oh despondency, how you nag at me.

that strange moment when you look in the mirror and it's your brother staring back at you. That overly sentimental " i know what you're going through" phrase turned staggeringly appropriate.
That even stranger moment when the mirror reflects your face, only it's different, more aggressive, the eyes give it away. I lost time for the first time in months last night, and honestly, it felt good.

rated W for whiney

warning: using this post to indulge myself in complaining and venting. Expletives are abundant. As my hands are too swollen to hold a pen to write in my journal.

Pregnancy sucks. All three trimesters. The "honeymoon" phase? What idiot came up with that load of bs? I really, truly do not understand women who can do this more than once. Or the ones who can gracefully walk through the grocery store, hair perfect, full makeup, reapplying and reapplying their lipgloss. fuck them. Also all the nymphy, "natural moms" that are on book covers and up at 6 am to go to the farmers market, not gaining a pound the whole time due to their oh so healthy diets, hair just messy enough so you know they don't put any chemicals or products anywhere NEAR their baby. One hand on the glowing belly so everyone knows it's the most wonderful thing in the world, like it's not totally throwing your body off balance and making you clumsier then you were in the 3rd grade.

As a soon mommy to be in this 2011 era of parenting, there is definitely a certain pressure to appear completely satisfied by your own bodys betrayal of you. Ask me how i'm doing? I'll smile, probably say i'm miserable. Probably make a joke i think is witty but just comes out as bitchy.  But what I really want to say is

I CAN NOT TAKE THIS ANYMORE! IM FIGURATIVELY AND SOMETIMES LITERALLY PULLING MY HAIR OUT! I HAVE TO TAKE BREAKS FROM TYPING THIS BLOG BECAUSE MY FINGERS ARE NUMB, MY EARS HAVE BEEN RINGING FOR TWO WEEKS STRAIGHT , THIS IS CRAZINESS! I WANT IT TO STOP I WANT IT TO STOP I WANT IT TO STOP!!!!

But that's not so nice now is it? It's not that i don't love my baby, believe me, after all this by the time he's borne we'll have memories together that go waaay back. I desperately want to love and hold and take care of my son, but i'd like to do it outside my body now please.I want to be able to fall asleep blissfully with my boyfriend when we have a snugglenight and it's the moon and the stars and the lovegod shining down on us, but my arms swell up and ache so bad i have to, just have to get out of bed. Even this christmas lover is now starting to warm up to scrooge and declare "bah humbug."

don't sweat it. hang loose.

a little word of wisdom from david schonhoff

no witty title necessary

Being sick last week has really thrown my sleeping schedule off.I know, i know, i know. "Just wait til you have your baby, you'll forget what a regular sleeping pattern even is. " I am aware. I'd also like to fall asleep before 5 am while i'm still sans baby.
It's been a strange couple of weeks. I won't go into details out of respect for someone very near and dear to my heart, but I'd be lying if this whole thing wasn't throwing me for a loop. On top of raging hormones, I still have disasociative identity disorder. It is there, and it will be there no matter what's currently happening in my life and this is a fact i've come to terms with. And lately it's been flaring up like a bad case of gout. They call it mental illness for a reason you know. My most troublesome alter,vampire, is having a very hard time coping with alot of things. From a psychoanalytical standpoint it makes perfect sense. We've been made painfully aware of things that are just plain disgusting, right at the advent of the beautiful child that's coming soon. (!) So it makes sense that the angry, protective personality is having a hard time dealing. Which means I occasionally have "bugs in my hair and crawling on me", and upon awakening from a nap i didn't know i was taking I'm usually overcome with this incredible fury. Usually directed at my boyfriend, which sucks because we are actually in a very good place right now. I never wake up with any particular reason to be overcome with such hatred for him, other than his genitalia. Men are a threat. Men are bad. They must be elimenated. I pick fights and say cold, callous, downright cruel things in such a condescending tone I almost can't believe it's coming out of my mouth, the occasional snarl escapes as well. I'm not just being "bitchy". I'm starting to get the gist of what's really going on. Peeling back the layers of the onion that stings so good. A good session with Dr. a would really help this along i believe, but especially this time of year, and a belly so big I literally cannot drive myself, making our schedules match has become a bit of a challenge.
Forest comes back on the 20th. I can't wait. I always feel like i'm at my best when my brother's around. I am so very excited for the baby boy that's coming. But i'd like to devote this next section to the baby boy's already here. My nephews.

River and I have finally come to a bonding place. I'd say it's perfect timing. you gotta give love to get it with riv, and I know a large part of his life, I just wasn't that much a part of hislife. Now he's graciously letting me in bit by bit and I love all his eccentricities. Medical difficulties and all. In fact I feel that we have a special bond there as well.

Now Liam and I go way back. I actually lived with him for a large part of his baby years (sorry dorothy for all the trouble i was). But something about Liam always brings me back to where I need to be. Very few people can ground me the way he can. Someday I'll get to tell him that by 3 years old he'd already saved my life multiple times. Before i became pregnant myself, I seriously doubted my ability to have children, also doubted that the love for my nephews could possibly even come close to being topped by another child. I am so excited for everett to meet his cousins, and for me to meet the most likely spitfire personality he will have.

I guess the moral of the story is, no matter how irritating 5 am bedtimes can be, it is one night closer to meeting my baby.

to sum it all up

The effectiveness of my ambien is starting to wean off again. This is not a good time to not be able to sleep.
I am now 35 weeks pregnant.That's roughly 35 more days until my baby gets here. Maybe I'll be lucky and he'll come a.s.a.h.p. (as soon as health permits. i just made it up.) I know to some extent I'm only kidding myself when i assume that things will be so much easier after giving birth, and this awful thing called pregnancy is over. ( go hug your mom. she had to do it for you.) I know there will be many many more nights of no sleep, that a rock attached to my abdomen turning into a real live baby with incessant needs is not going to be any less of an inconvenience. But I'd like to think it would be easier for me to handle. It somehow seems so much more logical that the burden of someone else's problems is way less of a burden.
I am so over my own shit. I want to wash my hands of it. Over the migraines, the backaches, the hormonal rages that make my bipolar diagnosis laughable. Over my childhood, my depression, my repression, my illnesses.

Here universe. You can take it all. I am done with it.

However it's nowhere near over. The little gnats and mosquitoes gnaw at my brain and the big things smack me in the face. I cannot stand the noise of electronics plugged in and not being used that make a sound, they remind me of left on amplifiers and guitar equipment.
I wouldn't wish this on anyone. and it is. and i am very very very angry.

sacrifice

as i sit alone in a crowded room of other moms and moms to be i wonder:
how many men would do the same?
backs aching in ugly red plastic
hardly
accomodating a swollen pregnant behind.
doing their best to make small talk through screaming toddlers and language barriers. not one face is scowling,
no complaints, only exasperated laughter.
show me a man who would happily do this alone for
one?, two?, three?
hours without
"bitching like a woman"
go ahead.
i dare you.

"Quis hic locus? Quae regio? Quae mundis plaga?

What world is this? What kingdom? What shores of what worlds?

I am entering new territory. A world I have never been before, one where I am left to deal with the ups and downs, the infuriating and the confusing, all with only my thoughts in my head. Never before have I considered how lonely and isolating it must be to be normal. To not have other people inside you who can just take over when the going gets tough. I am learning all too quickly. To be honest, I do not like it. I do not like having all 24 hours in my day. I do not like making decisions without an agreement, protest, or rebuttal from somewhere deep inside my being. The only break i've gotten in the past three weeks is when I got a birthday card in the mail from my dad. I watched from the balcony as it was burnt to a crisp in my kitchen sink, eminem blasting so loudly on the stereo that my ears hurt when i "came to". But that is all.....What shall we do tomorrow? what shall we ever do?... It began with the false supposition that my therapist was getting married, they went silent. I was deserted. Even now, after finding out it wasn't true, I still feel deserted and abandoned. It doesn't help that my boyfriend is sometimes wonderful and engaging, sometimes distant, but the greatest distance of all is the one between my best friend and I. The one I'm constantly, painfully aware of. She is there, and I am here, and as much as i want to, i cannot will the distance together. My loneliness, or "aloneness" is somewhat thrilling, albeit daunting. An adventure of sorts. I will undergo this one, holding my own hand, just as i always have, and just as i always will.