Among the wondrous mines on the battlefield that is a woman's body postpartum lies a trap we inevitably all fall into eventually.
We will, after glorious months of its absence, get our period back.
I never understood those girls in high school and college who sneaked over to you before class asking timidly, "Hey, do you have a tampon? I'm totally unprepared and, you know."
I would look at them incredulously.
HOW?
HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW?
For ten days before my Aunt Flo came to town, I would be a hormonally charged rage monster. I had unreasonable bouts of fury, jags of crying spurred on by a song or a random sentence said to me by a complete stranger. About three days before it arrived I fell into a quagmire of self hatred and depression so dark I could barely see straight. Then when the biological evidence finally showed up, I barely had time to be grateful I wasn't going insane, just having my monthly, before the crippling cramps doubled me over and I took turns between shaking with chills and sweating from pulses of heat.
Wasn't everyone getting it like this and just dealing with it better than I was?
No.
No they weren't.
Some girls didn't know it was coming, some girls had cramps for an hour, some girls had none.
Some girls had it for three days, some girls had it for five.
Some girls took aspirin and lay down for an hour and were fine.
I was none of those girls.
After two days of blinding agony so bad it kept me from sleeping, the pain would finally subside and I would settle in for ten solid days of flying through all the paper and cotton products in our household. Then, after twenty days of being held hostage by my hormones, I got between 10-14 days before the whole thing started again. Yes, I was one of those girls whose business only showed up every 35-40 days, so yeah, I had no idea when it was coming either, unless I pulled my head out of the paralyzing depression the day beforehand and remembered it might actually not be all in my head but in my ovaries. Hurray.
This changed when I developed my eating disorder.
I got so thin, my cycles slowed and then stopped altogether.
I remember being egged on in my unhealthy behavior by the development.
I was stoked. Gone were the mood swings, the cramping, the bloating, the stupid need for tampons!
Who cared if I was doing irreparable damage to my reproductive system!
After I began to gain weight, it crept back, at first not as bad as it had been before, but by my mid twenties, back up to full incapacitating wonder again.
This was when I first went on the pill.
It regulated everything, giving me what I had always wanted: predictability, lesser pain, less mood swings, and it even kept the whole messy process to a punctual 28 days, with the last four being the ones marked in red on the calendar. It took me three months to go through a box of tampons.
If I had to get a period, this was the kind I wanted.
Then, after about three years, I decided I was ready to try getting pregnant.
I went off the pill, and it took about six months for something to start.
But it didn't get much further than that.
Another year went by, no pill, no anything, and my cycles got back to their gut wrenching, sweat drenching, shudder inducing craziness.
Then I got pregnant again, and this time it stuck.
Nine months of no period is hard to celebrate when you're busy growing a human, I'll just say that right off.
But then you eject the human into the outside and you start breastfeeding and all the books tell you, don't worry, it will be another 6 months before you get your period back.
Of course there are exceptions.
There are always exceptions.
There's the girl who got hers back after eight weeks.
The girl whose milk dried up after three months, and whose period crashed down on her worse than it had ever been in her life the week after.
Then there's this girl...me.
Baby boy just turned 14 months.
And I still haven't got mine yet.
I know of women who breastfeed until their kid is 18 months, or even 2 years old, who get theirs before the babe's first birthday.
Most recently, a friend of mine bemoaned her first triple p (postpartum period) which arrived a week after her daughter's one year party, and all the comments on her instagram were in awe of how long it had waited to return. (This I like, by the way, the idea of a period like a nasty little monster, waiting in the darkness to seize upon your innards).
I checked her math, and then did my own.
I was about 10 weeks ahead of her, and I still didn't have mine.
I still don't have mine.
Obviously there are as many different factors influencing this as there are women experiencing their bloody tuesdays right now, but it's different when you've already had it go away once before.
It makes you wonder if you're doing something wrong again. If maybe you pissed off the little scarlet bugger and he went off in a huff.
Don't get me wrong, every month that goes by in which I don't find myself lying awake, holding my swollen abdomen, feeling like my whole body is a tooth with a cavity in it, is a blessing as far as I'm concerned, but now I'm concerned.
Beard and I have been thinking all along that we'd have a second one of these little critters, and the longer I go without a regular cycle, the longer we wait before even considering a timeline for that.
And here's the really fucked up part.
I don't want to be pregnant again!
Not yet!
I mean, the babe's only just learned how to walk!
We still haven't got him properly sleep trained yet!
I still can't drink more than one glass of wine without the whole room going sideways.
The idea of going through another pregnancy and then the whole newborn period...whew!
It is tooooooooooo much right now.
But it's amazing how all that stuff pops into your head when you start wondering if your body has taken it off the menu for you.
Of course the one truly clear indicator that I was about to bleed was always psychotic anxiety to match that bottomless despair, so perhaps all this ranting is just a symptom that the crimson tide is yet to come.
Anyways.
If you have any experience you want to share in the comments, I'd love the solidarity.
We need to be able to talk freely about this shit.
What was yours like as a teenager, and how has it changed?
Have you gotten a triple p, and what was it like?
What's your go to comfort routine when yours has just hit you like an oncoming truck.
Mine used to be a heating pad, a slice of chocolate cake (or more likely a brownie because I was lazy) with a glass of red wine and a violent heist movie of some variety. Snatch was always good. Heat or Jackie Brown were awesome too.
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
Friday, February 10, 2017
Mother Nature Just Went Off Her Birth Control and This Is What We Got.
Hello!
If you, like me, are stuck inside right now thanks to that foot of white stuff that was just dumped on us this week, then perhaps your February doldrums seem particularly vicious today.
Believe me, I am with you.
The high temperature predicted for today is 17 degrees! Yay! This means not only is it not safe for me to leave the house with my fourteen month old, because I don't have a car, it means we will be stuck inside my three room apartment all day for the sixth day in the last two weeks.
Before you go pitying me. I do not have it bad, by a long shot.
During the blizzard yesterday, as truckloads of those teensy, evil white flakes that sting you in the eyes if you try to walk in them were blown savagely about, I held my sweet babe and he yanked my hair, and I sipped some coffee from the warm confines of my home and I was grateful.
I am very very lucky.
There are people, just like me, with nowhere to go in these lethal conditions.
There are people sleeping in bus stations and subway tunnels to stay out of the cold and the wind and the storm.
There are people who are being kicked out of homeless shelters because "they've been there too long".
I'll never forget, the first year I worked in downtown crossing, I was desperate to get outside on my thirty minute lunch break because it was the first nice (ish) Spring day of 2008.
It was a little raw, but the sun was shining, and the bitter temperatures of the last couple of weeks had me so happy to soak up a little vitamin d while inhaling my bagel.
A woman and her two friends who were disheveled and carrying a number of scuffed and filthy looking bags and backpacks between them came and sat on the other side of the bench with their backs to me.
Here's something you probably don't want to know about me: I am an incorrigible eavesdropper.
I freaking LOVE listening in on strangers' conversations. What more could you possibly ask for? Drama, and a broken plotline that you have to fill in the missing bits to?
It's one of my favorite games.
Anyhoo, so I'm listening to this woman talk, and I realize she's explaining to her male compatriots how in order for her to be safe in the shelter at night, she has to pick a man to sleep with, otherwise she runs the risk of getting kicked out of her bed at the very least, by someone bigger than her, or raped simply because she's a woman, and nobody's paying attention.
The guys were sympathetic, but they didn't seem surprised nor in fact was she telling them for shock value. From what I overheard, it sounded like she was running through the list of men in the shelter at that moment who she felt were safe enough to sleep with, and she wanted her two friends to let her know if she was wrong about anybody. I gathered from the conversation, that she had not slept with either of those men, since they were at the Veterans shelter, and they were all seriously conferring about who she was the best off sharing a bed with. She was very matter of fact about the situation, even stating that she expected she was going to have sex with whoever it was whose bed she shared, that it was pretty standard, but she just wanted to make sure they wouldn't hurt her, and would let her get some uninterrupted sleep afterward.
My stomach clenched, and I stood up off of the bench. I turned, and I reached into my wallet and gave the woman the only thing inside, a five dollar bill. I think i mumbled something about how she should get a coffee, but then I ran away because my ears were ringing with how ridiculously easy my life was in comparison to what this woman faced every single night she wanted to get some sleep.
So I find a dose of perspective to be awfully important when I start to feel a bit shitty about being stuck inside yet again. Things, I say to myself, things could be a HELL of a lot worse than this.
So this morning when I looked outside, and the thermometer read 10F, I shrugged.
The thing I am learning as a parent, and especially as a parent with a predisposition to depression is that everything really and truly is temporary. Blizzards, babies, seasons, and periods of merciless self doubt are all finite.
When I was younger, in my late teens and early twenties, I remember people telling me that my sadness wouldn't last forever, that I would feel better soon, that the dramatic nature of my emotions were all part of my hormones rearranging themselves, and I could never believe them.
"You don't know," I would think fiercely. "You're not in here with me. This may never stop."
I wish I could impart the wisdom of my thirty four year old self on that young version.
I suppose it's nothing you can be told though. You have to figure it out for yourself. You have to make yourself strong enough to get through the truly dark times and find your way out the other side.
This is why, though I have checked out from social media considerably so that the anxiety mongers don't fan the fires of my fear and neuroses based insomnia, I am still engaged. I check my sources. I read only feminist sites that are about movement, resistance, and positive action.
I refuse to expose myself to the tradition sources of media because they want to encourage the negativity that fattens these situations.
I've taken a vow not to say the president elect's name. He doesn't deserve the power of being named.
I'm planning on participating in March 8th's World Without a Woman Day (by not purchasing anything from any establishment). I am also planning on participating in the Ides protest of sending postcards of dissent to the White House. If you would like to be part of those movements, look them up. I encourage you to because they will remind you, you are not powerless, not even if you are trapped in your house because of a snow storm or a cold or because you need to be.
I recommend taking stock of your surroundings every day and being grateful for your creature comforts.
I also recommend HIGHLY that you either write a To Do list at the beginning of your day (or the night before) it will help you feel accomplished throughout your day, so very much.
Here's mine.
TO DO:
-Feed Baby Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner.
-Take shower. Brush teeth. Get dressed.
-Do 10-30 minutes of yoga, whatever babe allows.
-Play games with Babe at least three times for an hour each time.
-Get babe down for two naps (length tbd).
-Read at some point.
-Try to limit tv/netflix to one-two hours for the day.
-Make something (a recipe, a craft, a toy, knit, write a blog, whatever you can concentrate on for a half hour that makes you feel productive) while Babe plays in pack n' play.
-Reach out to someone, call a friend to chat for a half hour, or see if anybody can come visit you.
-Eat three meals yourself.
-Read a book or two with the Babe and get to bed at a decent hour.
This is my to do list.
It's not fancy, but it gives me something to refer to when I'm in the miasma of the post lunch apocalypse where the whole afternoon/evening is stretching endlessly ahead of me, and I feel time is meaningless and I might actually go crazy.
Oh, and remember to look around every once in a while, take a deep breath, and remind yourself that today will end no matter how long it feels. You will go to bed. The baby and yourself will be okay, whether or not you actually managed to shower, and it's okay if you didn't. Then you can try again tomorrow. Really. You can. There is always a tomorrow.
LOVE.
If you, like me, are stuck inside right now thanks to that foot of white stuff that was just dumped on us this week, then perhaps your February doldrums seem particularly vicious today.
Believe me, I am with you.
The high temperature predicted for today is 17 degrees! Yay! This means not only is it not safe for me to leave the house with my fourteen month old, because I don't have a car, it means we will be stuck inside my three room apartment all day for the sixth day in the last two weeks.
Before you go pitying me. I do not have it bad, by a long shot.
During the blizzard yesterday, as truckloads of those teensy, evil white flakes that sting you in the eyes if you try to walk in them were blown savagely about, I held my sweet babe and he yanked my hair, and I sipped some coffee from the warm confines of my home and I was grateful.
I am very very lucky.
There are people, just like me, with nowhere to go in these lethal conditions.
There are people sleeping in bus stations and subway tunnels to stay out of the cold and the wind and the storm.
There are people who are being kicked out of homeless shelters because "they've been there too long".
I'll never forget, the first year I worked in downtown crossing, I was desperate to get outside on my thirty minute lunch break because it was the first nice (ish) Spring day of 2008.
It was a little raw, but the sun was shining, and the bitter temperatures of the last couple of weeks had me so happy to soak up a little vitamin d while inhaling my bagel.
A woman and her two friends who were disheveled and carrying a number of scuffed and filthy looking bags and backpacks between them came and sat on the other side of the bench with their backs to me.
Here's something you probably don't want to know about me: I am an incorrigible eavesdropper.
I freaking LOVE listening in on strangers' conversations. What more could you possibly ask for? Drama, and a broken plotline that you have to fill in the missing bits to?
It's one of my favorite games.
Anyhoo, so I'm listening to this woman talk, and I realize she's explaining to her male compatriots how in order for her to be safe in the shelter at night, she has to pick a man to sleep with, otherwise she runs the risk of getting kicked out of her bed at the very least, by someone bigger than her, or raped simply because she's a woman, and nobody's paying attention.
The guys were sympathetic, but they didn't seem surprised nor in fact was she telling them for shock value. From what I overheard, it sounded like she was running through the list of men in the shelter at that moment who she felt were safe enough to sleep with, and she wanted her two friends to let her know if she was wrong about anybody. I gathered from the conversation, that she had not slept with either of those men, since they were at the Veterans shelter, and they were all seriously conferring about who she was the best off sharing a bed with. She was very matter of fact about the situation, even stating that she expected she was going to have sex with whoever it was whose bed she shared, that it was pretty standard, but she just wanted to make sure they wouldn't hurt her, and would let her get some uninterrupted sleep afterward.
My stomach clenched, and I stood up off of the bench. I turned, and I reached into my wallet and gave the woman the only thing inside, a five dollar bill. I think i mumbled something about how she should get a coffee, but then I ran away because my ears were ringing with how ridiculously easy my life was in comparison to what this woman faced every single night she wanted to get some sleep.
So I find a dose of perspective to be awfully important when I start to feel a bit shitty about being stuck inside yet again. Things, I say to myself, things could be a HELL of a lot worse than this.
So this morning when I looked outside, and the thermometer read 10F, I shrugged.
The thing I am learning as a parent, and especially as a parent with a predisposition to depression is that everything really and truly is temporary. Blizzards, babies, seasons, and periods of merciless self doubt are all finite.
When I was younger, in my late teens and early twenties, I remember people telling me that my sadness wouldn't last forever, that I would feel better soon, that the dramatic nature of my emotions were all part of my hormones rearranging themselves, and I could never believe them.
"You don't know," I would think fiercely. "You're not in here with me. This may never stop."
I wish I could impart the wisdom of my thirty four year old self on that young version.
I suppose it's nothing you can be told though. You have to figure it out for yourself. You have to make yourself strong enough to get through the truly dark times and find your way out the other side.
This is why, though I have checked out from social media considerably so that the anxiety mongers don't fan the fires of my fear and neuroses based insomnia, I am still engaged. I check my sources. I read only feminist sites that are about movement, resistance, and positive action.
I refuse to expose myself to the tradition sources of media because they want to encourage the negativity that fattens these situations.
I've taken a vow not to say the president elect's name. He doesn't deserve the power of being named.
I'm planning on participating in March 8th's World Without a Woman Day (by not purchasing anything from any establishment). I am also planning on participating in the Ides protest of sending postcards of dissent to the White House. If you would like to be part of those movements, look them up. I encourage you to because they will remind you, you are not powerless, not even if you are trapped in your house because of a snow storm or a cold or because you need to be.
I recommend taking stock of your surroundings every day and being grateful for your creature comforts.
I also recommend HIGHLY that you either write a To Do list at the beginning of your day (or the night before) it will help you feel accomplished throughout your day, so very much.
Here's mine.
TO DO:
-Feed Baby Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner.
-Take shower. Brush teeth. Get dressed.
-Do 10-30 minutes of yoga, whatever babe allows.
-Play games with Babe at least three times for an hour each time.
-Get babe down for two naps (length tbd).
-Read at some point.
-Try to limit tv/netflix to one-two hours for the day.
-Make something (a recipe, a craft, a toy, knit, write a blog, whatever you can concentrate on for a half hour that makes you feel productive) while Babe plays in pack n' play.
-Reach out to someone, call a friend to chat for a half hour, or see if anybody can come visit you.
-Eat three meals yourself.
-Read a book or two with the Babe and get to bed at a decent hour.
This is my to do list.
It's not fancy, but it gives me something to refer to when I'm in the miasma of the post lunch apocalypse where the whole afternoon/evening is stretching endlessly ahead of me, and I feel time is meaningless and I might actually go crazy.
Oh, and remember to look around every once in a while, take a deep breath, and remind yourself that today will end no matter how long it feels. You will go to bed. The baby and yourself will be okay, whether or not you actually managed to shower, and it's okay if you didn't. Then you can try again tomorrow. Really. You can. There is always a tomorrow.
LOVE.
Tuesday, February 7, 2017
Bleed Red
This morning I spent on the phone trying to figure out how to get Bastian's one year doctor's appointment covered by our insurance company.
As it turns out, the insurance we get through the Beard's work only covers 9 general wellness appointments for the first two years the baby is alive.
This seems fine, but they don't tell you this when you have a baby.
There's no Welcome to the Fiscal Responsibilities of Your Child's Health packet that arrives in the mail. There are a lot of things that nobody tells you, but that's a whole different post.
The pediatrician of course wants the baby to be cared for to the best of her and her office's abilities.
When we brought the babe home from the hospital, he had jaundice, and she insisted we get a sample of his blood every day until his bilirubin levels came down to a percentage she thought was healthy.
She signed us up for general wellness visits once a month until he was 12 weeks old, and then every three months after.
If you're playing along at home, that means we've used up our nine visits now.
And she wants to see him again in March, June, and September before his second birthday.
Each visit, without insurance, costs a little over $350 dollars. That's a month's worth of groceries for us. It's not a small amount to us. It's not an amount we have to spare.
This means, that like many many many other people in this country, we have to take a risk and skip some of those appointments. We have to trust that the baby's development is going along as it should be, and that he can go until June before having another appointment. We can afford to pay for one, out of pocket, and I can't just wait a whole year to find out if he's doing as well as he should be. Besides, there are vaccinations he will need, and I am not naive enough to think we could get by without them.
Our situation is not dire by a long shot.
There are people out there who have no insurance, or who depend solely on the Affordable Care Act for their children's well being, and for whom, if the ACA is repealed, the health of their children will become a luxury they can't afford, to say nothing of their own health. The rift between the truly rich and the truly poor of this country will grow larger and more dramatic. The powers that be will be responsible for people without coverage going without antibiotics or preventative care for conditions that might kill them if left untreated long enough. Colds will develop into pneumonia. Wounds will become infected. Children will be unvaccinated against common childhood diseases which will then wreak havoc on their populations.
All for what?
A tax break?
The simple fact is we live in a society where "I don't want to share mine," is more important than "I have enough, why don't you have the extra?"
The fact of the matter is, I'm fantastically lucky.
I live in a liberal state.
I'm a caucasian woman in a heterosexual marriage with a caucasian man and I have a baby.
My husband makes an income which puts us above the poverty line (though only by a bit) for a family of three, and we can afford for me to stay home and take care of the baby as long as we keep a pretty modest budget. We don't go on vacation. We eat out once a week as a treat. We have one car so that the Beard can go to and from work. We live in a very pretty area, in a very small apartment. We don't buy things we don't need, and when something we own breaks, we repair it until the cost of repairing it is more than the cost of buying a new one.
We do each own an iphone, but they are several models behind the newest, and we are probably ready for an upgrade, but we're waiting for our tax refunds to do so.
We are lucky.
We are so very lucky.
Because of where we live and the trajectory of our privilege, we are safe in our apartment. I can walk places with the baby and I am not in danger of being jumped or assaulted. I can afford vegetables and healthy food for my child and myself. I can get exercise by walking next to the stunning beauty of the Atlantic ocean, and I can amuse my baby with the books we have, the netflix account we can afford, and the games I can play with him on our kitchen floor.
About ten minutes before i started writing this blog, he was tearing around the apartment with a rattle in his hand, terrorizing the dog and crowing with joy.
I am not going to be one of the people who is affected if the ACA is taken away, but I am all too aware of how conditional that status is.
Like so many people, we live paycheck to paycheck, but we are not suffering by a long shot. My student loans are in forbearance for the moment, and that's a big deal. We have a couple of credit cards with small(ish) balances to pay off, but we are not "drowning" in debt the way I have friends who are.
We do however still fear that "big bad thing" that everyone who lives frugally does.
I am all too aware that should the car need 1,000 of work or the dog need to go to the vet, should Bob lose his job, or when Bastian gets old enough to need his own room, we need to be making more money. Our situation is tenuous and I tell myself it's okay because it's temporary. I will be reentering the workforce at some point. There are options for us.
But it was not long ago that there were not.
When I was nine, my parents filed for bankruptcy.
We had to leave the country I was born in to live in rural Canada where my mother's relatives could help us get back on our feet. There was never a time that I was not being yelled at to save money.
I wore hand me down clothes that got me teased at school. The first bra I ever wore had belonged to a second cousin I never met, and it was made the year I had been born.
My parents never used the clothes dryer because it cost too much to run it, and so I had to hang my laundry outside, and in the winter, I hung it in the basement, which was damp, and so nothing ever fully dried and all my clothes smelled like mildew, which also got me teased at school.
We could not afford nice toiletries, so my mom bought three for a dollar men's speedstick deodorant for us to use and shampoo and conditioner which we cut with water to make it last longer.
We ate a lot of hot dogs, stringy meat cooked for hours to make it chewable, minestrone soup from a powdered mix kept in a huge old can. We fried potatoes in oil and then when the oil was cool we poured it into an empty pickle jar to reuse the next week. We didn't throw out the oil until it was clouded and brown, studded with burnt potato bits.
In my twenties I was poor too, but it was different. It was starving artist poor (at least that's what i told myself). I had worked so hard in school only to graduate, with the rest of my generation, into a world with no jobs for us.
I worked retail and coffee shops to get by. I ate frozen burritos and saved up my tips to buy clothes and bottles of cheap wine.
When I got married, it was using a tax refund. My dress was $150 dollars, and I felt like a queen in it. I know money doesn't matter.
Until it does.
Until you have the bad month or the shitty year that lands you in the hole you spent your whole life clawing your way out of.
This is why I am writing this, because I know what a big deal it is to be broke, to not go to the doctor when you are sick, to not get stitches even though you need them because the cost of the ER is too much.
I am not there now, but I have been there, and I know there is very little margin between being where I am and being there, and it has nothing to do with how good a person you are.
It has nothing to do with being "smarter" "better with money" "harder working" or anything else that the truly elite like to claim it does.
The truth is it has everything to do with privilege.
It is up to us, the people who have things, including voices, to stand up for the people who do not.
It is up to us to use the little platform we have to stop motions that will genuinely kill people just because they do not have enough money.
We are not living in 1700's France, but we need some of the fire of Mme DeFarge.
As I wrote down the claim numbers and redid my budget and figured out that my kid is going to see the doctor less than he should this year because I can't afford for him to go more than that instead of feeling sorry for my situation, I thought about all the people who are in one much worse.
We need to do more of that.
And we need to to share more.
Remember:
If you have enough, then you have more than most, and if you have more than enough, even just a little more, it only serves you better to share it, to help others with your extra. You are never as far from being the one who needs help yourself, and there is nothing between you versus them.
We all bleed red.
As it turns out, the insurance we get through the Beard's work only covers 9 general wellness appointments for the first two years the baby is alive.
This seems fine, but they don't tell you this when you have a baby.
There's no Welcome to the Fiscal Responsibilities of Your Child's Health packet that arrives in the mail. There are a lot of things that nobody tells you, but that's a whole different post.
The pediatrician of course wants the baby to be cared for to the best of her and her office's abilities.
When we brought the babe home from the hospital, he had jaundice, and she insisted we get a sample of his blood every day until his bilirubin levels came down to a percentage she thought was healthy.
She signed us up for general wellness visits once a month until he was 12 weeks old, and then every three months after.
If you're playing along at home, that means we've used up our nine visits now.
And she wants to see him again in March, June, and September before his second birthday.
Each visit, without insurance, costs a little over $350 dollars. That's a month's worth of groceries for us. It's not a small amount to us. It's not an amount we have to spare.
This means, that like many many many other people in this country, we have to take a risk and skip some of those appointments. We have to trust that the baby's development is going along as it should be, and that he can go until June before having another appointment. We can afford to pay for one, out of pocket, and I can't just wait a whole year to find out if he's doing as well as he should be. Besides, there are vaccinations he will need, and I am not naive enough to think we could get by without them.
Our situation is not dire by a long shot.
There are people out there who have no insurance, or who depend solely on the Affordable Care Act for their children's well being, and for whom, if the ACA is repealed, the health of their children will become a luxury they can't afford, to say nothing of their own health. The rift between the truly rich and the truly poor of this country will grow larger and more dramatic. The powers that be will be responsible for people without coverage going without antibiotics or preventative care for conditions that might kill them if left untreated long enough. Colds will develop into pneumonia. Wounds will become infected. Children will be unvaccinated against common childhood diseases which will then wreak havoc on their populations.
All for what?
A tax break?
The simple fact is we live in a society where "I don't want to share mine," is more important than "I have enough, why don't you have the extra?"
The fact of the matter is, I'm fantastically lucky.
I live in a liberal state.
I'm a caucasian woman in a heterosexual marriage with a caucasian man and I have a baby.
My husband makes an income which puts us above the poverty line (though only by a bit) for a family of three, and we can afford for me to stay home and take care of the baby as long as we keep a pretty modest budget. We don't go on vacation. We eat out once a week as a treat. We have one car so that the Beard can go to and from work. We live in a very pretty area, in a very small apartment. We don't buy things we don't need, and when something we own breaks, we repair it until the cost of repairing it is more than the cost of buying a new one.
We do each own an iphone, but they are several models behind the newest, and we are probably ready for an upgrade, but we're waiting for our tax refunds to do so.
We are lucky.
We are so very lucky.
Because of where we live and the trajectory of our privilege, we are safe in our apartment. I can walk places with the baby and I am not in danger of being jumped or assaulted. I can afford vegetables and healthy food for my child and myself. I can get exercise by walking next to the stunning beauty of the Atlantic ocean, and I can amuse my baby with the books we have, the netflix account we can afford, and the games I can play with him on our kitchen floor.
About ten minutes before i started writing this blog, he was tearing around the apartment with a rattle in his hand, terrorizing the dog and crowing with joy.
I am not going to be one of the people who is affected if the ACA is taken away, but I am all too aware of how conditional that status is.
Like so many people, we live paycheck to paycheck, but we are not suffering by a long shot. My student loans are in forbearance for the moment, and that's a big deal. We have a couple of credit cards with small(ish) balances to pay off, but we are not "drowning" in debt the way I have friends who are.
We do however still fear that "big bad thing" that everyone who lives frugally does.
I am all too aware that should the car need 1,000 of work or the dog need to go to the vet, should Bob lose his job, or when Bastian gets old enough to need his own room, we need to be making more money. Our situation is tenuous and I tell myself it's okay because it's temporary. I will be reentering the workforce at some point. There are options for us.
But it was not long ago that there were not.
When I was nine, my parents filed for bankruptcy.
We had to leave the country I was born in to live in rural Canada where my mother's relatives could help us get back on our feet. There was never a time that I was not being yelled at to save money.
I wore hand me down clothes that got me teased at school. The first bra I ever wore had belonged to a second cousin I never met, and it was made the year I had been born.
My parents never used the clothes dryer because it cost too much to run it, and so I had to hang my laundry outside, and in the winter, I hung it in the basement, which was damp, and so nothing ever fully dried and all my clothes smelled like mildew, which also got me teased at school.
We could not afford nice toiletries, so my mom bought three for a dollar men's speedstick deodorant for us to use and shampoo and conditioner which we cut with water to make it last longer.
We ate a lot of hot dogs, stringy meat cooked for hours to make it chewable, minestrone soup from a powdered mix kept in a huge old can. We fried potatoes in oil and then when the oil was cool we poured it into an empty pickle jar to reuse the next week. We didn't throw out the oil until it was clouded and brown, studded with burnt potato bits.
In my twenties I was poor too, but it was different. It was starving artist poor (at least that's what i told myself). I had worked so hard in school only to graduate, with the rest of my generation, into a world with no jobs for us.
I worked retail and coffee shops to get by. I ate frozen burritos and saved up my tips to buy clothes and bottles of cheap wine.
When I got married, it was using a tax refund. My dress was $150 dollars, and I felt like a queen in it. I know money doesn't matter.
Until it does.
Until you have the bad month or the shitty year that lands you in the hole you spent your whole life clawing your way out of.
This is why I am writing this, because I know what a big deal it is to be broke, to not go to the doctor when you are sick, to not get stitches even though you need them because the cost of the ER is too much.
I am not there now, but I have been there, and I know there is very little margin between being where I am and being there, and it has nothing to do with how good a person you are.
It has nothing to do with being "smarter" "better with money" "harder working" or anything else that the truly elite like to claim it does.
The truth is it has everything to do with privilege.
It is up to us, the people who have things, including voices, to stand up for the people who do not.
It is up to us to use the little platform we have to stop motions that will genuinely kill people just because they do not have enough money.
We are not living in 1700's France, but we need some of the fire of Mme DeFarge.
As I wrote down the claim numbers and redid my budget and figured out that my kid is going to see the doctor less than he should this year because I can't afford for him to go more than that instead of feeling sorry for my situation, I thought about all the people who are in one much worse.
We need to do more of that.
And we need to to share more.
Remember:
If you have enough, then you have more than most, and if you have more than enough, even just a little more, it only serves you better to share it, to help others with your extra. You are never as far from being the one who needs help yourself, and there is nothing between you versus them.
We all bleed red.
Monday, February 6, 2017
Two sides to each oreo.
Okay, I wanted to write this whole blog with a clever, chipper little voice rallying against the feeling of not being good enough in comparison to all the shit we see.
But I was up for a couple of hours last night while the baby decided pooping was the scariest thing that had ever happened, and it took a really long time to get him to fall back asleep.
So I am without cuteness, cleverness, and the whole lot.
This is what I want to say:
I love the body positivity movement.
I mean. I really really love it. There's never been anything like it for as long as I can remember.
My generation doesn't even get to claim it, I'm pretty sure it didn't really start until about five years ago, which is too late for a chick who grew up in the 80's and the 90's busy watching chiseled cheekbones, whittled waists, bored looking heroin addicts, and starved, white, cis-gendered females get hauled to the highest platforms for beauty worship.
If you look at me, you would probably assume I have no need of the bopo movement.
I'm a thin(ish) white, able-bodied, (cis-gendered)woman.
You would probably look at me and think, wow, she's got a lot of nerve claiming she needs this. Is she not aware that there are women who walk down the street and get yelled at for just existing in their bodies because they don't fit a standard? There are women who are told by completely straight faced strangers that their health is in danger if they don't change their habits? Does this privileged idiot going to sit here and tell us that her struggle is at all comparable to a woman in a wheelchair's, or a woman in a head scarf who gets stared at anytime she's in a public place?
No...and...yes.
Here's the thing.
I think every person, every single fucking person, who does not conform with the "mythical norm" of white, male, hetero, able bodied whatever has encountered individuals, if not entire media campaigns, designed to make them feel like they are not good enough as they are. After all, unless you convince the population to whom you are selling a product that they desperately need the product, you don't have a market.
What pisses me off, is the people who just accept the sales pitch, internalize it, and then use it on others.
We're all victims of a fucked up corporate manipulation scheme.
The companies that sell shit want us to believe we aren't living our fullest lives without their "thing" so they sell us discontent. They sell us the idea of comparing our lives to our neighbor's. They want us to compare and contrast and then find fault in what we have. That way, we'll scramble desperately to throw our money at whatever product they've convinced us will make us the superior ones.
But what if we decide we don't want to be superior to anybody?
What if we decide that the goal is just to be happy, and not to be "better than"?
This is where I am right now.
I was bullied as a kid.
You wanna know why?
Because I was an immigrant.
I had an accent. I didn't know what was current, popular, or interesting. More than that, I didn't care, because I didn't understand why the things that I had loved back in Australia were not the same in the U.S.
It was that not caring that made me a target.
If I had succumbed and conformed. Bought the right clothes to fit in, joined the right clubs, and played the game, then I could have saved myself a whole mess of ostracism and jeering.
But I didn't.
I didn't want to like the things everyone else liked because they liked them. I wanted to like things because I liked them.
I was heavier than most girls by 8th grade.
I was not athletic or thin.
I was thick thighs and big boobs. I was clumsy and awkward because I'd gone through a pretty fast puberty, and I didn't quite understand how this body worked yet.
I was struggling with looking in the mirror and seeing a person capable of making babies, who still liked hanging out with her sisters on the playground and reading books in the corner of her room under the window facing the West.
I still had nightmares so vivid and terrible that I would occasionally need my mother to turn the lights on in my room in the middle of the night and explain to me that I was safe. I felt like at any moment my life would be ripped away from me again and I'd have to go somewhere new and start from scratch again.
I remember kids throwing food at me in the cafeteria. The teachers didn't bother to intervene.
I remember in gym class we were forced to do a group activity that involved lifting every student over a fence without touching it. One of the more agile boys jumped the fence, another couple managed to get over by balancing on each other's shoulders. As soon as there were about five boys on the other side, I remember the entire class looked at me, the heaviest, most clumsy girl, and it took four of them to lift me, and then the three on the other side tried to catch me, but I lost my balance and fell. The teacher made us start all over again.
I remember the looks of hatred from my classmates. How my body had failed them.
I remember on the last day of high school, in my last class, which was AP English, and it was my favorite class, the teacher, notoriously strict and hard to please, had allowed all the students to spend the time signing each other's yearbooks, and nobody offered to sign mine.
I sat for eighty minutes staring out the window wishing I was anywhere else.
This is why inclusivity is so important to me now.
I remember how being alone makes you feel so worthless.
How you wonder what, if anything, your purpose is.
I love seeing the women of the bopo movement because they are so committed to make everyone feel welcome. They remind me not to take my healthy body for granted, not to punish it for things the marketing industry has told me are within my control that actually are not.
They remind me that every day is a shifting landscape of self perception that can be built up or torn down by what you expose yourself to and what you allow your mind to buy into.
You know what I've learned in the fifteen+ years since high school?
My body is sexy.
It holds a fascination I never dreamed.
I've learned there are ways I can move and things I can do that can bewitch people.
My body in endlessly forgiving.
It really is. It heals. Over and over. It rebuilds and starts again. It processes, detoxifies, resets and keeps going. I am in awe of how efficient it is. Every day, every hour, my body is being kind to itself, taking care of itself without my even being aware of it. That's pretty magical.
My body doesn't owe anybody anything.
It doesn't owe it to anybody's expectations to look a certain way.
It doesn't owe anybody any action it can perform.
My body doesn't have to perform a task in order to deserve food, rest, sleep, sunshine, or love.
It deserves those period.
My body is not yours to comment on. Ever. If you want to tell me I look beautiful, that's great, but leave it at that, and then let's talk about something else. Gone is the satisfaction of just "looking beautiful" if ever there was any to be had. I want to be more. I want to be clever, compassionate, funny, kind, inventive, and brave. Pretty is incidental. The other qualities I contain, those I chose.
My body is here to experience all the pleasures my senses can conceive of.
I am convinced that the reason our souls choose to inhabit these fleshy consoles is so that they can interact more sensually with the world around us. We are here to enjoy the feelings our biology drive us to feel.
Hunger is to be met with satiety.
Desire is to be quenched with touch.
Your body is so much more than anything anyone has told it is so far.
So stop listening to me.
And start listening to it.
Friday, February 3, 2017
Fuck It February
Oh February.
I dread the second month of year.
There's something about it that's just insulting.
Summer and Autumn are such glorious revels. Spring is such relief from the misery you almost forgive it for its fits and tantrums of cold, wind, and rain because at least it isn't snow, ice, and tomb-like darkness. December has the holidays to humanize it, and January, for whatever reason always seems so busy that I can never get a handle on it until the last week, when I look up, and there it is: February, bleak and endless.
That the shortest month of the year should somehow be experienced as an eternity is part of its hideous sorcery.
It is the month, without fail, that sees me succumb finally to the seasonal depression, to drown in malaise and despair, to wither in isolation, and give up on all my best set intentions of a brand new year.
It is also the month in which I previously used to eat all of my feelings and the contents of all the cupboards.
It's funny...
When I got pregnant, it was the end of February.
Which actually means that I was healthy.
Though I was the heaviest I had been in years. Perhaps that's saying something, eh? That I needed the extra weight in order to perform the function of procreation?
Let that sink in for a minute.
Some of us actually NEED the extra weight for our bodies to perform the functions of a healthy human being.
I think February is also the most difficult because it is the month we spend the most acutely alone with ourselves.
There are no distractions, no holidays or parties to prepare and attend.
The outdoors is a formidable foe, something to be endured as briefly as possible, and not somewhere anyone sensible spends any time.
People don't visit because they're busy burrowing into their own warrens.
People don't go anywhere (unless it's tropical, and let's be honest, I'm not going to the islands this year so nobody else is allowed).
In general, we are left for 28 days to unflinchingly spend in our own company, and this can drive most of us mad because we discover how truly dreadful we are.
In the past, I would challenge myself to do 28 days of yoga (a thinly cloaked announcement that I would be "centering myself" when in reality I was just trying to get six pack abs).
Or I would do a "cleanse".
"You guys, I'm going sugar free for February this year!"
"None for me thanks, I've given up alcohol for the month of February."
"Ugh, you're ice cream looks so good, but I'm not doing dairy this month."
A great way to punish myself and assign an arbitrary sense of virtue and shame to a month I could not give more meaning to on my own.
So with the baby being a teensy bit more self sufficient (read: I can put him down and do a half hour of yoga *sometimes*), I am NOT doing any of that shit this year.
In fact, since I've been sick all week, I've been unable to exercise at all, and I've been ravenous constantly, so I've been eating what I want, when I want, and refusing to feel bad about it.
So here, in no particular order are my goals for this February.
-Continue the trend I began in January, and read a book every week.
-Give up the scale. (I've been weighing myself every Tuesday since I can remember. This month, I'm going to skip it, and see if I forget. I'd really like to throw the damn thing out, but my Beard is all fitness psycho right now. His prerogatives are not my prerogatives though, so FU scale).
-Continue to listen to my body as best I can, rest when it is tired, eat what it wants when I feel hungry, and honor my hunger and fullness cues, but forgive myself if sometimes I eat for comfort because goddamn it is cold out and chocolate coated everything sounds mighty freaking fine.
-Make a concentrated effort to take the baby to a social activity (despite the fact that I'm pretty sure the *&%$-ing library toddler reading group is where I got this cold) at least once a week.
-Continue to donate what I can afford to organizations that resist the agenda of the current political regime, at least once a month. (So far I've done Planned Parenthood and The Preemptive Love Coalition. Next on the list is the ACLU).
-Do something for myself once a week that doesn't involve exercise, food, or baby.
These are my goals.
These are my survival tactics.
This is going to be the first time I look back on a February and I think,
"Yeah, that was pretty effing good."
I dread the second month of year.
There's something about it that's just insulting.
Summer and Autumn are such glorious revels. Spring is such relief from the misery you almost forgive it for its fits and tantrums of cold, wind, and rain because at least it isn't snow, ice, and tomb-like darkness. December has the holidays to humanize it, and January, for whatever reason always seems so busy that I can never get a handle on it until the last week, when I look up, and there it is: February, bleak and endless.
That the shortest month of the year should somehow be experienced as an eternity is part of its hideous sorcery.
It is the month, without fail, that sees me succumb finally to the seasonal depression, to drown in malaise and despair, to wither in isolation, and give up on all my best set intentions of a brand new year.
It is also the month in which I previously used to eat all of my feelings and the contents of all the cupboards.
It's funny...
When I got pregnant, it was the end of February.
Which actually means that I was healthy.
Though I was the heaviest I had been in years. Perhaps that's saying something, eh? That I needed the extra weight in order to perform the function of procreation?
Let that sink in for a minute.
Some of us actually NEED the extra weight for our bodies to perform the functions of a healthy human being.
I think February is also the most difficult because it is the month we spend the most acutely alone with ourselves.
There are no distractions, no holidays or parties to prepare and attend.
The outdoors is a formidable foe, something to be endured as briefly as possible, and not somewhere anyone sensible spends any time.
People don't visit because they're busy burrowing into their own warrens.
People don't go anywhere (unless it's tropical, and let's be honest, I'm not going to the islands this year so nobody else is allowed).
In general, we are left for 28 days to unflinchingly spend in our own company, and this can drive most of us mad because we discover how truly dreadful we are.
In the past, I would challenge myself to do 28 days of yoga (a thinly cloaked announcement that I would be "centering myself" when in reality I was just trying to get six pack abs).
Or I would do a "cleanse".
"You guys, I'm going sugar free for February this year!"
"None for me thanks, I've given up alcohol for the month of February."
"Ugh, you're ice cream looks so good, but I'm not doing dairy this month."
A great way to punish myself and assign an arbitrary sense of virtue and shame to a month I could not give more meaning to on my own.
So with the baby being a teensy bit more self sufficient (read: I can put him down and do a half hour of yoga *sometimes*), I am NOT doing any of that shit this year.
In fact, since I've been sick all week, I've been unable to exercise at all, and I've been ravenous constantly, so I've been eating what I want, when I want, and refusing to feel bad about it.
So here, in no particular order are my goals for this February.
-Continue the trend I began in January, and read a book every week.
-Give up the scale. (I've been weighing myself every Tuesday since I can remember. This month, I'm going to skip it, and see if I forget. I'd really like to throw the damn thing out, but my Beard is all fitness psycho right now. His prerogatives are not my prerogatives though, so FU scale).
-Continue to listen to my body as best I can, rest when it is tired, eat what it wants when I feel hungry, and honor my hunger and fullness cues, but forgive myself if sometimes I eat for comfort because goddamn it is cold out and chocolate coated everything sounds mighty freaking fine.
-Make a concentrated effort to take the baby to a social activity (despite the fact that I'm pretty sure the *&%$-ing library toddler reading group is where I got this cold) at least once a week.
-Continue to donate what I can afford to organizations that resist the agenda of the current political regime, at least once a month. (So far I've done Planned Parenthood and The Preemptive Love Coalition. Next on the list is the ACLU).
-Do something for myself once a week that doesn't involve exercise, food, or baby.
These are my goals.
These are my survival tactics.
This is going to be the first time I look back on a February and I think,
"Yeah, that was pretty effing good."
Wednesday, February 1, 2017
Turning My Head to Save Face
So something happened this week that has brought everything in my life to a screeching halt.
I got fucking sick again.
Only three weeks following the ten day crud affair we brought back from Virginia, I lay down in bed on Monday night and felt a wave of complete awfulness engulf me.
I had been struggling with a sore throat all day, and I drank a lot of tea and tried to ignore it (after all, the baby is super into growling right now, and more is there to do than growl back at him, so i figured I'd just hurt my voice), but no.
It was the strangest thing. I'd been running around all day trying to take care of the baby's weird stomach fussiness, plus he had a pimple (A PIMPLE) on his eyeball, and mailing bills and trying so very hard not to let the news and facebook and all the current media shit get me down, and I just hadn't had time to even think about whether I was really not feeling well. And then I lay down on my back, babesauce all snurdled into the crook of my arm, and I felt like I was being shoved into the bottom of a burlap sack of sickness and the top was being tied closed over my head.
My eyes began to water and my nose began to run simultaneously.
A headache descended over my temples.
Chills began to shake my body uncontrollably (I don't get fevers when I get sick, I get the opposite, don't believe come check my thermometer, in the midst of the worst of this I was 96.3).
And that horrible white noise feeling of sickness seeped throughout my limbs. YOU know what I'm talking about, it's that incapacitating indescribable awfulness. I call it "The Bees". It feels like my head is full of bees. My body is full of bees. There's a thrumming, buzzing, dizzying awfulness, and it's basically like all my blood has been replaced by bees.
Lying there, I thought, well, it's good it's happening now. I'll just get a good night's sleep and battle off this bullshit.
But sleep was nowhere to be found.
Instead my brain began to race with anxious thoughts.
I don't think I need to describe them. The started with current events, global crisis, my meager existence and feeling like I'm not good to humankind because I can't fix this.
Then we were off and running.
From there we went to my own fears of failure as a mother and as a writer and my delight at how having submitted over a dozen and a half pitches, blogs, stories, and poems to various publications and online forums not a single one has been accepted.
This line of thought of course led me to the fear of going broke, going bankrupt, losing everything and then having no recourse when the inevitable need to flee the country arrived.
Circle back to fears about global crisis, powerlessness etc...
And then as it was basically just pulling out all the stops, my brain started simultaneously picking my relationship with my husband apart WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY BROADCASTING THE ENTIRE MOVIE OF THE RING ON THE INSIDE WALL OF MY EYELIDS.
For those of you who don't know, I am terrible at scary movies. I love the cheesy ones, the classic ones, even the clever ones of today, but the really scary, disturbing, unsettling ones bother me for years. Case and point: The Ring. I saw it ONE BLOODY TIME when I was 20 years old. I have proceeded to have nightmares about it for the last FOURTEEN FUCKING YEARS, PEOPLE.
In fact, I'd been blissfully not troubled by images of a pale ass goth bitch in a threadbare nighty clawing her way out of my television for a couple of years now, and then some FUCKER in hollywood figured the series needed a reboot and I began seeing exactly that image on my goddamn youtube page every time I opened it up. Hey movie people: SHOWING PTSD INDUCING FUCKING IMAGES ON HOMEPAGES IS NOT COOL.
But I digress.
So yeah.
I didn't sleep. Not one wink on Monday night.
And I woke up Tuesday with a full blown disaster of a cold.
The thing is, I haven't been anywhere since last week.
I've been busy taking care of the baby, while he got over what he had, and applying for jobs online, and stuck around the house.
I haven't been around anyone, let alone anyone sick.
And then there's the fact that Bastian is better as of yesterday. He's fine.
Doesn't show any sign of this cold, and usually if one of us is sick, the other comes down with it within hours.
Even Beard shows no symptoms.
So I have a theory.
I think this was my body's message to me to slow the fuck down.
I've been racing and freaking out ever since the election. I know it sounds like a cop out to blame that but I've never been this scared before, not even after 9/11.
I knew it that day, and I've felt it since, I just don't know how to make things better, and the powerlessness makes me psychotic.
I feel like as an individual it is my responsibility to stay informed. I feel like I need to be donating and marching and actively resisting, and every moment I'm at home with the baby feels like (and I can't believe I'm saying this) like an excuse not to.
Anyway...so I got sick.
I think my brain got so overwhelmed with fear and anxiety and impotence that it literally shut my body down.
And I am going to listen.
I'm signing off of social media for a while.
In fact, I'm signing off of media in general for awhile.
I'm still going to be informed, but I can't do my job, my incredibly important job of raising my son if I'm like this.
I'm still donating to planned parenthood, the aclu, the preemptive love coalition, and others.
I'm still going to be aware of my surroundings, globally and politically, but I can't do the fear mongering anymore. I can't exist inside a pool of panic all the time. It's literally breaking me.
So I'll still be here, off and on, but don't expect me to engage in too much hot rhetoric.
I'm going back to motherhood, writing, and general baddassery.
Now excuse me. I have a batch of shortbread in the oven and my son wants to play blocks with me.
I got fucking sick again.
Only three weeks following the ten day crud affair we brought back from Virginia, I lay down in bed on Monday night and felt a wave of complete awfulness engulf me.
I had been struggling with a sore throat all day, and I drank a lot of tea and tried to ignore it (after all, the baby is super into growling right now, and more is there to do than growl back at him, so i figured I'd just hurt my voice), but no.
It was the strangest thing. I'd been running around all day trying to take care of the baby's weird stomach fussiness, plus he had a pimple (A PIMPLE) on his eyeball, and mailing bills and trying so very hard not to let the news and facebook and all the current media shit get me down, and I just hadn't had time to even think about whether I was really not feeling well. And then I lay down on my back, babesauce all snurdled into the crook of my arm, and I felt like I was being shoved into the bottom of a burlap sack of sickness and the top was being tied closed over my head.
My eyes began to water and my nose began to run simultaneously.
A headache descended over my temples.
Chills began to shake my body uncontrollably (I don't get fevers when I get sick, I get the opposite, don't believe come check my thermometer, in the midst of the worst of this I was 96.3).
And that horrible white noise feeling of sickness seeped throughout my limbs. YOU know what I'm talking about, it's that incapacitating indescribable awfulness. I call it "The Bees". It feels like my head is full of bees. My body is full of bees. There's a thrumming, buzzing, dizzying awfulness, and it's basically like all my blood has been replaced by bees.
Lying there, I thought, well, it's good it's happening now. I'll just get a good night's sleep and battle off this bullshit.
But sleep was nowhere to be found.
Instead my brain began to race with anxious thoughts.
I don't think I need to describe them. The started with current events, global crisis, my meager existence and feeling like I'm not good to humankind because I can't fix this.
Then we were off and running.
From there we went to my own fears of failure as a mother and as a writer and my delight at how having submitted over a dozen and a half pitches, blogs, stories, and poems to various publications and online forums not a single one has been accepted.
This line of thought of course led me to the fear of going broke, going bankrupt, losing everything and then having no recourse when the inevitable need to flee the country arrived.
Circle back to fears about global crisis, powerlessness etc...
And then as it was basically just pulling out all the stops, my brain started simultaneously picking my relationship with my husband apart WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY BROADCASTING THE ENTIRE MOVIE OF THE RING ON THE INSIDE WALL OF MY EYELIDS.
For those of you who don't know, I am terrible at scary movies. I love the cheesy ones, the classic ones, even the clever ones of today, but the really scary, disturbing, unsettling ones bother me for years. Case and point: The Ring. I saw it ONE BLOODY TIME when I was 20 years old. I have proceeded to have nightmares about it for the last FOURTEEN FUCKING YEARS, PEOPLE.
In fact, I'd been blissfully not troubled by images of a pale ass goth bitch in a threadbare nighty clawing her way out of my television for a couple of years now, and then some FUCKER in hollywood figured the series needed a reboot and I began seeing exactly that image on my goddamn youtube page every time I opened it up. Hey movie people: SHOWING PTSD INDUCING FUCKING IMAGES ON HOMEPAGES IS NOT COOL.
But I digress.
So yeah.
I didn't sleep. Not one wink on Monday night.
And I woke up Tuesday with a full blown disaster of a cold.
The thing is, I haven't been anywhere since last week.
I've been busy taking care of the baby, while he got over what he had, and applying for jobs online, and stuck around the house.
I haven't been around anyone, let alone anyone sick.
And then there's the fact that Bastian is better as of yesterday. He's fine.
Doesn't show any sign of this cold, and usually if one of us is sick, the other comes down with it within hours.
Even Beard shows no symptoms.
So I have a theory.
I think this was my body's message to me to slow the fuck down.
I've been racing and freaking out ever since the election. I know it sounds like a cop out to blame that but I've never been this scared before, not even after 9/11.
I knew it that day, and I've felt it since, I just don't know how to make things better, and the powerlessness makes me psychotic.
I feel like as an individual it is my responsibility to stay informed. I feel like I need to be donating and marching and actively resisting, and every moment I'm at home with the baby feels like (and I can't believe I'm saying this) like an excuse not to.
Anyway...so I got sick.
I think my brain got so overwhelmed with fear and anxiety and impotence that it literally shut my body down.
And I am going to listen.
I'm signing off of social media for a while.
In fact, I'm signing off of media in general for awhile.
I'm still going to be informed, but I can't do my job, my incredibly important job of raising my son if I'm like this.
I'm still donating to planned parenthood, the aclu, the preemptive love coalition, and others.
I'm still going to be aware of my surroundings, globally and politically, but I can't do the fear mongering anymore. I can't exist inside a pool of panic all the time. It's literally breaking me.
So I'll still be here, off and on, but don't expect me to engage in too much hot rhetoric.
I'm going back to motherhood, writing, and general baddassery.
Now excuse me. I have a batch of shortbread in the oven and my son wants to play blocks with me.
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