So there is this girl that Al used to work with, she's younger than him (like 19, 20 tops. Pretty sure she can't drink but IDK.) and for a while when we first got married there were all these rumors going on around his work that he was hooking up with this slut (her name's lexi. Pretty sure I talked about this when it happened because it was around the same time as Missy. And there is only one Lexi that I love. And she is here, and we have sex. No we don't, but I'm not against it. Call me. BUT NOBODY GOOD IS NAMED MISSY. Anyway. I digress.) They weren't. They still aren't. But she loves to write on his facebook wall saying "GAME" or what the fuck ever and I didn't even think that was still cool/ever cool but whatever.

Okay so last night we were playing my favorite game/Al's least favorite game called What If. And if you've ever played this game before you know it's just a thinly veiled way to get your husband/boyfriend/whoever to admit really personal details they wouldn't normally otherwise. And I am one of those sick fuck masochists that likes to know every ugly detail about my husband's past because aside from Missy the Wonderslut, I can say with certainty that I am the most awesome girl he's ever been with. Which doesn't say much about me, it mostly says a lot about the caliber of Bridge Troll my husband has been inside.

And somehow we got on the topic that while yes, there is such a thing as a hot chick nerd, no, he is not friends with any of them.

So he says, "YES I AM ACTUALLY." and proceeds to go on his phone to find a facebook picture of this mystical faerie nymph he apparently knows personally. And he pulls up a picture of this Lexi twat. But not just any picture. A picture of her with her shirt off, arm covering the most minimal amount of boob acceptable by facebook, showing off her sUpEr SwEeT bellybutton ring. On facebook. In front of God and everybody. LIKE A FUCKING SLUTFISH.

So in my usual fashion, I said nothing about it, let it marinate in my brainspace for a day or so, and got increasingly more and more pissed off that not only do these people exist in the real world, but that my husband thinks its appropriate to be friends with them on facebook. Or in real life but mostly facebook. Her skanky ass pictures sandwiched between updates about my sister's whatever the fuck she does and pictures of HIS CHILD. Gross. I am not a fan of sluts that are just sluts to be sluts and maybe I'm jealous that I don't have a body like hers but whatever. I don't like it. Especially since that's the girl people thought he was hooking up with. It's fine if he's single but he's not so.... nix the slut Alejandro.

My plan was to just hack his facebook and unfriend her without him ever knowing and playng stupid squirrels when he noticed but instead, I decided to give the whole "healthy communication" bullshit a whirl and guess what? IT WORKED.

At first he was all, WHAT IF SHE FINDS OUT AND GETS MAD AT ME. To which I responded MAD ME IS WORSE. And he agreed. Mad me is the worst ever ever ever.

There really was no relevancy to this except that I can't tell any of my real life friends (except Jess, and well... she's here anyway.) because they would think i was cray for being jellybeans of some skank who probably smells like Love Spell and chlamydia anyway. Because yes, I am jealous of girls that are skinnier than me, and yes, she wanted on him/probably still does and he really could get her if he wanted. And I really don't see anything wrong with thinking that's inappropriate. If it was the other way around, if I was in his shoes, he would be mopey as fuck about it so IDGAF. Happy wife, happy life fucker.

Also I am getting my recovery tattoo on the 4th. THERE NOW ITS RELEVANT SUCK MY DICK.

Lately, I’ve had this strong urge to “tell my story”, if you will. To at least have some sort of tangible evidence that I was not always as crazy as I am, and reassure my daughter that it took a LOT of fuckups to get to where I am. Or even to convince myself that I am not, actually, as insane as I feel.

Maybe I’m just trying to figure out where I went wrong. And in charting out each misstep, hospital visit, self-deprecation, and the like, I will be able to finally makes sense of the past twentysomething years. Because in comparison, my husband has essentially softshoed through his formitable years, despite his penchant for slaying mythical dragons and, well, being unavoidably awkward. But all comparisons aside, life cannot be THIS confusing. And if it actually is, how have other people come through so flawlessly?

Not that my life has been horrible, by any means. Despite my best efforts at completely fucking everything up, I have managed to cling to a loving husband, a beautiful (albeit sassy) child, and a handful of people delusional and masochistic enough to call themselves my friends. And if nothing else, at least I have my dog. Unless there is another dog outside the window, then at least I have…. a really good story?

I apparently also have “potential”. I say this with some dubiety because, in fact, I don’t know what that means. It’s almost as if everyone else but me knows of this greater means to my end than I do, and they’re all just in a perpetual state of disappointment that I didn’t catch on when they did. Take, for example, one of my mother’s friends. Lesbian, school board superintendant, and prime example of someone who sees something in me that I truly never have. She, in a perpetual liberal/hippie/feminist fashion, takes it upon herself to lamnt to me nearly every time she sees me, “Oh Katie, the THINGS you could have BEEN! I always knew you had SUCH POTENTIAL! It’s a shame, isn’t it? Such a shame.” To which I usually respond with a somber smile mixed with a repetitive head nod, as if to say, “I feel you”, when in reality, I’m thinking, “What the fuck are you talking about?” It’s as if when you’re born, whatever higher power that’s working that day stamps you with either “success” or “total fuckup”. And everyone can see it but you. So this whole time I was under the impression I was a member of the latter camp, and boy was I stupid. Stupid to think I could measure success in ways other than the places I’ve travelled or how much money is in my bank account. The idea of being senior VP of ANYTHING makes me want to blow my brains out, so I guess my “potential” is just going to rot inside my brain while I’m out trying to make a life worth living according to me.

Maybe I’m realizing that I shouldn’t feel guilty for wanting to be a mother, a wife, and a friend, instead of something that looks better on paper. And maybe that makes me feel a little insane.

I’ve come to the conclusion that pregnancy turns you into a monster.

Not the kind of monster that would actually impart physical HARM on anyone, per se, but the kind that is just intrinsically ugly to the core. The kind that assumes without a shadow of a doubt, that their husband is hell-bent on leaving them after the appearance of a few stretch marks, dark purple and winding like the exposed roots of a tree, make their way across their steel-drum-tight skin. The kind that resorts to hatred as the easiest and most applicable emotion in any situation. Hate, after all, is easier than sadness and incessant depression.

Don’t get me wrong, I will never, EVER resent my daughter for the terrifying changes happening to my mind and body. I will, however, blame myself. And most importantly, I will add this failure to an already long list of missteps in the timeline that is my life. This is the nail in the coffin. Now I will NEVER be beautiful. Now I will NEVER have a perfect body. As much as it pains me to be one of “those” people, the girls who blindly equate self-worth with pant size, I can’t help it. Years of a cynical mother, a feather-light sister, and well-meaning yet harsh dance teachers, have turned me into someone who hates their body so much it seeps into every aspect of their life. If I didn’t get a job I wanted, it’s probably because a fat girl like me would just make the company look bad. If I get overlooked by some meathead jock at the bar in favor of a waifish blonde, drunk on lemon drops, it’s probably because I am so hideously ugly that nobody in their right mind would even want me to so much as take off my JACKET, much less my shirt. I’ve found myself pining for the attention of people I really don’t care about, just to prove to myself that I’m at least capable of a minute of their time. I’ve laughed at jokes I found absurdly moronic just so I feel validated enough to keep from slitting my own wrists.

And now, with the recent addition of a 20-pound bowling ball stuck directly on my midsection, I have become the enemy of my own sanity. I find myself sneaking off to the bathroom to cry when my husband and his best friend express interest in a movie that happens to star a blonde in a short skirt. Every second my husband leaves his phone on the table, I snatch it up and scroll through his text messages, absolutely positive that I’m going to find a message eliciting some sort of interaction from another woman, inevitably a thin one. In order to keep myelf from pulling my hair out, I pacify my raging emotions by telling myself that at least he’s too poor to divorce me for someone else. Whenever anybody comments on how “pregnant”, “big”, or “round” I am, I spend the next hour thinking of horrible ways for them to die. Hell, whenever anyone acknowledges my stomache AT ALL, I instantly hate them for reminding me of how fat I am, have been, and always will be. To say these things out loud would be moronic. I don’t want to hear about how irrational I’m being. Because deep down, doesn’t every crazy person KNOW that? Everyone who thinks that sort of thing knows they aren’t supposed to. And hearing someone remind you of the fact doesn’t help matters at all.

So I’m left feebly counting down the weeks until I meet my daughter. Until I hopefully find a bigger use of my time besides hating every fiber of my own being. I hate the person I’ve become, yet I’ve turned into this person because of how much I hated who I used to be. It’s a vicious cycle, and hopefully I learn my lesson before I really fuck everything up. But hey, at least I’m not barfing.

I’m realizing more and more that I’m one of “those” moms. You know, the one that feels compelled to take eight kabillion pictures of their kid as if other people ACTUALLY care about the OMG ADORABLY FUNNY FACE SHE MADE TODAY or whatever. Like I should even be surprised. I’ve been doing the same damn thing with my dog since I adopted him. But whatever. Unfollow me if you have some sort of allergy to fucking adorable chubby babies. See if I care.

I’m trying to figure out how to put in to words how I feel. About not being pregnant anymore, about how much my future has dramatically changed, how I feel about my body, and how I feel about my daughter. But hell, I might as well try. (real quick. My kid is sleeping and when she breathes she makes this high-pitched *sigh* that is so precious I literally turn the volume down on my pandora for like five minutes and just listen. I do that when she hiccups too. Because that’s delightful.)

How I feel about not being pregnant anymore: Obviously, I’m elated. Somehow carrying a ten pound baby around on one of those Baby Bjorn things is infinitely easier than carrying her in my actual stomache. But it’s weird, because now that my actual delivery was almost three weeks ago, I can look back and see how actually terrifying it was. How much pain I was in, how depressed I was, and how medically, it was so so scary. I’m noticing now the sheer amount of ENERGY I have, even when I was taking the post-op painkillers. And when my mind wanders and I actually THINK about the surgery, how it happened literally overnight, how my baby almost didn’t make it, how I almost didn’t make it, and how our friends and family woke up on Monday morning not even realizing I had a baby at 4am that morning. I start to think about how I didn’t meet my child for three days after she was born because I was sick and she was sick, and literally HOLDING her threatened her life. I think about the blood transfusions, the night I woke up with an oxygen mask on, my husband freaking out because I had stopped breathing in my sleep, and how the first time I saw my child was a photo my mother in law took on facebook. And how hard it’s going to be for me to let go of the anger I feel towards her about that.

How I feel about my future: Before I got pregnant, and even up until the day I had my child, I was a workaholic. If there was a shift to pick up, I would take it. If I had the time to pick up another part-time job, I would do it. I have ALWAYS held down two jobs. Even when I was in school. So honestly, the biggest struggle for me is knowing that yes, I WILL have to be part-time while my child is a baby. And what in the HELL am I going to do to silence the worker bee voice in my brain? I’m not kidding, I literally worked until seven Sunday night, grabbed some food with my friends from work, got a headache, and went to the hospital at ten. I cheated and didn’t go on bedrest like I should have because I NEEDED to work. But at the same time, I’m struggling with the fact that I can’t be with my baby all day every day in a few weeks. A brief research of daycares made me cry so hard I had to stop. And not just because they’re criminally expensive (seriously. 400 bucks a WEEK to take care of a tiny person who sleeps, farts and eats? Come ON.), but because somebody ELSE will get to turn the volume down and listen to her hum in her sleep. Fortunately, I’m blessed to have people around this summer to watch her when I go back, people that I trust. And I’m going to have to find a way to convince myself to trust my mother in law to watch her when my mom goes back to work in september (damn teachers. Why can’t my mom be retired?). Add that to the fact that I don’t drive due to anxiety, and… well… hello anxiety. Regardless, I really am okay with the fact that my husband gets to hang out with his friends while I stay at home. because this is where I WANT to be. I want to be there the first time she responds to me calling her by her name. I want to be there when she smiles for the first time, not just because it’s a face she happens to make. I want to be there for as much as I can be. I know that my husband LOVES his child, and he is so attentive to taking care of her. But they don’t call it maternal instinct because it’s something dads traditionally have. Since I see myself only having one child, I want to make sure I don’t miss a THING.

How I feel about my body: I gained so much weight SO fast towards the end, due to preeclampsia. So I am one giant stretch mark. Given my *ahem* history in the body-image department, I’m really struggling. I literally have to tell myself every day that it takes time, that I’m more than a body, that I’m not the only one who has had their body ripped apart by pregnancy, that my daughter will love me no matter how much my skin hangs down. I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve skipped meals and gone on longer walks despite how much my incision ached. Every day I step on the scale is just making that negative voice louder. But I’m a sucker for it. I literally thrive on being able to tell myself, You’re not good enough. And no matter what I tell myself, that I’m more than a body, that the reason for me looking this way is more important than how small my clothes are or that I’ll be wearing one-piece bathing suits from now on, I can’t shake the selfish feeling that I am ruined. I am broken. And since I’ve spent my life measuring my self worth with mirrors and scales, I am throwing EVERYTHING into taking care of my baby, in order to distract myself from how much I want to curl up in a ball and cry.

How I feel about my daughter: This has been a long journey. I’ve had to explain myself to a lot of people, and I’ve been ostracized by my husband’s friends due to horrible rumors started about me. I know when his friends see me, they see someone who got pregnant by “accident” (or, according to a bitch he’s friends with, I got pregnant to keep my husband around because I was afraid he would leave me.) and until recently, I sort of felt like this pregnancy was just an inconvenience to the life my husband wasn’t truly prepared to give up. Yes, we wanted children, and yes, we wanted children int he near future, but I would be lying if I didn’t say it happened a lot faster than we planned. But seeing her, holding her, I don’t care what anyone says anymore. I always told myself that having a child would “save” me, make me realize my purpose outside myself, but it is so much more than that. I made a HUMAN. I made a DAUGHTER. And I made a chance to right all the wrongs that I experienced. I made a chance to tell someone they are beautiful, valid, and appreciated every day of their life. I made an opportunity to give someone whatever life they choose. And honestly? I can’t put in to words how much I want her to have everything. Because she DESERVES everything. I don’t mean materially. I mean she deserves everything of me, of her father, of herself. She deserves every opportunity to be herself. And I am so lucky to be able to give that to her.

Okay that was a lot longer than I thought it would be.

“You’re SUPPOSED to have anxiety. You’re SUPPOSED to worry that the rent isn’t going to get paid, because THATS HOW THE FUCKING RENT GETS PAID.” - Chris Titus

My daughter is going to be a month old tomorrow. Well, four weeks. Technically her “one month birthday” isn’t until the 6th, but I digress.

At the risk of turning this tumblr into my “philosophical shit I’ve learned about being a mom” blog, I keep writing about it all. Because in reality, being a parent, being a MOTHER, more specifically, is different than I could have even comprehended. And in a way, I’m disappointed in… well, everyone that’s ever given me wax poetic “advice” about “motherhood”. And about feeding times and laundry detergent for babies and diaper ointment and cradle cap. And about how “beautiful, fulfilling, and life-changing” being a mom is. Because really? Nobody can EVER have the right to tell you how it’s going to be. Because telling you involves using words. And as far as I’m concerned, there aren’t any words to describe what this is like, or how it feels, or what you’re supposed to do. Trust me, I’ve had a lot of time to contemplate it.

But the thing is, I really don’t want my kid to grow up. It’s not that I thoroughly enjoy getting up at three AM for feedings, or the fact that feeding now lasts three times as long because my kid has thrush and eating hurts, or how I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve put on mascara in the past month. It’s because she’s sort of perfect in this serene, naive way and I don’t want to watch someone get run over by the reality of life. I don’t want to watch her find out that there will actually be people out there who don’t think she is as beautiful as I do. I don’t want to be there when she realizes that not everyone is going to be as eager to hold her when she cries as I am. I mean, I WILL be there, always, I don’t know how I’m going to react, what I’m going to say, how it’s going to feel.

It’s like when you first get married, or I suppose when you first start dating someone. That borderline obsession you feel, that overwhelming need to just be around that person, exist in the same breathing space as them because somehow it’s better that way. Food tastes better, sleep is more fulfilling, and life just runs smoother. But after a while, time takes it’s toll and you start to notice the flaws, like small cracks in pavement. It doesn’t mean you love them any less, you just love them differently. Right now, she sees the world like it’s perfect. Like the only things upsetting enough can easily be fixed by being held until you fall asleep. And I honestly don’t know how I’m going to feel when she doesn’t think like that anymore.

In other news, I’m starting to feel the negative side-effects of not being pregnant anymore (and honestly, I didn’t even know that was possible. Go figure.) My hair is DRY. Like, the Sahara dry. Nothing I do will make it shiny and bouncy like it was a month ago. Not to mention, it’s falling out like crazy. I’ve always had incredibly thick hair, but when I was pregnant the weight of my hair alone probably added five pounds to the scale. Oh, and I have acne now. Like, clusters of nasty acne bombs all over my chin. Thanks hormones. You’re a dear.

In other news, my kid burped on my boob today. Funniest. Thing. Ever.

I've come to the conclusion that pregnancy turns you into a monster.

Not the kind of monster that would actually impart physical HARM on anyone, per se, but the kind that is just intrinsically ugly to the core. The kind that assumes without a shadow of a doubt, that their husband is hell-bent on leaving them after the appearance of a few stretch marks, dark purple and winding like the exposed roots of a tree, make their way across their steel-drum-tight skin. The kind that resorts to hatred as the easiest and most applicable emotion in any situation. Hate, after all, is easier than sadness and incessant depression.

Don't get me wrong, I will never, EVER resent my daughter for the terrifying changes happening to my mind and body. I will, however, blame myself. And most importantly, I will add this failure to an already long list of missteps in the timeline that is my life. This is the nail in the coffin. Now I will NEVER be beautiful. Now I will NEVER have a perfect body. As much as it pains me to be one of "those" people, the girls who blindly equate self-worth with pant size, I can't help it. Years of a cynical mother, a feather-light sister, and well-meaning yet harsh dance teachers, have turned me into someone who hates their body so much it seeps into every aspect of their life. If I didn't get a job I wanted, it's probably because a fat girl like me would just make the company look bad. If I get overlooked by some meathead jock at the bar in favor of a waifish blonde, drunk on lemon drops, it's probably because I am so hideously ugly that nobody in their right mind would even want me to so much as take off my JACKET, much less my shirt. I've found myself pining for the attention of people I really don't care about, just to prove to myself that I'm at least capable of a minute of their time. I've laughed at jokes I found absurdly moronic just so I feel validated enough to keep from slitting my own wrists.

And now, with the recent addition of a 20-pound bowling ball stuck directly on my midsection, I have become the enemy of my own sanity. I find myself sneaking off to the bathroom to cry when my husband and his best friend express interest in a movie that happens to star a blonde in a short skirt. Every second my husband leaves his phone on the table, I snatch it up and scroll through his text messages, absolutely positive that I'm going to find a message eliciting some sort of interaction from another woman, inevitably a thin one. In order to keep myelf from pulling my hair out, I pacify my raging emotions by telling myself that at least he's too poor to divorce me for someone else. Whenever anybody comments on how "pregnant", "big", or "round" I am, I spend the next hour thinking of horrible ways for them to die. Hell, whenever anyone acknowledges my stomache AT ALL, I instantly hate them for reminding me of how fat I am, have been, and always will be. To say these things out loud would be moronic. I don't want to hear about how irrational I'm being. Because deep down, doesn't every crazy person KNOW that? Everyone who thinks that sort of thing knows they aren't supposed to. And hearing someone remind you of the fact doesn't help matters at all.

So I'm left feebly counting down the weeks until I meet my daughter. Until I hopefully find a bigger use of my time besides hating every fiber of my own being. I hate the person I've become, yet I've turned into this person because of how much I hated who I used to be. It's a vicious cycle, and hopefully I learn my lesson before I really fuck everything up. But hey, at least I'm not barfing.

Yeah, sorry I was so WAH the other night. I'm still upset about my situation, but now I can realize that my problems are not NEARLY as bad as they could be. And I really do have a lot of positivity in my life. It's just that some of my husband's friends have this uncanny way of just pointing out HOW shitty your situation is, and how un-shitty their life is. I just need to avoid them entirely when I'm high-stress. But no shit, I fucking love you guys.

Also, I had a fucking panic attack on the bus home from work last night. I got this weird rush of nerves and felt like someone was going to steal from me or jump me or something. I NEVER get that way. I dunno. it was really terrifying. And then I got home and Alex had grilled chicken that he marinated in this yummy sauce, and made veggies and had big ol' glass of milk waiting for me. And all was well.

Suck my dick.

I WROTE THIS ARTICLE ABOUT NAIL POLISH OKAY

No but seriously. My nails are always gross and disgusting. And now they're chipped and jagged and ick. I really should fix them and make them purdy. But I'd rather watch Metalocalypse. IDK, maybe I'm better at blogging about nail polish than doing it myself?

Whatever.

I usually put movies on when I leave the house so my dog doesn't wig out when he's home alone. (Helloooo separation anxiety...)

Today, I had to pop to CVS for a minute and grab some lunch while I was at it, so I put on Fraggle Rock, because it plays all the episodes on a repeat and I didn't know how long I would be out. It's one of "his" movies, AKA I only own it to play for him, because any really scary/realistic/action-y movies make him spaz even more. I've never really paid attention to him when his movies are on however, because I usually turn them off as soon as I get home.

Okay, I've been home for two hours already now, and i was out for about two, maybe an hour and a half. REGARDLESS.

My dog is sitting on the couch, watching Fraggle Rock SO INTENTLY. It's been the same five episodes on repeat for almost four hours now. THE SAME FIFTEEN MINUTE EPISODES. It's like I'm not even home. He's just burning a hole in the screen with his eyes. He'll sometimes bark when Sprocket, the giant "dog", which is actually a giant puppet with a floppity head, barks (and mind you, it sounds nothing like an ACUAL bark, it's just an actor making a "bark! Bark!" noise). other than that, NO reaction from him.

I think my dog is actually stoned right now.