Mamarati

Are the Republicans trying to ride on the wave of pride leftover from the Olympics or something? Do they know they aren’t campaigning in China? It’s really weird to me to see all that chanting start up. Ummm, we’re all Americans here. I think no matter what side of the issues you are on, most of us just want what’s best for the country.

I don’t know, I think there are enough things that we disagree on that we don’t need to add a fake thing. It’s strangely alienating.

Now, I said I was going to talk more about politics, because it’s a pretty big part of life in this household. But… this is a conversation so large and complex, I just don’t think I can even begin.

I will try, though. I always think it must be nice for those people who are absolutely 100 percent sure of how they feel or believe about anything. I’m not that way. There are very few issues that are black and white for me. And there is no platform that I am 100 percent behind. I lean lately more toward the Democratic party not so much because of what they are but what they aren’t. And because of who I am right now. And because it’s one of the few two choices out there.

I think it’s really unfair that a candidate has to line up with a party so completely. There are very few say, Republicans that are pro-choice. Or Democrats that are against choice. A few. But it’s like so much hinges on that issue, for example. And if you believe the opposite way of how you’re “supposed” to for your party, it’s like you’re some kind of traitor instead of some kind of person who has come to a different conclusion about a thing. It’s like you’re forced into believing (or at least saying you believe) a certain way.

And I think that’s terrible. And it’s so terribly dishonest. And it makes the media coverage of things like elections or crises a big lie. You see these spokespersons and pundits up there one minute talking about how much they love McCain and think he made a great choice about picking Palin, and they’re all smiles and joy and bubbling with support. Then you go off camera and, Oops, open mic, and the story is completely different. They’re saying the exact opposite and slamming his choice.

And then there’s all this fakery about how we shouldn’t talk about Palin because she’s a woman, we shouldn’t talk about her being a mom. We shouldn’t talk about her kids. We shouldn’t talk about her pregnant teen. We shouldn’t question whether she can do both things. That’s anti-woman. Look how hard we’ve fought for blah blah blah blah.

No. Anyone who says we shouldn’t be discussing these things can just go on and stop talking about them. But for me, I will continue to talk about these things. Because some of these things are things we haven’t been talking about and quite frankly they are just the conversations we need to have. Can we, as women, as mothers, balance it all? Can we do it all? Are we superwomen?

I mean, you can continue to be a martyr if you want and you can say bring on the challenges. Bring on the adversity. Make it hard, as hard as you can. Don’t give me any slack just because I’m a woman or a mother. To that, I say NO. We do need to be protected on the job against discrimination. WHY? Because discrimination against moms happens. We do need privacy and more breaks for pumping milk. WHY? Because not everyone wants to feed their kid formula and because that’s how breastfeeding works. Supply and demand. We do need flexible work hours. It’s not a 9-to-5 world any more and why should it be anyway? It would help more than just moms, it would ease traffic burdens and energy costs, too. We do need flexibility about where to work. Because not every job requires my butt to be sitting in a seat in an office somewhere when I could be doing it (and probably even more efficiently) at home, thus reducing child care costs, etc.

So, with this Palin stuff, I am afraid that some people are going to get this idea that, WOW, here’s this powerful woman and she’s doing it all. How amazing. If she can do it, anyone can do it. She went back to work just days after having a baby. So you can back to work just days after having a baby. She got on the plane when her water had broken, so you can, too. She has five kids and is going to try and be the Vice President, so what’s your problem that you can’t work a few hours or 20 of overtime?

Know what I mean? And I’m sorry, she may have that small-town background, but make no mistake that what she’s doing now and what she’s been doing for the past few years is not at all middle class. I don’t know too many poor folks or even middle class folks that can afford a nanny and a housekeeper. I also know that most families don’t have kids spread out that far apart where the teens can take care of the babies and younger kids. Most of us do not have child care that is so flexible we could leave the house at a moment’s notice without completely disrupting our kids every time. Most of us do not have husbands that stay home with our kids.

Of all the women that I know with kids who also work, very few of them have husbands that do a significant portion of things like taking care of the kids or taking care of stuff around the house like cooking or cleaning. Certainly nothing like half of it even though they may be working as many or more hours than their husbands. There are exceptions to this, of course, but not an overwhelming amount. Not many of their husbands woke up in the night with their babies or do laundry regularly or sweep, mop, dust… and very few cook regularly, plan the meals or shop for the food. If the kids are sick and someone needs to stay home with the kids, most of the time it’s mom. If the kids need to go to the doctor, it’s probably mom that takes them. And this goes beyond just the people I know, too. I mean, my kid has tons of health issues, and when we’re sitting at the allergy shot clinic, it’s 98 percent moms with the kids. Ditto all the other doctor’s appointments. This is how it works in my neighborhood.

So, the expectation that moms are just so wonderful and they can do anything and they can balance and juggle it all… that’s all sweet and quaint. But it’s not true. There’s a lot of sacrifice in there and a lot of suffering and resentfulness and guilt and we need to keep talking about it so it can get better. Of course motherhood without having an outside job is full of times of sacrifice and suffering and whatnot, I’m just saying that we don’t all have to put on this stoicism and run around like a bunch of friggin’ martyrs when we can talk about it, hash it all out and figure out what can make it better for women and for their kids and families overall. For society overall. I know many of us would like a little more joy and a little less hardship and I think we can get that if we keep this conversation going and not act like it’s taboo or it’s going to collapse everything that women have worked so hard for. Give me a break. We’re still working hard. Palin is not evidence that we’ve arrived, by far. Hillary isn’t either.

So, in short, regarding the working mom thing, I don’t think that anyone should confuse what Palin is doing with what working moms are doing. Palin is making sacrifices that are above and beyond what should be EXPECTED of a working mother. I’m sure she’s doing it because she feels she has a calling that goes beyond what she feels called to do directly for her family. Don’t kid yourself, no matter what you hear in the media… She knows that she’s not giving her family 100 percent. The only way you’d be so clueless is if you were in complete denial. BUT, that’s not to say that she doesn’t feel that what she’s doing is going to provide an even better life for them, for their kids, for their kids and generations on… there’s something to be said about making sacrifices now for huge change for the future.

But for your average working mom, that’s not what’s happening. And the support network that Palin has in place does not one iota resemble what that everyday working mom has to contend with. And the EXPECTATION should not be the same. It doesn’t even compare. And of course I realize that you can work and still be a good mom. But I also know that you can work and be a mom who is doing her best but is still leaving a lot to be desired in the parenting arena, whether you realize it or not. And I realize, too, that sometimes, these are the sacrifices that have to be made because food has to be on the table and a roof has to be over your heads. But I’m also saying that not talking about it and pretending that everything is perfect and fine — that’s not going to bring about any changes.

We have come a long way, but we need to keep going. When I was growing up, for example, and I lived with my dad and step-mom… there were a variety of tough things going on. I had lots of emotional problems, my mom was an alcoholic and I couldn’t live with her any more after the divorce, we had a big family (13 kids) that was just full of drama all the time… I could go on and on. My dad would leave the house before I ever woke up. He would get home many times after I’d gone to bed. My step-mom worked a split shift as a waitress and would be in bed or getting ready for work when I got up to go to school and would sometimes work till late in the evenings and I wouldn’t see her either. They were so tired when I did see them that they hardly had the energy to deal with me. I was the baby of the family so I’m not sure they had the energy left to deal with me anyway. On the weekends, she would still work or they would do housework, yard work or do their own thing. My dad was obsessed with our ginormous yard. It looked like a friggin’ golf course. His battle with moles is the stuff of legend. When I came home from school and let myself in the door (from about 2nd grade on) I was responsible for myself. I could wake up in the morning and roll off the side of my bed between it and the wall and my parents would think I’d gone to school. I could then go play in the woods all day long. Maybe that’s typical for a teen to do once in a while. No, I was doing this from 4th grade on. In 5th grade, I was in the office almost every day getting swats and I never did my homework. I was so clueless in math, so behind in it that when I looked at my assignments it was like trying to read a foreign language.

OK… my parents didn’t even know 99 percent of this stuff. And half the calls they got from the school they just ignored. Were my parents neglectful? Absolutely. But then how much choice did they have then when they had to stay afloat and my dad was an criminal defense attorney and could not cancel people’s court dates and he always had to be somewhere meeting with a client… and my stepmom would lose her job if she took time off to deal with me. This was the reality. Were they good parents? Actually, no. They weren’t. That is also reality. There was no one for me to talk to about my problems. No one told me about my period. No one explained the world to me. No one cared for me. No one noticed if I didn’t take a bath for a month. No one helped me recover from failing grades. No one noticed I had asthma or allergies. No one was happy to see me in the morning or at the end of the day. Hell, half the time I didn’t even see anyone so wouldn’t know if they were happy to see me or not.

I try to be forgiving and understanding when I look back at that time, but it’s not easy, really. I look at the sacrifices and I’m not sure what they were all for. They weren’t for me. I didn’t need that big house or those 8 acres of land. I didn’t need fancy lighting fixtures or a giant pond or a new Ford Mustang or plastic surgery or 50 trees to line the driveway. I needed an inhaler, an antihistamine and some help with my homework. I needed someone’s time.

I realize that my upbringing may not have been the most typical, but I know I’m not alone. And the more Burby parents can argue that they do get to spend time with their kids and that they do meet all their needs. Awesome. And other parents will argue that they may not meet all their needs but that they try their best. WooHoo. And there are other parents who are trapped in an existence that is so bleak, working two or more jobs or working and going to school and barely making ends meet and I don’t know what they will say… And I don’t know what to say to them. But I do know that what I won’t say is, “Hey, shut up. We don’t talk about this issue. You suck it up and deal with it because you’re a woman and this is what you wanted, isn’t it?”

There are so many different levels here and to deny the level another person is on is just nuts. I realize I’m rambling at this point, but hey, like I said… it’s complex. And there is no black and white. And your life is not someone else’s life so you should reserve your meanness and harsh judgment… but you should never stop talking about it or scrutinizing it or rolling it over and over in your mind to try to figure out what it all means. Because there is no one truth to this all. And it’s certainly not anything at all like what you see on either end of the political spectrum. Take down your defenses and look deep down inside and think about what you really want for your life and what you really want for your kids, for your sons and daughters… for their friends and their friend’s mothers. And don’t ever stop talking about it.

I love a good purge.

I mean, I love it afterward when I have room in a drawer, cabinet or closet.

Before the purge, I am not so in love. I don’t want to let go of a single thing. I think that the first 20 years of life — having nothing — made me spend the next 10 years collecting every little particle that entered my universe.

Then I had to make a series of moves. From giant apartments and a big house (complete with off site storage unit) into a tiny apartment. TINY. That helped me come to grips with my problem. It made me realize a few things…

First, that it’s OK to get rid of stuff. I’m going to get more stuff at some point. I will probably never be so addicted to something that I spend all my money on that one thing to the exclusion of everything else. I will not ignore the necessities of life like food, clothing and shelter in favor of something. That’s not me. That was my mother and I’m not my mother. Yay.

Second, all that stuff isn’t important any way. But, I like stuff. Why oh why do I like it so much??? What’s the deal with stuff? Who cares about all that stuff? It’s an encumbrance most of the time. You have to dust stuff. Pay movers to move stuff. Store stuff. Take care of stuff. Be responsible in the way you dispose of stuff. Ugh. For what?

Third, I don’t have to store every little thing that reminds me of some other little thing. I went through a phase where I thought I was really sentimental. And I kept every little thing. Every receipt, ticket stub, rock, blade of grass, pressed flower, cork… you name it. Ugh. Sure, it’s fun to look through those things once in a while, but what I realized was that the more stuff I saved in the name of sentimentality, the less all of it mattered. I’m not really all that sentimental anyway, so I don’t know what I was thinking. It’s OK to save things like that, though, but for me, it’s better not to.

Now, those are some of the things I learned. Putting those things in practice is another story. I’d say I’m doing pretty well, though. It took me 30 years to get to that point. It’s taken me six more to begin to apply the learning. I go slow. Rome wasn’t built in a day.

At any rate, I’m going through the closet now and I’ve committed to really narrowing it down. Throughout all my childhood, just about all my belongings would fit in one box. Nearly all my clothes would fit in a single suitcase. I could move every single thing I owned in my car — in one trip — up until the time I was about 23. I’m nowhere near that now, of course, and I don’t want to be… but I would love to take up about half the space in the closet that I do right now.

Mental note to self: Talk about how expensive clothes were back when everything wasn’t made in China.

She died in a car accident on Friday.

My brother Richard’s daughter.

I haven’t seen her in so long. I guess it’s been since Richard’s mom’s funeral. That seems like forever ago. I found out through a message on my myspace account.

She was a beautiful girl. She always was. My brother is not holding up well, it sounds like. I cannot imagine what it would be like to lose Jacob. I don’t think I’d know why much more mattered in the world after that. He is lucky to have another daughter to keep him tethered to reality, I imagine. They will need each other so much right now.

I need to go to Oklahoma now for the funeral. And I am going to see people I haven’t seen in many years.

For a long time I wanted to think that what I was doing was isolating myself. Insulating myself. But that’s not true. What really happened, was… One day I decided to see what would happen if I stopped calling everyone. If I stopped pushing myself into everyone’s lives. If I stopped maintaining. If I stopped being the one upon whom all communication depended. Because it wasn’t my phone that was ringing. It was always me. Why was it always me?

And when I did that… when I stopped, I disappeared. No one called. No one wrote. No one came to visit. No one inquired. No one came to my son’s birth. No one came to his surgeries. And by the time I had my accident this year, there was no one to call to say that I’d almost died. And I didn’t really mind that much.

I always left a little bit of a trail, though. In case anyone wanted to follow. And it’s clear to me that when it is necessary, I can be found. Yesterday is an example of this. More than one person was able to find me and let me know this awful news, less than 24 hours after it happened.

But it is disappointing. I write at a site owned by the New York Times, people. My picture is on every page there. You can google my name and despite its popularity, I am generally in the first page or two of results. For years I was the first result. Even though nobody knows my maiden name except my family, I intentionally put it in the keywords so that in case anyone wanted to come looking, they could find me.

But no one does. Today it just drives home the fact that the day I stopped was the day I disappeared. Everyone else had stopped long before then. Perhaps some had never even started. I don’t have any person or situation to blame for any of that. Perhaps it’s just the way that things go. The way circumstances are. Wide gaps of age, conflicts in beliefs, different paths, busy lives. Who knows?

I think it’s more than that, though.

This feels so much like when my grandmother died. It was all on my birthday and yet I could not be happy. Yesterday was my son’s birthday party. Tomorrow is my birthday. Here we are again.

David came to visit me yesterday. A surprise visit since he’s been in Houston for a while now after graduating. I was so happy to see him. I hadn’t gotten on my computer yet to find this out about my niece… So it was a happy visit.

My boyfriend gets back today after being gone nearly a week.

“Discipline doesn’t produce immediate joy, but it is an investment that will pay great dividends in due time.” (Hebrews 12:11)

Seriously, though.

Yesterday I got to thinking about my weight and just how I feel in general. And I’ve been down this road before… realizing that I’m not eating the best I can. That I eat too much fat and sugar.

And in my quest to get rid of high fructose corn syrup, I end up eating more sugar. And in my quest to get rid of trans fats, I eat more of other fats. Read the rest of this entry »

I just saw this on Boing Boing as I sipped my morning coffee and enjoyed the complete and total silence that signals that school has started for my wee boy…

And wow, does that bring back memories or what? I don’t think I have ever realized just how much damn television I watched as a kid. I recognized nearly every logo clip except the local ones. Go through it with your eyes closed and you can even see the logos in your head… the one for ITC — that’s totally Muppet Show, y’all. I must have seen and heard that a million times in my life. Read the rest of this entry »

I just had a really disturbing dream about my mom. my adoptive mom. I woke up feeling really scared.

skittish details: a trailer, mud, walking, her trying to ground me, cornering me, she had one tooth, confronted her about alcoholism and being emotionally dead, tried to hit her, was speaking to her in a very venemous way, we were in a big closet type thing…

anyway… I woke up and couldn’t sleep. started having thoughts about things… my mom and how I just really treated her with such ? distance and dread towards the end, because she just didn’t feel much like my mother. And now how I pity her.

Then I got to thinking about things… with this baby, with past babies. My first. I got to thinking about my oldest brother. and how I’ve never really dealt with what went on with him, and how I never really can because he holds that key to my past and I can’t risk losing it.

other thoughts, but it’s late and I do need to get some sleep, but I just wanted to make a note of thinking these things because it seems important somehow.

I’m going to have to deal with that stuff one day. I should probably get a head start now. or something.

just a thought.

once upon a time… there was this girl…

well, you know, there was me. And I was young. And I was stupid. And I needed… something.

I do not even know if it is possible to even begin to tell the story of who I was then, what was really going on.

All I know is that, like many crossroads I have come to in my life… nothing was right. Nothing was right. Nothing felt right or good. My future seemed bleak. And when your future seems bleak, you don’t live for it. You live for whatever needs you have to meet right at that moment, and screw what the consequences are later on.

I was such a different person then. What was going through my head? Why was I so weak then?

As always in my life, I had no one. And I met a someone who wanted to be somebody in my life. This was nice. To have someone who wanted me. I was 17 at the time and he was 21. That may not seem like a huge age difference, just a few years… but think about it, you’re talking about a teenager and an adult. Someone who can’t even vote and then someone who can already buy beer.

I had absolutely no idea where I was going in life. I had already been without parental supervision for 6 years. From what I could tell, there wasn’t much more for me than that.

I was pretty innocent. Or maybe naive is the better word. Gullible is a good one, too. I didn’t know the first thing about what sex really was all about.

My God, I can hardly remember what that was like. I can’t remember what it was like when my body was basically untouched. I can’t remember what it was like to never have given birth, never have had a stretch mark, never have known what it was like to gain 80 pounds in nine months and then shed it all in 4 weeks. I had never known the pain of labor then… Imagine that. It’s so hard to do. How tender my skin must have been. How pink my nipples must have been. What a different outlook I must have had about life.

Anyway… I met this boy, and pretty soon, he became the center of my world. He was the only person who paid any attention to me at all. And he wanted it that way. I saw this slow development, but didn’t know really what it meant or how to stop it. He imagined all these things, that other guys were looking at me, that I was talking or flirting with them. He was possessive and didn’t like any of the people who I hung out with. So… I stopped hanging out with them. This was OK, because he gave me a lot of things in return. He made me feel like he was all I ever needed in the world. And then there came the point where he wanted to have sex with me, and I was pretty scared… so I held out as long as it seemed I could, and then he started pressuring me, saying that he would get it from someone else, that he would leave me, that… just lots of things. It was a different thing every time he wanted it.

I knew… or thought… or had some notion, of how I thought that it was supposed to be. Like… slow and special and all those things you see in movies with love scenes.

But it wasn’t at all. And I didn’t feel good at all.

And we didn’t use anything at all. No protection. It never even crossed my mind… I mean, I’d never had a reason to even think of it before.

And I got pregnant that very night. But a very long and hard month and a half went by before I ever even knew it.

Then he became rather violent. Manipulative and very controlling. Nearly every time that we saw eachother after that, something happened. After the sex, I wanted to leave him, but, he wouldn’t let me, and really, he was all I had, so where was I going to go? And he just… much like my father, he just broke me down and broke me down till I gave up trying to get away. He would hit me and choke me and tell me he was going to kill me. He would choke me till I felt like I was going to pass out and he’d tell me to promise that I would never leave him or he wasn’t going to let go. So I would.

Sometimes it was almost like a game. Sometimes it felt normal to me. Sometimes I felt like I just needed to be really submissive and deal with it. It makes sense to me now, because that is the role model I had of most of the women in my life.

Then he found out I was pregnant, and then he hit me and kicked me and basically left me alone behind a building’s dumpster where we were staying. I left to stay with my sister and he moved to Texas, back home with his mother. Left me completely.

So much in the world I didn’t know about life. Myself. How things are supposed to work, how people think they should work and then how they really do work. So much of my reality so different than the rest of the world I was living in. Not much in common with… anyone or anything. At least not much in common with anyone I’d want it to be with… if that makes any sense.

All of this seemed to be impossibly happening to me, and yet, there I was down in it.

And I had this whole pregnancy to deal with.

Everyone wanted me to deal with it, too. Suddenly all the people, like family, came out of the woodwork and started trying to make decisions for me. Abortion and such. I was young, after all. It’s OK when you’re young, right?

And no one would hire me to work.

And I was miserable and tired and emotionally wrecked and not finished with school.

And no one wanted me to live with them, no one wanted to help me because I wouldn’t have an abortion. No one wanted to help me raise this child. And I knew there was no way I could do it alone. I didn’t even have a place to live. I was alternating between staying some nights with my sister when I could, sleeping in my car, crashing with a friend when I could find one. I signed up for assistance and I was able to get prenatal care, free vitamins and all, and food stamps, which didn’t help me too much because I had no place to put food. My brother talked me into putting the baby up for adoption, basically, because he was an attorney and his wife a social worker and they said they would get me a place to stay while I was pregnant. And they did. Roach infested, tiny, cold apartment on the south side of town where it wasn’t safe to be outside after dark and where I had to wait in front of the mailboxes on food stamp day or someone would steal them. With a phone that I could only make local calls on. And in my quad there was a very judgemental woman with five million cats, 2 lesbian biker girls who did lots of partying and a guy, his common law wife and his two babies and he beat them all three incessantly.

This was how I lived. And I sat in that apartment and ate my $99 worth of tax-free food and watched my 14-inch black and white TV that picked up three channels and read whatever books I could scavenge. And I wrote. (unfortunately, in a fit of anger and disgust, I burned everything I wrote some months after she was born thinking I would never want to remember those days, thinking I could somehow forget it all.)

And I had a cat. And a lot of roaches. And I washed my clothes in the tub and hung them to dry. And I got my maternity clothes at a thrift shop with the change that I had leftover from when there was a dollar I didn’t fully spend of my food stamps. My brother’s girlfriend brought me a big box of maternity clothes one day and I thought I was in heaven!

I’m pretty sure that my brother made a significant amount of money dealing with the “legal side” of giving up my baby. In looking back, I think I would have liked being taken care of during that time a little better. Some counseling would have been nice. In fact, this was one of the agreements that we made. I specifically told him that if I ever felt like I needed to go to the shrink, that I wanted help paying for that. That never happened.

Anyway… Six months or so of my life… every day. Just like that. Just me, my cat (fly he was named, because he thought he could) and my mangled up body and the baby inside me that was making it all so. And the drunk phone calls from David telling me how he loved me and wanted to be with me (and then five minutes later telling me how he bet I was screwing entire city blocks of men in my spare time just to spite him and how he was gonna kill me and cut the baby out of me and take it home if he ever got back to Oklahoma) and that was about it.

I was three weeks overdue when I finally lost my plug and went to the doctor to get checked. I was dilated to a four when I got there. He told me to drive to the hospital. I did. Alone. I had my first hard contraction on the way. In 7-11. (elevens?) In spite of the fact that I’d been neglected, forgotten, belittled, beaten, and bruised at the hands of others throughout my life… nothing was like this pain. And I arrived at the hospital. Alone. And I checked in and I was dilated to a seven. And my contractions started coming hard. And I called my sister, and later my entire family showed up and made me miserable throughout the next two hours. They gave me demoral for the pain but it made me sick and out of control and didn’t relieve the pain at all. And I got my head stuck between the bars of the bed and they had to slather my head with vaseline to get it out. And finally they gave me an epidural. And I was so high from the demoral, and so numb and couldn’t move. Trapped like an animal. And everyone was talking and I could hear them… talking about how I wasn’t keeping the baby. Everyone was wondering if I would chang my mind. (She won’t. She doesn’t even want it. She can’t raise a baby on her own. I’m not helping her, that’s for damn sure. Do the parents know she’s in labor? She wants to see the baby, can’t we stop her? I know she’s 18 and they have to let her do what she wants, but can’t we do something? Maybe they could keep it in the nursery, just let her see it for a few minutes. She’s so high now maybe she won’t remember it. Are they gonna let you take the baby before she gets released? Talk to the doctor and see if you can. How long are you gonna pay for that apartment for her? You think she’ll be able to work pretty soon?) I just laid there, I guess everyone thinking I was asleep… just listening to it all.

My own family saying all this…

So casually they discussed what was my misery, my misfortune, my bad situation…

What about me?

And then I felt like I needed to push, and I did for a long time it seemed, but it couldn’t have been, because from the time I checked in to the time she was born was only 5 hours.

She ripped through me so completely. I couldn’t even hold her because they were so busy sewing me up. Forever and ever it seemed he worked on me. Left me in stirrups with a lamp on me to dry and tighten my stitches. 45 or so of them, inside and out. Muscle that had to be reconstructed… groups of students coming in and out to look at the job he’d done while I just laid there, drugged, alone.

And then my family left. And I slept. And they brought her to me in her little glass bassinet and I held her and told her she was Victoria Nicole. And that I was sorry. And that I would miss her. And that I loved her. And…

I’ve never told a soul this in my entire life… In fact I’ve even denied it outright to anyone who has ever asked… but I nursed her that first night, just for a moment. And I soaked her little gown with my tears while I did. And I felt like her mommy. And I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to stop it all. So I didn’t.

I bucked up and smooshed it all down inside me, and outwardly became so cold and detached. This changed me forever. It changed who I had been. More of an INFP, really, but now I had to stop with all that F. It was time to trade that in for a mechanical, hardened T if I was ever going to survive this.

The drugs helped with that a lot. And they gave me a phenomenal amount of them.

And then I stayed with my brother for a while, while I was “healing.” Physically I guess. I wanted to talk to someone, a shrink or something, but he wouldn’t pay for it and I couldn’t afford it, and my medicaid was gone since I was no longer pregnant, only my postnatal check-up would be covered.

And then.

Some things happened (one of eleven) that I can’t talk about. It’s the thing that I’ve never been able to talk about. That I’ve never told a soul. Except that I wrote it down one time, recently, when I had to fill out questionnaires to see the shrinks this last time I felt like I needed something for my depression.

And it was the first time ever. and since.

But I find myself wanting to talk about it all. But it just reinforces all the badness that is my life. And I don’t know if it’s part of what keeps me like this. And I don’t know if it’s not. And I don’t know if it’s better in or if it would be better out.

And I’m scared to even say it. And I think, if I never do, then maybe I can pretend it’s not even real.

And sometimes I feel absolutely crazy, and it’s no damn wonder. What a mess. What a mess it all is. And what a mess followed it all. preceded it all.

Why would I think that things would ever be different for me?

And the adoptive parents of Alex just wrote me to tell me that his adoption was just finalized. And while that was a different situation, a different thing… it feels bad, too.

I’m just so so damaged. Some days I feel like I will just never be OK. And because I will never be okay, I can never… have anyone for me. Have anything for me. Have any rest. Have any peace.

I’m just so so flawed and damaged.

Some days I feel like I’m too tired to go on with it any more. I’m too tired to wonder how to stop hurting.