conversely, sometimes happiness just happens. Happiness is a lot easier when we’re not lacking basic rights — societal recognition of our humanity and freedom from marginalization and oppression; enough food and shelter and health care and free time to not worry about surviving the day, or the week, or the year; a network of family and friends, people who care for us and who we can care for in turn; a vocation that gives us satisfaction and a feeling of contributing to something greater (such as our family, our cause, or our culture) — but happiness is possible even without great good things happening to us, and even, sometimes, without those basics. Sometimes it just happens.

If we spend all our time trying to hold on to our happiness, or resenting our unhappiness, we never get to simply experience the good possible in each moment. Even when we’re grumpy. Even when things aren’t going “right”. Even when we have a child who disagrees with simply everything.

We don’t have an obligation to be happy in each moment — we don’t have any obligations or shoulds around our moods at all. Today, I was not particularly happy, ever. But because I was ok with being grumpy, I didn’t suffer my grumpiness.

So now I can look back and say: it was a good grumpy day.

****************

1a. Any group larger than two, or maybe [...]]]> 1. I am an introvert. No, really. I adore parties, love people, am a great conversationalist, have quite excellent social skills when I choose to¹, but holy fuck: if I don’t get enough downtime between activities or being around a crowd, the results are not pretty.

1a. Any group larger than two, or maybe three — counting myself — is a crowd.

2. The Boychick is quite possibly also an introvert, because his ability to use words and empathize and behave as a social, gentle creature — as he is 95% of the time around his immediate family — decreases in direct proportion to the number of people around him increasing.

2a. Except for his younger cousin, whom he professes love for when away from, but is cruel to in astounding ways when close to, regardless of who else is present. This is slightly made up for by his utter, and mutual, adoration of his older cousin. But it still makes me cringe and weep.

3. The one thing a restaurant really needs in order to be family-friendly is to have a kid-accepting attitude. Crayons help. Clowns are unnecessary. Candles are not incompatible as long as the servers are happy to take them away if asked. I’ve felt more welcome with the Boychick in a restaurant with chandeliers and candles and a wine list longer than my arm² than I have in some places with balloons and picture menus. It’s all about attitude.

4. The more busy I am, the more I need to write. The more busy I am, the less time I have to write. Next time, I’m putting it on the schedule, because as antisocial as it seems, it’s better than the alternative. (See also 1 and 1a.)

5. A seven day visit, no matter how stressful, may it worth it for the one late-night one-on-one two-hour conversation all by itself.

5a. But more of those connection moments would be better.

5b. Staying up late for a two-hour conversation, no matter how wonderful, seems like a Phenomenally Bad Idea the next morning, when the child(ren), who had been sleeping the whole time, wake up and demand that adults also be awake and chipper and ready for More Fun, regardless of how sleep deprived they may be.

6. If no one is making the decisions, no decisions get made. Herding cats might actually be easier, because cats at least know what they want and will tell you (even if it is “to get the hell away from here!”).

6a. Don’t ask me to make any decisions: see 1, 1a, 4, and 5b.

7. Never, ever, ever again will I schedule or agree to a visit during which The Man is in training the entire time, thus leaving me as the sole on-duty parent during days and days of Super Fun Activities, any one of which would challenge me, the combination of which about does me in.³

8. Destination reunions are sounding better all the time. How’s the Caribbean in February?

If you can’t forgive yourself for not acting with compassion, forgive yourself for not forgiving yourself.

If you can’t forgive yourself for not forgiving yourself, forgive yourself for that.

Start somewhere. Start now. Wherever you [...]]]> If you aren’t acting with compassion where you wish you were — with yourself, your child, your spouse, your family — forgive yourself.

If you can’t forgive yourself for not acting with compassion, forgive yourself for not forgiving yourself.

If you can’t forgive yourself for not forgiving yourself, forgive yourself for that.

Start somewhere. Start now. Wherever you are, whatever you’re thinking, if it’s “not ideal”, if it’s other than what you want, if it quite possibly is damaging someone you love (as not being able to forgive yourself does): forgive. Let go. Offer love. Start somewhere, because it gets easier with practice.

This is radical acceptance. If you cannot accept what is, accept your unacceptance.

When you forgive yourself for not forgiving yourself, soon you may forgive yourself for not acting with compassion.

When you forgive yourself for not acting with compassion, soon you may be able to forgive the other person, and act as you wish to in the first place.

And if not, letting go of that little bit additional resentment, letting yourself feel just that little bit better, is worth it for itself.

Start somewhere. Start now. And if you can’t or don’t or won’t, that’s ok too: forgive yourself.

One of those days when something goes wrong, and suddenly everything else goes wrong too — because children pick up on moods, because the ability to cope has been drained and then some, because half-broken beds can stand up to daily use but not fuck-I’m-having-a-shit-day attacks.

The most proximal reason for [...]]]> It’s been one of those days.

One of those days when something goes wrong, and suddenly everything else goes wrong too — because children pick up on moods, because the ability to cope has been drained and then some, because half-broken beds can stand up to daily use but not fuck-I’m-having-a-shit-day attacks.

The most proximal reason for the crap covering this day: I got kicked out of physical therapy for, essentially, hurting too much. For being too broken. After being referred to PT in the first place for plateauing with chiropractic and massage.

The universe does not seem a friendly place when one feels hopeless and helpless and pissed off and in pain.

***********

There are things going on about which I am not blogging. And it appears that my brain has decided that because I won’t blog about them, I shan’t blog at all, for my words have vanished¹.

I sit here, head throbbing (post-crying-jag dehydration headache? oncoming migraine? too much crappy-day-quitting-the-world-knitting-and-movie-watching? only time will tell), words gone, ideas slipping between my fingers, and I am torn as always between staying in the room and staying in the moment, between going all-out and going with the flow. Which means I do neither, and fit and start and flit… and stop.

I’m praying that this is my crazy brain speaking, but I feel like this — this start-and-stop, this can’t-pick-a-path — has been my whole life. At least since adolescence.

(12 was when I injured my back.

12 was when I started writing.

Let’s call that a coincidence.)

***********

A scene:

I’m lying in bed, eyes red, tear tracks drying. The Boychick is trying to drag his dad away to “watch something”² with him. His dad is trying to put him off. I, feeling better but as though a cozy brain-dead snuggle would be about my speed, ask gently “What would you like to watch?”, to which my angel child responds with a shout “Stop talking to me like that!”

I lose it.

Cue next crying jag.

***********

A belief:

Any improvement I try to enact, any move toward health and the life I want which I try to make, is countered. Any thought of how to help leads to twenty thoughts of what it would require and what it would entail that makes it impossible. My life is an oroborus, a perpetual catch-22, two steps forward and two steps back, and if I’m to wind up in the same place anyway, why am I trying to travel at all? All this shaking about is giving me a headache.

***********

An assertion:

I am not by nature a pessimist³. I call myself a cynical optimist: the world sucks, but it’s gotta get better eventually. And I can see, if I take the long view, that I have made so many steps forward in these years, in my mental health, in my physical health, in the life I live. My family has grown; I have a child.

But I’m back again doing the same old shit, in my body, in my habits, in my mind. Polished by the years, worn down by dint of my hard effort, but the problems I’m dealing with now are the same ones from last year, from five years ago — some of ‘em from fifteen years ago, and more. It’d be taunting Murphy more than I care to to ask for new crap to deal with, but I gotta say, I’m more than a bit tired of facing the same dance partners again, when I thought I’d spun away from them for good — when I know I’ve new ones to deal with now as well.

***********

So today I quit. I quit cranky children and falling apart beds and bulging discs and impossible decisions and insufficient funds and fucked up neurology. I quit deadlines and judgments and standards I can’t live up to and never ending chores and never unpacked boxes. I quit failure and pain and mean people and getting ignored. I quit. I’m done.

***********

It doesn’t go away, of course (alas), just like your job doesn’t disappear when you quit, it’s just not your job any more. Today I declared — loud enough for neighbours three houses over to have heard, I’m sure — that even though I couldn’t make the world stop, I could make it not my job, and I was more than ready to. (There was rather more swearing at the time, and fewer syllables.)

Everything that sucked today will still be true tomorrow. But that’s tomorrow. And today, tomorrow isn’t my job.