kate; uncensored

Just like I’ve written before, I’m feeling tender about the day.

I’m thankful for my mother, and our relationship. Even though she’s 2000 miles away, I feel her love. I’m grateful to have so many wonderful women who have mothered / nurtured me at one point or another. I’m happy I have great friends who are a shining example of motherhood. Kind, strong, patient, loving women who are raising exceptional children. I feel lucky to be on the sidelines of that. I hope to someday be an aunt, that my sister or brother’s girlfriend will become mothers and give me that opportunity. It’s the closest I’m going to get.

I still feel the wistfulness around this day. The what ifs and what might have beens haunt me both at night in my dreams and in the sunlight when I wipe the sleep away.

There are days on the calendar that call to mind a pain I fail to dismiss.  March 25, April 24, May 24, July 22, October 20;  Then of course, we add the holidays with rotating days, like Mother’s day.

I used to get close to those days, counting down, full of melancholy. Then, as life pushed me forward, the days blurred together. I no longer felt the need to bring my world down, hiding from everyone, secluding myself in my bed.

Still, I find myself unable to forget them completely. Last year, some of those dates, a would have been due date and a miscarriage anniversary, went by unannounced. I didn’t think of the experience that day, I didn’t wake up the night before, remembering all the pain they brought. The grief was finally subsiding, letting me live the life that comes after loss.

I should not have been so naive.

Unexpectedly, days later, out of the blue, I’d hit a wall. I was driving down the highway, choking on the sobs, wiping away the tears until it became too much, and I needed to pull over.

The other time, I was in the grocery store. With a cart full of groceries, and my hand on a carton of cream, I panicked. The air began to thin, the sounds in the store were overwhelming. I just wanted to get out. If I could make it out of the store before the tears ran down my face, before I made an audible cry.

I didn’t.

I left the cart and hit the car, grateful for the privacy of my own vehicle, however thin that veil might be. Knowing it was a short ride home, I blasted the air on my face, willing myself to focus on the road.

I feel it now. As we reach Spring, and some of those dates, I feel the tightening on my lungs, I feel the hesitation in my heart. I feel the things I can’t forget.

Thank you to Sadie for the post that prompted these thoughts. 

I suppose for most people, this happens Sunday night, but since Sunday night is date night here (we have Mondays off) it sets in on Mondays instead.

I wonder if it’s time to look for another job once your stomach hurts at the idea of going to work the next day. It happened at the last place after about a year, when I felt I was getting more responsibility and more work without more pay, and the benefits that were supposed to happen didn’t. I’m again in this situation, wondering about the security of my job, my practice, and wondering how to broach the subject again with them, since they were less than receptive the first time.

I wonder if I’m just spoiled after having worked for myself, not knowing how to get through tougher times in a job that I don’t have 100% control over. I guess I feel ambivalent about leaving, and since I’m already losing staff, I don’t worry about leaving this place in the lurch.

If only I had that crystal ball that would help me decide if staying will be better or worse than looking for something new.

I want to learn guitar.

I have songs inside me that I want to get out. I feel better when I can sing, especially so at full volume.

I have this inner melancholy and heartbreak that lingers with me, throughout the good and bad times. I can never seem to shake it completely, there’s just something about sad songs that soothes me, no matter what is happening.

I want to sing them, loudly. I want to get them out of my system. I want to grip and strum an instrument the way I do the man in my life.

Every once in a while, something pops up and makes me uneasy. Something I’ve thought was buried under the surface.

I get to a point where I have some form of closure. Some part of my past, that I thought was finished, comes back to rear its head. I want to forget a lot of things, and mostly, I can. However, not everything wants to stay underneath.

This time, it’s a legal issue, and it pisses me off, because it is something that should have been settled with my divorce. I am not sure if it’s something that slipped through the cracks, or if it’s a fishing expedition.

Either way, I wish the past would stay in the past.

While I’ve come to believe that glitter is the herpes of the craft world, I still like it in some forms, especially this one.

My submission to “Glitter” covers much of the territory I’ve covered earlier on in this blog, my experience with my sexuality as I went through infertility treatment.

The women involved with this project have bared their souls, and it would be awesome if you could support them, either through the site or by reading the book.

A huge thank you to my favorite dominatrix, Mona Darling, for putting this all together.

Lately I feel my brain full of so many questions.

I feel turned inside out by the little things, and the bigger, life altering questions.

I can’t handle all the questions.

I feel sad and overwhelmed. I need a break, or a vacation; a change, or perhaps some kind of medication. I don’t know. What I do know is that I can’t stay on this track too much longer. I believe something has to give.

I’ve tried to pursue some things I enjoy, to give myself an outlet that I’m severely lacking right now. I’m working on surrounding myself with people and things that make me happy, that give me something. I want to make myself a happy place. I want to learn new things or maybe discover a talent I didn’t know I had. I want to spend time with D, just us, connecting without work chat, phones, or any electronic screens.

I can’t escape or run away, so I need to at the very least, care for myself a little bit more right now.

There’s been a lot of sadness around these corners.

I lost my uncle / godfather last week, and unlike in November, I was not able to go home for the funeral. The more people I lose, the more I wonder why I live 2,000 miles away. I know why, but I don’t know how much longer I want to. I would never ask D to leave his hometown if he wasn’t OK with it, but I may have to start broaching the subject.

I am conflicted lately about life, my own mortality; Just as I think about my own, I think about my parents and D, and what that means for me as well.

With him being significantly older than me, I know there’s a possibility I’d be left behind. I wonder how other childless women feel. With no children, no parents, no partner, who would I spend my time with? I suppose we all have the possibility of ending up alone, but I wonder if it’s an inevitability for those of us who don’t procreate.

I don’t have very many friends, and they seem to come into and out of my life with no rhyme or reason. I have moved away from most of the people I love, and often alienate others because of my own anxiety, fear and depression.

I wonder how we avoid dying alone, but then, I suppose, the only way to guarantee that doesn’t happen, is to die before everyone else, leaving them with the loss.

I wrote this comment after reading Melissa’s post

“I wrestle with the punishment / reward idea constantly. As in, why do they get this reward and I didn’t?

I think, some little part of me, maybe in the deep dark recesses of my mind and heart, believe that I did not deserve a child; that my infertility, my miscarriages, my cancer were all a punishment.

It’s one of the hardest parts to let go of, actually. It’s harder than the loss and the grief, that compulsion to punish myself.”

I don’t know at what point you start to blame yourself for what happens to you. It certainly feels like a long-lived habit for me. I have some weird sense of “if you’re bad, bad things happen to you”.

My parents used to joke that they must have been Hitler and Eva Braun in a past life. It was supposed to be funny, but it was strange. Still, both fantastically good people, they endured a LOT of hardships early on in their marriage and therefore developed a pretty tough exterior. I thank them for this, because I was able to learn about dealing with unfairness early.

I think I was a really good kid, and as an adult, I’m a fairly good person. I’ve made mistakes, I’ve fucked up for sure, but deep down, I think my heart is more pure than rotten. On an intellectual level, I know I didn’t cause my miscarriages. I know that mistakes I made didn’t leave me unable to bear children, or make my ex-husband almost sterile. I know that the wrongdoings didn’t add up to a failed adoption, a cancer diagnosis or a failed marriage. Still, I can’t escape that feeling entirely.

It’s a small voice, like a mocking child. Like the little girl version of me on the playground, speaking in the tones I heard directed at me years ago.

Certainly, I can’t think that being a mother is a reward for being good. There are too many instances where that cannot be the case. Yet, when a woman who has struggled to conceive or carry a child becomes a mother, there is that belief that she has been blessed. The implication is that a woman like me, who remains childless, is not.

I’d like to believe that it doesn’t work that way, that the good things that happen to a person are just good things, and not a reward for being an ideal human being. I’d like to believe that the converse is true also. I’m just not entirely convinced.

I don’t know why the number thirteen has such a bad reputation. Could be a number of things causing that, once you get Wikipedia involved. I’ve never found it to be lucky or unlucky for me, just a benign number like so many others. I’m hoping for neither lucky or unlucky. But, once again, like most years, I’m hoping for a fresh start.

Last year, I hoped too. We did get to take a trip, we cruised last February. I got to be home with my family twice; a fun trip in July, a sad one this November. My father is now healthier, there being no new cancer found and the cancer he had eliminated for the most part. D hasn’t yet found peace at work, and my changes weren’t necessarily for the better, but you can’t have everything.

This year ahead brings changes. All years do, but this one especially seems intimidating. D is going to switch hours at his work; going from a 3.5 day work week (three 12 hour days and one 6 hour day) to a 5 day, 8 hour work week. Pair this with a schedule change – instead of 6 am – 6 pm, he’ll either be working graveyards or a swing shift, and we’re upset, wondering about that change and how it will affect us.

I’m looking forward to a trip together, home to a wedding in the fall, and to the other things we’ll share this year. I pray that the good things outweigh the bad; that there’s more smiles, less tears and much less frustration.