A Return to the Aughts

 

On a whim, I decided to read the most recent, random blog post from Hey Natalie Jean. Her old Nat the Fat Rat days pulled me out of a deep depression once upon a time and for a while, I lived for what she posted. She was my Mormon mommy Oprah. And funnily enough, her most recent post was about her leaving the church and creating a safe space for others who were wrestling with doing the same. She also mentioned another reader who changed her life when they told her her words helped them stop self-cutting. 

And I skimmed a few archived posts and felt so wistful for the early blogging days when Instagram was barely a thing and we were all posting blurry, heavily filtered shots for basically no one. 

I decided to go back. To try anyway. To barely existing on Instagram and blogging just to get out your thoughts and posting a few filtered snapshots to accompany them. 

Not for nothing, Natalie Jean was the one who inspired me to have a positive attitude about motherhood, which felt like such an incredibly rare thing. And since she stopped sharing…I’ve stopped feeling the joy and let myself get bogged down in the drudgery. 

Also totally unrelated I blew through the final season of Dead to Me and not without some tears. I am so sad for Christina Applegate and knowing how she suffered to bring fans this conclusion. There was also an appearance by Katy Sagal and it took me a minute to remember that she was Christina’s TV mom once upon a time. Shows like this and like Grace and Frankie give me hope that one day I’ll have a best friend again. Travis is more or less my best friend these days, but a platonic female friend who really gets me and accepts me would sure be nice. I am friendly with a lot of people but I don’t feel like I really have friends anymore…and that’s part of what had me feeling so lonely and dark lately. 

I’m going to try harder. To find the joy. To appreciate what I have. I could really, really use a win…but until I get it, I can only control my own response to what goes on around me. 

One Door Closes

 

Unofficially, this is a chapter that’s been closed for four years. But there’s been this little voice nagging me, unable to fully let go. A little what if? A little uncertainty that this is what’s right. Fear of going forward and being a whole-ass adult woman free to live her life. 

For four years now, we’ve been careful. I tried another birth control implant that made me feel psychotic and out of control. I think the only way it prevents pregnancy is by killing your sex drive so there’s no chance of it happening anyway. After fourteen months, I had to remove it for the sake of my relationship. Since then, it’s been good old-fashioned condoms. The plan has always been for him to have a vasectomy; to be honest, I’m not entirely sure why he hasn’t. It’s not something I can do for him, I guess? And the continued ability to produce children isn’t causing physical pain like his wisdom teeth. I don’t know...but I’ve been telling people loudly and often that I’m definitely done having kids. Whether to convince myself or perhaps to try to tempt fate once again, I’m not sure. But I started to believe it as the years went on. 

Last month we weren’t careful. We weren’t careful more than once. We weren’t careful during my peak fertility days. And as I sit here, still constipated and a little nauseous, lacking the trademark soreness in my boobs that always signals the impending start of my period, I’m struggling accepting that single, solitary line on the test I took. The one I honestly didn’t see coming with the way I’ve been feeling. Deep in my guts, I still don’t feel done. I had resolved myself to cutting us off from any more biological children, reasoning that we will be in a great position to adopt someday “when we have our life together,” if we still feel like we’re missing someone. I’m less than a year from all of my kids being in school full-time. I’m finally applying to the accelerated nursing program I should’ve started four years ago. I need another baby like I need another hole in my head. 

But when the week of my period came and I felt none of my usual symptoms, I couldn’t help myself. I Googled OBs hoping their short blurbs could tell me which one had the most high risk experience. I mentally worked another car payment into the budget to trade for a bigger passenger van. I imagined myself sheepishly telling Travis, my friends...asking my sister to save me a spot when she opens her in-home daycare again. I pinned Solly wraps and space-age baby equipment on a Pinterest board I haven’t really touched since I was carrying Willa. I tried to picture my normal daily routine with a baby in it. I refreshed myself on the benefits of red raspberry leaf tea during pregnancy. I researched the outcomes of pregnancy and delivery after uterine rupture. I looked at tiny outfits at Target. 

Yesterday was the estimated start date for my period. Today I bought a two-pack of early detection tests via Target drive-up and thought about how much more amazingly convenient life has become just since my last baby. I picked up my order with a carful of children under the age of five, in between preschool and lunch. I rushed everyone into the house, my bladder bursting, hoping I could make it to the bathroom and get the test open before I exploded. The test line showed up fast and clear. It didn’t look like another line was going to appear, but I set down the stick and walked away, busying myself with lunch preparations. I checked it after five minutes. I checked it after twenty minutes. Still just one line. Not Pregnant. 

My stomach dropped a little bit. I texted Travis that he dodged a bullet but we absolutely need to get him fixed if we don’t want anymore babies or for me to die...for real this time. It is really, truly the end. 

And I love having older kids. I always thought of myself as a baby person and had no idea what to do with older kids, but I’ve adapted and grown alongside them and I’m in love with who they’re turning out to be. They fight a lot and they’re messy and their interests don’t always interest me. They have opinions and they’re loud. But it is so much better than I ever dreamed of. I can’t saddle them with another one when our house, our car, our budget, our life are all already bursting at the seams. This is the way it’s supposed to be. 

Yes, I’m still trying to convince myself. 

The Bad Place

 When I was actually excited (but still anxious) about going out. 

Surprise, I’ve been struggling lately. Every so often I try to quit social media because I feel so shitty about it and/or post something embarrassing and want to disappear. But then I still have so much in my brain that I can’t share so I come back to this neglected space and dust off the cobwebs and word vomit all over the place. 

I don’t know if it’s hormones or just the state of the world but I never feel okay or safe anymore. I’m scared all of the time of something bad happening, especially to the baby. I feel so out of sorts and I can’t quite pinpoint one particular thing making me feel that way. Tiny House just sort of…stopped scheduling me and basically ghosted me without a word? Which is sort of a relief but also adds to my general feeling of worthlessness and never-good-enough-ness. I volunteered to come in in the middle of my vacation to cover someone who said they had asked for the day off and didn’t get it. It was an opening shift I hadn’t worked before, which I made clear but said I’d come in if it would help out. I ended up working with the owner, who probably thinks I’m a total idiot…despite my saying that I’ve never bartended or done more than serve very basic drinks like on-tap hard cider. I’m usually a fast learner, but learning all of this fancy cocktail shit when I’ve always been a beer-and-seltzer girl and only work one usually busy evening a week has been a struggle. I assumed it was okay to ask a lot of questions and try to keep learning as I went but it seems I was written off as a lost cause. My little bit of extra summer fun money, My Own Thing, my excuse for getting dressed and interacting with other adults is gone and it’s back to being the overwhelmed mom with sticky floors and no breaks. Also pretty sure the person I worked for didn’t even say thank you…

Travis worked last Saturday and has been working late almost every night this week so we’ve felt pretty out of sync. He busted ass to get done earlier on our anniversary and I still had to rush all of the kids around myself and show up late to our date. We had asked my sister to babysit and I had a feeling going into it that it wasn’t the best idea, but we didn’t have many other options and Clementine and her stranger danger aren’t cool with a lot of people right now. It’s been rough. Every conversation we’ve had lately has been further proof it was a mistake to add my neediest (well…probably second-neediest, honestly) child to the mix. But I desperately needed this night out and while I was disappointed that we were going to have to get back so early, especially when I already had to show up late, I had every intention of sticking to the agreement. We had no intention of milking our time. I kept thinking “10:30ish, as long as we leave by 10:30 at the latest, we’ll still make that ‘-ish’. We just kept running into people we hadn’t seen in forever (because we almost never get out), and were struggling to break the conversations. I told Travis repeatedly “we HAVE to get going.” But I also drank too much too fast on a nearly-empty stomach, trying to make the most of our two hours, and I was starting to forget about anything else. 

In any case…things didn’t end well and we haven’t talked since. I know it was my bad for being late but I don’t think things were handled well on either end and attempts to talk it out never go well for us so I guess we just…don’t talk anymore? The worst thing is I had to ask my ex-husband to babysit Sunday night for the Bright Eyes show we’ve had tickets for since my birthday…that I don’t even really want to go to anymore after how things went the other night. I know he won’t make me feel bad (in the moment anyway) or rush me but I also know Clementine won’t be happy and I don’t want to be tempted to drink, which I always am, no matter how bad things get. It’s just terrible timing all around. 

I feel wracked with guilt and shame all of the time. My mental energy is consumed by how bad the news is all of the time. I want to do so many things with my kids but I just feel frozen. It feels like so much work just to be alive and be a person.