Friday, July 22, 2005

Ballroom Blitz

Sigh...almost the end of a very long week. I went for my yearly checkup with Dr. Walsh today, which as it turned out wasn't today but next Friday, and I sat there for half an hour before they told me that...but I was just sitting in her office and I almost started crying. Just thinking about all the times I had been there while pregnant with the twins, and how happy Chase and I were when we found out it was a girl and boy, and everything else of that nature. I just want to be totally happy again, I don't really care how. Jordan was talking about moving to Tennessee or Georgia with Ruthie, and I asked if I could go. I don't know if I could leave my parents, or my friends, and I'm sure Chase would have a fit if I tried to take the twins nine hours away on a permanent basis, but the idea of starting over just appeals to me. I still want the happiness I expected up til last year. I want to get married and look absolutely beautiful and breathtaking. I want to have the same last name as my kids! I want to crawl into bed at night and have someone there to put their arm around me. I want, I want, I want. I'm so self-involved right now.

Sunday, July 17, 2005

One Is The Loneliest Number

I can't wait to lose this taste in my mouth
All the bitterness just pouring out
Can't describe it, or lose it, or hide it
Just screaming my way out of town
I feel so low, like I'm starting back over again
I don't know why time goes much slower than it did back then
Can't retrieve it, or keep it, or leave it
Just want to be way out of town

Can't be lonelier than this
I can still feel your goodbye kiss
I've been trying to find
Justifiable reasons
Giving you time
Since the change of the seasons
A whole life that I've missed
Can't be lonelier than this

Thursday, July 14, 2005

Proposals

Internet dating is something I will never be able to handle. Seriously. This guy posted on okcupid.com wanting to know if anyone wanted a mail-order husband??? I replied to his post and asked him if it was a weird stunt or just a random genius idea. I don't think he was very sure himself. But he wanted to know if I would order him. Kind of funny.
Who am I kidding, dating is something I can't handle, period. I wouldn't know what to do with myself. I just mouth off when people flirt with me, so they're like, mahaha, you're funny and kind of cool, but I'm not sure you're actually female, so I'm going to leave now. Which is okay, because more than that would require actual emotional involvement on my part, and I really don't have any left for anyone except the twins.
Speaking of them, they're tired and cranky today. They took two! naps apiece, Conner actually put himself to sleep the second time. Just rolled over onto his belly, stuck his finger in his eye for a minute, and was out. I had to wake Dia up to eat dinner, she was less than pleased with me. But then she ate, really well, with her fork (YES! So smart!) and everything. She can count to ten with you if you go slowly, and she knows five and nine, ten all by herself.
Do I sound overly proud? I am. Extremely so. They're just getting so smart so fast. I don't quite know what to do with them.
The echo of every parent from the beginning of time is ringing in my ears.

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Laughter In The Rain

Just when I think things have fallen down farther than they could ever go again, I am surprised at the rate they go upwards again. Today has been (after noon or so) a relatively great day. I have the kids, they've been pretty good, not perfect but mostly so, they've played and had dinner and we went outside and ate berries and came back in for the second bath of the day, and now (eek) at 7:30 p.m. Conner is sleeping and Lydia is monstering around as usual, torturing baby cousins and trying to ruin my fine typing. And I tell her this, that she is hampering Mommy's progress and impairing the message I am trying to send to the world. She sticks her bottom lip under her teeth and grins at me delightedly. This is the life people dream of living.

Robotics

I'm so mad right now. I can't understand how someone can be so cold, so unfeeling. Even if he hates me, he could at least acknowledge the fact that I am the mother of his children and that I spent three years with him, during one of which we got engaged. I don't know what else to do. I broke up with him thinking that it would be a breather, that everything would be fine eventually, that all would be well soon enough. It's worse than ever. But he doesn't see his part in anything, it's always my fault, my problem, because he has no problems. He is perfectly fine. And I am left half-alive, drowning slowly.

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

And Again

I can't seem to stop writing. The floodgates have opened. I was sitting on the porch, reading a magazine about parenting, and I read this great passage that I had to put down here for posterity.
Lydia came home from the hospital at 4 lbs. 4 oz. She was tiny in every sense of the word. Smallest thing I'd ever seen in real life. We put pop cans in her bili-bassinette and took pictures to compare. She didn't stay small for long though. She is now 14 months and weighs a grand total of 25 lbs. 4 oz. Not exactly itty-bitty. People tell me she's chubby all the time, and I want to smack them. She's not chubby, she's beautiful and smart and healthy. The same thing happens to this woman in the article, and this is what she says about it:

"Once, in the changing room after class, a woman mentioned Amelia's round belly. I watched as Amelia listened to the woman with rapt attention and then, ever so slowly, rubbed her hand over her stomach. I crouched down beside her and said, 'Oh yes, her belly is perfect.' I realized I wanted all three of us to hear it......
.....Ultimately I realized.....The process of making them feel self-conscious about their bodies isn't the result of one big blow, but a thousand small cuts."
- Susan Swimmer, LHJ Aug 2005

That makes so much sense to me. Lately I am searching for thoughts that make sense, for things people say or do that are tangible, that you can touch and feel, that are certain and unchanging. And when I find one, it strikes with such sharp poignancy that I want to cry for the joy of knowing: Someone understands.

The Morning After

I thought I would wake up this morning and be aghast at the mindless spew of despair I posted last night. But I'm not. I feel exactly the same.
I just want to know how it all stops and starts, and how to control the two, because I think a lot of people have a handle on this, and I definitely don't. I can't quite grasp the moment when I started to grow up or if I have even started. Having my children would have seemed to be said moment, but I know you don't have to be any sort of adult to give birth. Once you get home with the baby (duplicates in my case) it kind of sinks in. 'Dear God, what do I do with them?' And he either answers you or...not.
I'm glad this is just another anonymous place, because while I'm writing all of this I'm thinking to myself that's it's all insane. But nobody cares if you're insane if they don't know who you are.
I just need to blather on, because I don't have a counselor and friends, God love them, even they get sick of you now and then. The best ones are the ones who steadfastly refuse to admit it. I have been a black hole for the past few weeks, regurgitating all this nonsense about unrequited and misguided love, and depression, and utter misery, and they just say, that's okay, even if they've been letting the phone sit on the table while I talked for an hour. The best friends in the world.
Perhaps that's enough for now, I sound like an idiot and feel it too.

Monday, July 11, 2005

The First Outpouring

So. I'm not quite sure what to write in here, except maybe just what I'm feeling, or what I'm thinking, and who knows where to start with that.
I have twins. Lydia and Conner. They were born 14 months ago, on May 3rd. They're funny and sweet and smart and kind. They simultaneously make me laugh harder than I ever have and want to cry more than I ever can. They are my serendipity, my 'fortunate accident'.
Loving them. That's the part that has turned out to be easy, not that I thought it would be hard. But it's the only easy part. Being a single mother of two was not in my master plan. I feel like a statistic. For the moment at least, we're not on assistance, but we will be, because they don't have insurance right now. Not that I'm knocking the mothers who are on assistance, or the fathers for that matter. I pay for it, we all pay for it. It's ours to take advantage of. It's the knowing looks of the cashiers who actually know nothing, and the old men who come up behind you in the grocery store to ask if you're married, and then tell you that you're supposed to be married before having children. Like I didn't want to be. When is it okay to turn around and scream at those people, "I WOULD HAVE LOVED THAT, BUT IT DIDN'T HAPPEN THAT WAY, AND YOU KNOW LESS THAN YOU THINK, SO SHUT UP!!!!"
That's what I'd say if I wasn't racked with guilt. That I probably should have paid better attention to birth control, and worked harder at the relationship between their father and I. That if I would have waited five or ten years, I could have provided for them in so many ways, and been more ready to take on the everyday battle for time, and attention, naps, mealtimes, and tears. I could make every moment laughter and hugs and kisses and absolute adoration. Or not, I don't know. Perhaps I'm good enough for them, and I wouldn't trade a second of having them for a few years from now. I wouldn't change their father, he loves them and he's around, he just doesn't love me, and that's my issue.
I just needed to say these things, to scream out to something or someone, and since I could always write it better than I could actually vocalize it, I'm writing it. There's something safe and reassuring in a journal like this, although anyone can read it, you're still protected while you write it, while the feeling is strongest. Because you want to say all these things to everyone anyway, but you can't, because the immediate reaction is more than you can handle. Because you're afraid of what you look like in the daytime, or your brain, rather.
There's no holding back when it's just an empty page and your keyboard. I can say that I am more depressed now than I can ever remember being, even when I was in high school and had several ugly haircuts. I want to break the smiles off of peoples' faces and tear them into a million tiny pieces. I want to have magical powers so that I can turn indifference into agony. I want to have everything the way I want it. And that's selfish, and it's not politically correct, and I don't give a damn. The shiningest things in my life are my children, and everything else dulls in comparison.
I don't really know where this is all coming from, and I may look back tomorrow at this entry and think, OH MY GOD, I wrote that? For everyone to see? But isn't this kind of the point of these things, airing your laundry and relative anonymity, except for the people you give the address to, and telling the world that you couldn't care less if it fell down tomorrow were it not for the two small people holding you and all of it up?