Post partum

It's really impossible to measure what I've gained and lost in this online life I've led for the past four years or so.

The gains have been unique and exquisite and huge and life-changing.

But some of the losses have been devastating beyond description and have left long-term damage.

It's been one hell of an adventure.

But there comes a point where--like poor New Orleans--you wonder whether you're even meant to keep rebuilding.

I'm exhausted and lonely and hurting and wondering where everyone went.

And, for god's sake, why?

I've been fighting it, but tonight, I've decided to send up the white flag.

I'm tired.  And it just keeps coming.

So I'm just going to curl up around the hurt and the losses and the depression and give up for a while.

Goddess, this is not what I wanted to teach my daughter before she's even a year old.

But I'm praying that she's too young to perceive much of it, yet.

And maybe, just maybe, I'll learn something in surrender that I couldn't figure out by fighting.

I really, really hope so.

 

“It had a breathtaking view of the flowering fauna.”

--Sherrilyn Kenyon, Night Play

I’ve been giggling about that one all week.  Somebody’s editor was so slacking.

On the other hand, the same author gave me this one, which pleased me on a couple of different levels:

   “You know, you should have stayed in your bolt-hole one more day.  Tonight’s Buffy night, and it’s a whole new episode, too.”

   The Dark-Hunter paused to sigh irritably.  “Have you any idea how angry it makes me that I have to come out here in the freezing cold to slay you when I could be at home all toasty warm, watching Sarah Michelle Gellar kick ass in a halter top?”

   --Sherrilyn Kenyon, Kiss of the Night

Okay.

So.

It’s true.

I read romance novels.  I’ve read a lot of them over the years.  Including the paranormal ones in which immortal hunks--with all the perks of the undead (sex appeal, centuries-old investment portfolios, excellent teeth) and nearly none of the obstacles (pesky homicidal impulses and iron-flavored morning breath)--wear leather pants all the time and have asses repeatedly described like steak (e.g. “Grade A prime”).

I’m not going to try to defend them from an artistic standpoint.  Many, if not most, are not well written.  Many of them, in fact, are written so ineptly that I can’t read them even for a total escapist jones.

I did actually even stop reading them altogether for a few years after I read the worst criticism I’ve ever heard about romance novels—that they’re emotional pornography for women—in The Fortunate Fall by Raphael Carter (an excellent strange book, by the way, with a discussion of the problems of the middle east that still reverberates for me, years later).  I think that’s pretty much a direct hit, as condemnations go, and it really disturbed me.

On the other hand... I don’t think they’re any worse than the fairy tales that Hollywood spins that end up blockbusters.  Artistically, A-list films are slightly more sophisticated mostly just because so many more people are involved.  But the end artistic accomplishment doesn’t seem to me to be any loftier.  (Lord knows, some of those film scripts aren’t written any better!)  And I don’t just mean chick films that are blatant female relationship fantasies.  I include things like action films, which are basically the same thing for the kick-ass contingent, whether male or female.  And, hello... horror flicks?

Entertainment for the masses.

But who’s knocking it, really?

In the end, those Romans were right; we all need our bread and circus.  And, apparently, for a lot of women, what makes us happy is… a happy ending.  With kisses.  And maybe some children.  And, well, Grade A prime ass.  (But I dare the first male—of whatever orientation—to disagree with that one.)

What’s so horrible about that, I ask ya?

And here’s the deal.

They’re fun.  Some of them are even written skillfully by authors who understand both the strengths and limitations of their genre.  The best ones are written about funny, clever, wounded, misguided, searching, unique, believable characters you wish you knew finding their way through problems you can relate to, whether they involve supernatural shenanigans or not.

They can make you laugh.  They can make you cry.  They are, in fact, better than Cats.

There was a lot of ugliness and pain in my early life.  Then there was more while I confronted my demons and cleaned up the mess they made on my living room carpet.

I don’t need anyone to explain to me that life can be strange and brutal.  I don’t need someone to give me a vicarious ride on the psychological junkie train of life.  Been there, done that.  And the last thing I wanted to pick up and read during those times when I have been knee-deep in the shit of my life was a tour de force fictionalization of the existential meaninglessness of life.  In fact, when I’m just simply tired and worn down by the daily grind, I really don’t want to sit down and watch Saving Private Ryan, either, no matter how brilliantly done it may be.

I admit that I probably have a much lower threshold for emotionally disturbing input than your Average American Joe or Jane.  I was born sensitive and have the scars to prove how much farther downhill things went from there.

Ergo, when I want to run away to someplace better and I can’t afford Bora Bora (which is always), I go for the Coldstone Creameries of the artistic world. 

So sue me.

And, in respectful rebuttal to Ms. Carter, I recently read this in a smart, funny (If you don’t believe me, try the quote “Hey, I haven’t obfuscated in weeks.  Makes you go blind.” on for size) contemporary romance novel:

“You try spending six months sitting at somebody’s bedside waiting for them to die and then tell me that the happy-ending love story isn’t one of God’s good gifts.”

   --Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Ain’t She Sweet?

And with annual romance fiction sales in the billions, I seem to be in good company.

So that’s partly why I’m going to write one, now.

Happy Birthday to me.

In my late 30's, I am now older than I ever imagined myself to be.  (Isn't it weird how we're always sort of 25-ish to ourselves, inside our heads?  I wonder if anyone's ever done a study on that.  But then, I wonder things like that.)

I'm not crazy about it.  There are lines where there didn't used to be and some of the strength and flexibility--on a few different levels--are missing, where they used to be.

On the other hand, I was so happy this weekend, for my birthday, that I felt like I could fly.  Goddess, I'm so happy with my life right now.

I never really imagined that, either.

All in all, it seems like more than a fair trade.

For once.

     Self-reflecting with a yellow ducky bathrobe.

(And the vertigo's much better, thanks.  I'm a little wobbly in the morning, and if I lie down very long, but I'm managing without the medication, which makes me very happy.)

“Vertigo is a type of dizziness felt as a shift in a person's relationship to the normal environment (a feeling that the room is spinning is common) or a sense of movement in space.”

It’s interesting how you can be going along and think you’re fine when you’re not, really.

Over the past couple of days, I was forced to come to the realization that the unusual events of the past few weeks have affected me much more deeply than I was admitting.  Wednesday morning I woke up in bed feeling a little dizzy.  The feeling got worse when I adjusted positions to nurse my daughter (who cosleeps with us).  After several minutes and a few more position changes, I began to realize what was happening, but it was too late to stop the process.  About ten minutes after that, the throwing up started. 

So, a few hours later we were at Urgent Care and a doctor confirmed my self-diagnosis of vertigo.  He prescribed the standard Antivert for it and we went home.

I had a sort of self-awareness moment, when I realized that the reason I had gotten so upset when I realized that I had vertigo again (I had it before, about five years ago) was not for myself, but because I was really worried about how I was going to be able to take care of our daughter.  I was also pretty sure that I wouldn’t be able to breastfeed Caitlin while taking Antivert, which scared me especially because there was no way to know how long this attack would go on.

My balance has shifted, you see.

I’m not the center of my world, anymore.  Not in the same way.

I’m happy to say that I’m feeling better—I didn’t even have to take the medicine today, so it’s looking very hopeful.  At doctors' advice, I did “pump and dump” for two days, but I had pumped and stored milk for nights out and emergencies, and we’ve been giving Caitlin bottles periodically to make sure that she’s comfortable with them, so she’s fine. 

But it really, really upset me not to be able to breastfeed her.  And I think encountering the idea that something might happen that would mean I would have to stop nursing her altogether scared me so much that it knocked me off kilter a bit more.  Worse, the idea that I might not be able to take care of her adequately at all was too terrifying to look at too closely.

But my distress felt out of proportion with the situation.  Or, maybe more accurately, it felt misplaced.  I had a gut-level realization that I was feeling wrong on more than one level.  I’m not saying that I think my vertigo is psychosomatic—the car accident that gave me a bump on the head certainly wasn’t.  But I guess that I felt the vertigo go deeper.

So I tried to work on my vertigo on two levels. 

On the first, I remembered that I’d just been in a car accident and hit my head really hard on the window or something just two weeks ago.  (And the last time I had vertigo, I’d hit my head really hard on a car door less than a week before.)  So, physically, I’d literally taken a beating.

And then I had to accept that the past month or so has felt emotionally similar.  First, I was so upset about feeling that I had to go back to work that I was physically sick about it.  Then, we realized that I could probably stay home for a while, if we rearranged some of our finances, and I was thrilled.  Then, just days later, came the news that Kevin might be laid off at work, which was devastating.  Two days later, Caitlin and I were in the accident, and the car was totaled.

Kevin and I have been working really hard to stay positive, and live in faith that it would all work out well, and things do seem to be going well, now.  But, as I thought about it, I had to realize that I was feeling pretty battered by chaos and fear.

I’m feeling a lot less sure of the ground under my feet, lately.

On top of the normal, humongous shift in my sense of identity just because I’m a new parent, these other things have been really hard. 

I'm moving uncertainly through space, these days.

And I’m not really sure what to do about it right now.  But I feel a little better just acknowledging that.

We interrupt the Mom rhapsody to remind myself of the person who still exists somewhere under the diaper-changing diva I've become...

 *

Today, it is three years, eight months and nine days since 9-11.

And we are still at war in Iraq, with nothing resembling a lasting peace or victory in sight.

To put this in perspective, think on this:

Victory in Japan Day was three years, eight months and nine days after Pearl Harbor.

"Those [American] principles provide the faith, the hope, and the opportunity which help men to improve themselves and their lot. Liberty does not make all men perfect nor all society secure. But it has provided more solid progress and happiness and decency for more people than any other philosophy of government in history.

[...]

Victory always has its burdens and its responsibilities as well as its rejoicing.

But we face the future and all its dangers with great confidence and great hope. America can build for itself a future of employment and security. Together with the United Nations, it can build a world of peace rounded on justice, fair dealing, and tolerance."

--Harry S. Truman, speech Announcing the Surrender of Japan (September 1, 1945)