Back From the Dead, Yo!

Okay, not really "dead". Mostly just marriage, teaching and childbearing, all of which will take a HUGE chunk of time out of navel-gazing. But I've missed it, so now I'm back.



Hello, navel. How you been?



Anyway enough with the weirdness and on to... other weirdness, I guess. So, to recap:

1: Gipester and I got married in August of 2008. I got knocked up in approx. March of 2009 and


2:gave birth to our first daughter, Diablo Uno (G came up with that... kickass nickname in my opinion) in December of that same year.

3:In November of 2010, we found out that I was pregnant again (another girl, it turns out) and am due in July.



Oh yeah, we also moved out of the condo at some point in there. And we're trying to move again. Because we're going to have TWOOOOOOO KIIIIIIIIIIDS and need some space.

But I'm taking it all in stride.



Actually, that's bullshit. I'm a wreck. I can tell that comes as a shock. You may take a minute to absorb..... Done? Good.

Anyway, the whole point of this post was originally to bemoan the current state of my realtionship with the Gipester. Our sex life has taken a pretty serious hit in the last year or so, and it feels like we are so far out of practice that we may never get back in.
So to speak.
Sorry.


Anyway, I'm left feeling fat and ugly and undesireable (I am not a "glowy" pregnant lady) and more than a little bit embarassed. Then I get angry and hop out of bed at 2:30 in the morning full of righteous indignation ready to cry out the injustice of the patriarchy and biology to the world.


As I did this morning.


Then I opened up Blogger in my browser and realized that G didn't log off his Google account, so instead of my blog, there was his. The one he kept when he was getting divorced.
So I read it.

Not for the first time ever, but for the first time as his wife and as the mother of his children. I read about this sadness and this agony that I was unable to share with him or help him through.


And I remembered some important things about this man, chickens.


The Gipester has the soul of a poet.
He sees the world with the eyes of an artist.
He never gives up on anyone he loves. Ever.


And I love him more than I've ever loved anyone for all of these reasons and for a whole bunch of other ones that only he needs to know.


So, the white-hot flame of righteous indignation has passed, leaving behind only glowing homefires and the words of someone wiser than I:

"And this, too, shall pass."



Peace.

It's good to be back.

Do you have a pamphlet on that?

Oh look, light.

Today I am recovering from a migraine headache. I don't have them often and I don't handle them well. In addition to the face-melting pain, I can't deal with light, or high pitched noises, my eyes can't focus, and I usually am in a really FOUL mood until the whole thing is over. Oh, and I throw up. A lot. The good thing is that, today, I can open my eyes, focus, and speak in full sentences. The pain and the foul mood are still very much intact. Wheee!
The only reason I am back among the living is because the Gipester took me to see a chiropractor yesterday. She was fantastic, more therapist, really, than medical doc. She scolded me soundly for the huge knots of muscle in my neck and shoulders. "I get the feeling you're not loving yourself the way you should," she said as she tried valiantly to get me to relax. Since I was face down on her scary-looking chiropractic table I couldn't really see what she was doing... There was tapping and an industrial strength massager that sounded a little bit like a belt sander.

Anyway, when she gave me the bit about "loving myself," I really wanted to open my mouth and make a joke about how long it had been since I'd owned a decent vibrator, but I didn't really get the chance. I opened my mouth to make my stupid joke, and I started crying. Not three-year-old-choking-on-your-own-snot crying, just crying. I will be forever grateful that she didn't mention it, or even ask me what was wrong. Which is good. If she had asked me, I don't know that I'd even be able to tell her.

I didn't cry for long. I don't anymore. A minute or two at a time is really all I can sustain. In some warped way, I think I'm trying not to inconvenience those around me. I cry enough to make whatever issue I'm dealing with just small enough to shove back in its file drawer. I wonder where the migraines come from...

I would never pretend that the way I deal with stress is healthy. It's actually pretty insane. I keep my minor irritations and tiny hurt feelings locked up because I don't think they are valid. I don't think they are valid, because if they were, the person who is currently hurting or irritating me wouldn't be hurting or irritating me. But they are, so hurting me must be the right course of action, therefore, I have no right to complain or be upset. When I complain about hurt feelings, I am irritating to others and that must be avoided or no one will ever love me and I will die alone. That about covers it.

Whew.

I realize that there are myriad things wrong with this line of thinking. You have to realize that this is me at my most irrational. These are the thoughts that are birthed directly from the id, before the ego and the superego have their chance to talk some sense into them. Assuming people know that they are being irritating or hurtful is ridiculous, especially if you choose not to engage them in conversation about the situation. But our gut reactions, the ones untempered by logic and reason, tend to guide much of what we do, so I thought mine deserved a little stage time.

So, the doc was right, I have a little bit of a self-love issue (who doesn't?) But here's the thing about all of this "loving myself" bullshit. It's one of those things that people will tell you to do, but they never really tell you HOW. They tell you to spend money on self-help books, CD recordings of Wiccans chanting in the rainforest, organic diet granola, mineral spa treatments and other useless shit, but isn't the lesson there that money equals love? I have to buy myself tantric yoga classes so that my self will love me? How dysfunctional is that?

So, my goal for the next month or so is to make a conscious effort to love myself in a healthy way. I will express my hurts, frustrations, joys, and excitements. To not do so is as unfair to the people I love and who love me as it is to myself. I will express opinions that I have thus far held back for fear of expressing something as silly as the wrong movie or restaurant preference. I will stop feeling embarrassment about being divorced and almost 30.

And maybe I'll take a tantric yoga class.

Havin' trouble sleepin'

When I'm in bed, staring at the ceiling, counting the blades on the ceiling fan (one...two...three...four...five. Yup, still five. Same as last night), listening to the BF snore, and watching the clock as the night closes in around me, that's when I do all my deep thinking. Stuff like:
"Oh shit, I never took that orange out of my briefcase. It's been there for almost a month. Ewww. Take care of that tomorrow."

"Hmmm. I wonder if I should cook chicken tomorrow night? I'll have time to marinate it between work and my job interview, but I don't want to cook before I GO to the interview because I will 1. get chicken goo all over my interview clothes and 2. I don't want my stomach to make those weird Jabba-the-Hut digestive sounds while I sit in my interview."

"I wonder what happened to Michael? Actually, no. I don't really."

"How many calories are in a grape?"

"Argh. I left the sheets in the dryer. Fold those tomorrow."

"Will the fact that Hillary Clinton has done such a bad job running her campaign make it harder for qualified women to run for president in the future? Do Hillary's flaws undermine the feminist movement's desire for equality between the sexes by proving misogynistic toads correct about the inability of women to be organized, strong leaders? Or is she simply proving that male and female politicians can be dissembling bastards in equal measure, thereby bolstering the equality argument?"

"I love berry Lucky Charms. Love them. I could probably eat a whole box, a fistful at a time without thinking about it. Picking all of the marshmallows out and eating them in ROYGBIV order, of course."

"I wonder if I have OCD? I wonder if I have OCD? I wonder if I have OCD?" (Ha! I crack myself up.)

Anyway. I really do think all of this stuff. I think of these random products of my feeble brain as a fence that keeps the wolves at bay. I can hear them. In the dark, crying out with the voices I love the most. My mother, my father, my little brother, all cry to me of tragedies that might not ever come to pass. But might, all at the same time. They cry out with the voices of those who never loved me, and who number my sins and fears in perfect rhythm.

The wolves will howl, chickens. But they're quiet for now. So, I will return to my bed, curl up against the man I love, count the ceiling fan blades, and wait for the sun.

Aw, hell...

Very few of us are lucky enough to have the biggest mistakes
of our lives captured on film. The best part about this is that my
parents actually paid to have this picture (and several hundred
others) taken. Actually, that's kinda sad isn't it?
The point of today's entry, my little chickens, is not really my first (and at this point only) marriage. The point is that I have dealt with my divorce in a less than healthy way, and I have the wonderful, loving, and brilliant Gipester to thank for this realization. Damn him.
I have talked to him a great deal about his divorce and his relationship with his ex. The hardest thing for me to deal with was that he got stuck with a divorce he didn't want and that he *sigh* loved this woman very much. She's still in our (his) circle of friends and is impossible to avoid altogether. Anyway, this has been a source of discomfort for months and only today have I really figured out why. Okay, so there's not just ONE reason why, but there's only one I'm going to concentrate on today.
I never really mourned my marriage. Ever. I went from denial to anger and just... well... stayed there.
I never mourned the fact that I lost damn near my whole social network because we spent so much time with his family. My sisters-in-law were my friends, but when it came time to circle the wagons, guess who was left to fend for herself. That hurt, but it was so much easier to say some variation of, "Yeah, well, fuck off, I never liked you anyway," than to let it show.
Not one of them called me after we split. Not one. Of course, to be fair, I didn't call them either. So, because I've never said it before, and because I think it's important, I miss my sisters-in-law. All of them. I miss my nieces and nephew. All of them.
I miss my little house. I picked the carpet and all the paint colors. I painted my office the exact color I wanted. I cooked in the kitchen and pulled weeds in the garden. I was surrounded by my things. Now the Greeley ARC looks more like my home than my home actually does.
I miss my dog. When I made the choice to move in with G I had to give him up. My parents were willing to take him, so he's still in the family, but he was my dog. Now he's not.
I grieve the loss of these things, finally.
But I do not grieve the loss of the man that went with all of these things. We were bad to each other, again, and again, and again. We left spectacular scars on each other's lives and I weep for that fact.
Without mourning, we can never move on. And now I have a new life worth moving on for. So. This isn't the end of it. There's still a lot that needs to be drained from the wound (eww) but here is the beginning. I feel much better now.