At the risk of sounding like a total whiner, I didn't expect this process to feel so isolating. Maybe part of that is my fault. I'm not really embracing the whole "sisterhood" of having a baby. I specifically avoid talking to people who want to talk about nothing but growing a fetus. The thing is, the people who want to talk about those things are not people who are close to me. They're people who want to find some sort of kinship with me through this subject, sometimes people I've drifted from and don't really feel the need to be pulled back to for any reason. The people around me who do have kids are the sort of parents I want to be, the ones who don't constantly talk about their kids or the process of growing them. The ones who don't have kids well....why bother them with details they don't care about? So who does that really leave? And the thing is, I don't want to talk about it all the time but sometimes I wish someone would ask me in genuine earnestness how I'm doing. Not that "How are you feeling?" crap you get from co-workers where it's not really appropriate to say anything other than "Fine, thanks!" but a genuine "Hey, how are you?" where it's safe to say how you really are is sometimes welcome. I don't even have anything to complain about. This has been a piece of cake for me so far in the sense of physical change and all of that. I'm not crazy hormonal and emotional. But sometimes the fears creep in and it'd be nice if someone asked if I was ok. Sometimes I just feel more tired than usual and it'd be really nice to have someone else offer to make dinner or at least help with it. Some days I just wish that I wasn't sitting around feeling like it's just me, all alone, while the rest of the world goes about their business.
Sometimes it's hard because my husband is in the type who doesn't talk about anything. Like.....anything. I find out more from reading his blog than I do from him actually telling me anything about himself. I struggle with that, but I'm trying to just accept it and find a way to make it fit with my own needs, though there are days when that's hard. This whole process has been a non-thing for him. He's actually said, several times, that he doesn't make a big deal about it because it's not a big deal. I suppose for him, it's really not at this point. Nothing changes for him until this kid shows up and starts needing things. He can go days or weeks without ever thinking about it at all. He doesn't have to. It's not happening to him. Me? I can't go more than 4 hours because at some point something's going to happen and my bladder is going to get kicked, and there it is. A reminder of everything that's going on and sometimes a reminder of how afraid I still am. Not so much of being a total screw up anymore, but just afraid of how things are going to change, or afraid of what the end game for this looks like for me, in that whole "Sort of afraid of being ripped apart" way. It's also a bit of a reminder that, although she's in there rolling around and doing her thing, I'm still sitting here feeling like that's somehow separate from me. A friend of mine said something about how she was "already in love" by 20 weeks and I'm like "I'm not even sure if I'm in love now" because....there's still an element of it that doesn't seem entirely real. I'm struggling with this lack of feeling "super connected" that all of these other women seem to have. It's not that I'm unhappy or not excited, I just sometimes feel like all of this is happening to someone else. Like, I still feel too much like me for it to be happening to me. I half expected something to trigger in my brain and turn on and make me suddenly feel like a mom, but I just feel like myself, and the me I know is certainly not a mom. The problem is that I don't know how to express that to people. I also don't think it's actually ok to express that to people. Especially when people don't ever ask how I'm doing in the first place. Even my husband doesn't ask how I'm doing. Probably because it doesn't cross his mind because again, he could go days without thinking about it. I don't expect it to occur to him that, because I'm not walking around with a list of pregnancy related ailments and I was never puking every day, and I was never so exhausted I couldn't function, that it's exactly the same for me as it is for him. But it's not. It's different, and I don't know how to express that either.
I keep latching onto things that are easy to get excited about. I'm actually excited to put together a nursery. I like decorating. I like picking paint and fabric and all of that stuff. The problem is, that's on hold. Just like everything is on hold. So it's just me surfing the internet looking up ideas and doing nothing with them. I like picking out tiny baby clothes and for some reason having those makes me feel like maybe this is happening to us. Something, in the not-so-distant future, is going to fit into those clothes. I think about names a lot, despite the fact that he refuses to talk about it. I keep latching on to all of these things that do make me excited, but there's always resistance. There's always a reluctance to move from one milestone to the next and to get things done that might help me feel like a mom. Moms buy their kids clothes. Moms decorate bedrooms. Moms take care of necessities. This probably doesn't make any sense to anyone. I'm not sure I'm articulating it properly. I don't know how to explain myself, and when I try, I feel like I just make everything more complicated.
Basically, I'm just lonely right now.
And I wish I wasn't.
0 comments:
Post a Comment