deal's off

Forget it. The deal's off. I hate this. I don't want this. This sucks. I can't deal with the proposed outcome of all this craziness.

My husband leaves for work this morning and tells me he'll be thinking of me. Oh goodie. Thanks. Cause I'll be here, schlepping around your kid. I don't get a choice about whether or not to think about you. I couldn't get a break from this reality if I tried. Think all you like. Bastard.

Last night, I poured out my thoughts, as usual, to my husband who was falling asleep, as usual. I imagine trying to get his attention by banging on his chest. I'd watch him shatter into colorful and dangerous shards, like stained glass. I imagine sweeping up the pieces, my fists bloodied, communication only slightly improved. Oh but he's a good man. Just read my blog. A great man. A caring partner. And I'm being unfair, aren't I? Perhaps I shouldn’t bother my husband with such domestic issues. He goes out to work after all, keeps us fed, while I piss around with teaching, writing, crap that doesn't necessarily pay the rent. He's tired when he gets home. I should put on an apron and make him dinner. I should massage his feet and smile.

I quake at the thought of the isolation I might feel once this kid is here and my dear, kind husband is skipping off to work to "think of me." I quake because I imagine it in relation to the isolation I already feel these days. Already, trying to schedule coffee with a friend is some sort of logistical feat for which I am under-trained. My image of having a baby is a bit like a death in the family – for the first couple weeks people are all around you. This period is all-too-soon replaced with the one where they vanish to resume their normal routines and leave you helpless in your new paradigm.

Then there are the women who approach me, mothers and non-mothers alike, and feel the need to tell me how my life will "never be the same," to tell me with widened eyes and broad arm gestures that this is "huge." I hate these women and their pantomiming even more than I hate the women who tell me their horrendous birth stories where everything possible went wrong. I want to grip their painfully obvious sentiments in my already clenched hands and beat them unconscious with them.

I don't need more responsibility in my life. I'm the type who in times of despair and sadness could lie in bed in the dark for days at a time and never get up except for the fact that I am pushed to rise eventually for the guilt I feel about not opening the blinds for the plants. Focus on this for a minute: The only thing that would kill me faster than my own wrecked brain is the guilt I would feel for being responsible for killing the PLANTS! I'm not sure if the full absurdity and power of this is getting through.

People like me are not supposed to have kids. I hear them more and more all the time. The stories. About post-partum. The dirty little secret. Just when I've begun to buy into the idea that I'm overstating this problem, that my fear is silly, hardly worthy of the weight I lend it, I hear more stories. Then there are those who tell me about how I have just as good a chance not to be depressed afterwards. And for a minute, it's like a window of light. For a second, I believe it could be true. What if? Right. Fucking look at me. I'm a disaster now, and for the hundred-millionth time since all this began, shit, since I was born. Not because I'm worrying about post partum, just because. I go along just fine and then, bam! Gee, whaddaya think? Will I have an issue with depression after the baby? Fuck. Fuck!!! Maybe I'm addicted to my pain, but in almost every other scenario the well-meaning would turn me toward rational thought, logic, odds. But if I discuss the odds now, I'm being ridiculous. I'm being pessimistic. I'm really just no fun and no one wants to play with me. If you don't acknowledge your demons, great for you. If you don't have any, bite me. If you don't speak them out or write them down for other people to jump all over, cheers. I do. And what if it's because I actually care about this baby? What if it's because I care? The bottom line is, I don't want to know there are medications, and myriad other paltry solutions. I simply don't want to be pregnant and imposing my troubled self onto another human being. I make it sound like I'm a raving mental case, and I'm not really. Here's what saves me every time - I am really, really smart. And I'm intelligent enough I know when to be concerned.

Zillions of women have had babies for zillions of years. So fucking what. What does this mean to me? I still have to go through it. I still have to find my place in it. Do the zillions before me nullify my feelings and cancel my fears about parenting, or do they dull the intensity of labor pain? I pretty much doubt it. I think that the zillions, and most notably the dozens nearest us - friend and neighbor, family or stranger - that hover to tell us just how it is, tsk away our concerns offered already in an air of meekness and uncertainty, a sense of disobedience to our kind, our eyes trailing to the ground, words soft and censored, or chuckling and waving our hands to imply these pathetic cries for assistance we can hardly get out aren't things we really mean, these zillions - or dozens - are perhaps as much the reason for the lack of writing about negative feelings surrounding pregnancy as anything. The women who've been through it and come out the other side cradling baby can't talk that way anymore and don't like it when I do. I know this because I could care less what you all think, but I already carry a guilt at my feelings in relation to this creature than bubbles and pops at me from the inside while I'm trying to sleep. So you made it and I probably will too. Fabulous. But I'm in THIS moment now. And there are feelings that go along with THIS moment for me. And maybe if someone had a notion, as I do, that to look at this dilemma now I can head off future problematic moments, I'd be faster to shut up about it. I thought you mothers all learned the value of the moment. Chasing around small beings with immediate needs and joys that extend only as far as their fat little fingers. Well, my moment is called the middle of an unplanned pregnancy. And this is how it feels. If you know so goddamn much then help me! Help me! Make me some fucking tea.

The personal story is never out of style. Can never be blasé. We hear those that make sense to us for where we are; we miss the rest. You can always change the channel.

So I feel responsible for my thoughts and words. Worried that the mere existence of them is a betrayal to my baby. (Then can writing them down be any greater a crime?) Not so much worried about betraying this secret society of silent, loving mothers who met pregnancy head on and of course never felt like throwing things from impressive heights, like their telephone, large quantities of fruit, or themselves, would never talk that way. Not worried about how I appear to them and yet, perhaps doomed to enter their realm. What if I dare feel a responsibility to someone else who might read this, another pregnant woman who is busy repressing her anger and confusion somewhere? What if she needs me to be honest? Should we care about her? What if she needs not just kind-of-honest, the kind that leaves out the really bad days? What if she needs me to be truly-honest, the kind that makes me write the word that sometimes is the only fit when I think of my gracious, loving husband -- "bastard," even though he'll be hurt, feel like he failed, or see me as cruel. Is it rational to be angry at him? No. Is it real? Yes. Am I allowed to express that anger? Well, that's the debate.

What if I'm responsible not to the mothers who made it, but to this other pregnant woman?…and, of course, to the plants.