Sing Anyways

Is it exhibitionism?

Who cares if you can't sing.  Sing louder.
 

"I figured, if you don't want my essay, I'll write a book."

I'm such a sucker for saxophone, trumpets, and strings.

Girls in ties.

Free love.  Easy love.  Breathe in, breathe out, exhale music, breathe it out through your hands, and put that shit on a CD for me.


You are stuck in my head.

When You Move On.

No time is enough.

Sometimes there is the sensation that it has been one very long pregnancy, and that the current one is a simple fallacy because obviously the baby has already died.  It died almost a year ago.  So there IS no child in me kicking.  So there IS no need to prepare.  So there is no way to get excited about baby clothes or this and that because...it isn't real.

Don't you realize my baby died?

Why are you still talking about it?  Asking me about it?  Wanting to know about it?

Why are you asking about my dead baby?


Sometimes I get the feeling instead that there is a baby there, but it isn't mine.  Because, again, mine died.  I don't feel invested.  This is my husband's baby.  But it isn't my baby.


Sometimes I get terrified because I think it is the same baby, and it died, it died, it died, it died, it DIED.


I always feel guilty because I am not the shining, happy mother everyone expects me to be.  Because sometimes there are holes in my enthusiasm, or I do not smile wildly enough.  Sometimes you see through my little barrier and you get the impression you can even sense the depth of my grief, my terror, my guilt.  You don't.

Let's just get that straight.

You don't.

Please, just don't tell me about how hard it must be when sometimes your body rebels against you.  Doesn't cooperate.  Like I was just a broken machine that malfunctioned, threw a part, killed a baby.

Don't give me ANY inkling that you think you know what is going through my head, because chances are, what I am thinking is that I want you to stop talking now so I can change the subject.

We don't need to discuss this.

We need to just wait this out for another three months.  Just try not to panic and scream "GET IT OUT" for another three months.  Don't claw at your stomach or scrunch up your face or cry hysterically in the shower because you can't get it out for another three months.  Just breathe and wait.

Just breathe.

And wait.

This Isn't TV, and I'm Not a Celebrity

I wasn't underweight at the start of this pregnancy.  I didn't keep up a healthy cardio routine and eat lots of health food.  I do not have stick arms and stick legs, a perky little ass, modestly sized tits, and a taut, shiny baby belly that sparkles and sprouts unicorns every time the baby kicks.

Oh, no.

Let me tell you about my bump.

My bump rolls and thunks like I have an alien eating me from the inside out.  Over it is a decent, oddly shaped layer of squishy fat and wiggly skin.  That same layer pads my growing ass, and I have armpit-fat that could evacuate a beach.  Part of that is a result of my massively growing boobs - guys, these are not Pamela boobs.  These are big, swollen, wobbling things with a bonus boob on the end of each one - oh, excuse me, I mean GIANT nipples.

My only stretch marks to date are on my thighs, and I have no idea when they got there.

I am kind of beginning to understand why it used to be that women were expected to be modest and quiet about their pregnancies.  It kind of makes your body gross.

Oh, I know, I'm supposed to just fucking adore my body right now, right?

Goo coming out my bewbs?  MIRACLE OF LIFE!  Swelling stomach that can high five you back?  Kind of... cool...  Gassy, squishy, and hairy?  Oh, what, this isn't sounding fun anymore?

There are times I feel pretty.  When I have a particularly flattering maternity shirt on (I never buy myself clothes, so that's a big deal).  When I am well-rested and don't have big bags under my eyes from just getting off work at 7 AM in the morning.  When I brush my hair.

All I know is, the people pestering me for pregnancy photos all the time, who want me to text them pictures so they can show all their friends and family how bloated with spawn I am, and the one particular individual who thinks nude/topless photos would be a terrific idea (I don't care if you photographed an underweight model covering her boobies - you'd need four hands to make mine tasteful)...

All you folks need to understand what you are in for.

Understand what you're asking me to do.

And don't bitch if your picture involves a hearty use of middle finger.  I don't photograph YOUR bodily functions, you know.

I didn't know I wanted that.

And now I don't think I can live without it...

I'm shopping for stuff to put on the baby registry, because um...the shower is apparently in like 2 weeks and I have neglected to do ANY kind of baby product research or registry-ing or...anything.  Because...I am scared of baby products.

Like, I found a diaper bag with skulls on it.

That was neat.

But my husband found a better bag.

I am just not very good at this.  Yet?  Yet.

So I started looking at "wipe warmers."  These apparently make babies scream less when you change them.  I imagine it would, because who wants a cold-ass wet thing on your cold-wet-ass?

I don't know a thing about these, so I pulled up a ton of options and started looking at their product details to compare.  Under "Protective Qualities" a lot of them had things like:

• Mildew resistant

Or...

• Bacteria resistant
• Resists browning

 Blahblahblah.  These are all good things, but I'm sitting here wondering, "do the others NOT do those things?  Or are they just adding in stuff that sounds flashy and useful?  Because it does, but is that a unique thing?"

And then...then I saw this:

• Protective Qualities: Flame Resistant

OH THAT IS PROBABLY USEFUL YES LET'S PLEASE NOT CATCH FIRE.

From Your Lips She Drew the Hallelujah

It's all a trade-off.

I believe in trade-offs like Christians believe in Heaven.

When you hit that point where your hands are stuck in your hair and your breaths are fast and painful.  And you think to yourself, that at the end of the road, there will be something waiting for you and those you love.  That the struggle HAS to be worth something.  That your hard work, your perseverance, your sweat, your heartache, will all culminate in a beautiful overflowing of peace.

That is somebody else's heaven, and it makes it worth something to keep going.

Me, personally, I think when you die, you die.  Your systems shut down.  Your pieces fall apart.  You stop and goo begins, and that goo goes on to do different, if not better, things with itself.  I don't have a heaven.  I don't want a heaven.  And to quote the lovely Beth, it don't fool me, either.

Nope.

My trade-off is here.  It's now.  It's summed up at the end of each calendar year.

I play a progress game.  I push that bar forward until I level and then I push it forward again.  Each time it gets harder to push, but I keep pushing.

And when my hands are stuck in my hair and my breaths are fast and painful, I feel it, I feel it in every fiber, and I have no numbness, no relief.  My trade-off, my trade-off for letting the panic cover me, is that maybe somewhere out of this chaos I will have created something.

Maybe when the ADD mess of half-finished projects, goals, and ambitions all settle into the ground and dissolve into something else, I will have affected somebody, something else.  There will have been a cause in the world to what I did.  I panicked and I screamed and I stumbled and I cut myself, but when I was finished, a dog was taken off of a highway full of traffic and put in a dog bed with a yard and a patient, loving owner.  When I lift my head up, I eased somebody else's breathing.  When I open my eyes, I can look over my shoulder, and see that you are the person you are because I was there for you, even when it hurt me to do it.

I am scared.

I am alone.

I don't have anyone to blame for that except the person I have made myself.  But it's a trade-off.  Because if I keep working, and I keep going, and I keep pushing right through the hurdles and giving more and more of myself, then at the end of the day, when my last breath slips out from my lips, I'll know

That you know

I loved you

And I would do it all again.