I must say that sitting in bed with my feet propped treading water in the internet for hours, my eyes getting hazy from skimming every possible mood and nuance and situation related to my obsession a la mode (by which I mean, du jour), no matter what a miracle it is, is draining.
I remember it was not so long ago (was it the summer, or was it the fall? I do not remember, we had a ball), hearing the piano strains of Eric Satie- they were so solemn and strangely triumphant, that I felt a life without D. would be so empty I would rather be ripped apart. But it's very hard. He wants to get married on the twentieth, he says. I think it's the "right" thing to do, not out of conservatism, but because both of us largely believe in making a public statement/forming a contract regarding a pledge of monogamy (while realizing that the statement or contract in itself does little to ensure the stability or success of the relationship), our families would appreciate the gesture, and it would simplify our situation, socially, with a baby on the way. I am of course torn to the point of despondency. Today I texted him something flirtatious and when he didn't immediately respond I was torn between anguish and relief. Everyone said it was hard, but nobody told me that these crazy feelings, of wanting to hunt someone down, would live on. And the other side of it, the nasty inverses of borderline personality disorder: that when he is here, in my bed every night, and closer than ever before, and promising to work hard, work full time, support me in graduate school in a year or two (I would return the favor of course), and only desire me, I become overwhelmed with all his tics: the way he drums his fingers, his slow way of talking (it's a miracle, I sometimes think, that we ever talk at all, we have such different speeds), the way he puts his head down on the next pew in church this morning; the blank, morose look across his face. His lack of confidence.
But this is love, this is the real thing: the asthma inhaler next to me and smelly feet, and silly text shorthand when I'd prefer something more dignified, and somberness when I'd prefer to be laughing. That is love. And sometimes it's not only more practical, but more interesting, to accept who you have and commit to them completely rather than keep looking for a more ideal person. (I know he is far from ideal, but so am I, and I see great potential and an earnest desire, albeit often obscured by despair, to realize said potential. But I am blind, perhaps. Oh well. If I join the ranks of spurned women in "complicated" situations, will I not have more wisdom, more compassion to offer? Is life about picking the easiest path, or the way we can learn the most? At the same time, should I purposely make poor decisions merely to seek "lessons"? Is that not the height of irresponsibility, to the point of immorality?)
So today, after I sat in front of the computer for hours, wondering about mothers of all kinds, and what Virgos are like (my due date will be in the middle of Virgo), and whether or not we will have a giant, and looking at hundreds of names, and not wanting any, (even when I had a full name- Adabella Easter Wood- picked out, complete with a loving mental image, for the one I terminated in the spring. Well, I am crazy. But of course I need a new name. And I am sorry, and do not mean to make light of such poor decisions, on my part. This summer, I sat in the Catholic church and, it sounds horrible and cliche, like artificial guilt imposed by cultural constructs, as opposed to genuine conviction: but I realized with tears that I should not have ended the lives of the two littles ones I had in me before. I don't hate myself or anyone else who does this, and I don't think I redeemed myself by immediately becoming pregnant again, which is very likely more selfishness. But I do think it wasn't the right thing to do, and motivated by fear. I of course aim to forgive myself), that parenthesis was getting heavy, for me I mean, a superficial girl, but I just want to speak my truth! It's hard out there, for us women. Some women have their heads screwed on very, very tight in certain departments and do not engage in epic struggle with ambivalence about fertility / sexuality. For those of us who do, I tell my story. Whatever that is.
But oh yes, the internet. Bjork had a child at 20, which was comforting to me. She actually was quoted as saying something like, "Children are the best companions. There is nothing better to talk about than why elephants aren't blue." (I got a lovely image of sitting at a table with a young person when she said this, but I'm still not convinced that I will wholly enjoy this kind of discussion.) And I found no names I like (as though naming were the most important task in this equation. Ugh, I hate when people call multifaceted, highly qualitative scenarios "this equation." It might be fresh if it weren't so old.)
So I kept sitting there, surfing the net for hours, and meaning to go for a walk, or something. I turned music on but all the songs seemed to romanticize a vaguely self-destructive autonomy, the so-called cult of individualism, and none of it seemed to have anything to do with me. But this is a very old problem I have, that of feeling perpetually left out, and one I must make short work of in the next few months.
I went to my mom's for dinner which was too rich for me after a huge lunch and mostly just sitting around, and the new, much slower way of digesting food, and I felt the old heaviness around her. She is doing her best to encourage me but I think is baffled by my ambivalence. She never admitted anything to herself but it seems, to me, so obvious that much of her optimism was false and did more harm than good. She did, after all, leave when I was ten, my brother nine- and do very little parenting from there on out, just ocassional suppers, and a brief stint I lived there at 16, but no one could have parented me at that point, and she simply fled to her boyfriend's, while I took over in a rage of binge eating and cruelty and self-hatred that I sometimes marvel didn't do more permanent damage (or did it?).
I do love my mom and I'm sure I could learn a lot from her, but there is a hedgy privacy about her I can't relate to. I feel like I can't really get close to her because she doesn't admit essential truths about herself or even acknowledge the darker aspects within herself. I, by contrast, am ready to see the worst murderer in my own heart, am awestruck by my greed and selfishness, and even by the way I boast of my humility. I see everything in a flash and yet can do seemingly little about my temperament. "I don't know what the truth is. I can only keep living and trying to figure that out," - again, a quote from a Mexican inmate in the jail, who prounounced "living" as "leaving," which I liked very much but am too tired to explain right now (something about how we can't step in the same river twice, perhaps). Whether or not it is "false honesty," only the veneer of truth, this is how I am: I worry about everything, air almost all my feelings, change my mind constantly, but in the end, I am, ironically, usually pretty commited when it matters. But anyway, enough about me. Perhaps the little person and I, too, will be worlds apart in huge ways.
But we had supper, and she had her sort of chirpy, ready-to-fall-apart-at-a-tap domestic pretending to like being domestic mask on, and while she really does like to cook and bake and clean and decorate, and excels at these things in a way I doubt I'll ever come close to, it all seems so fragile, too much like she is seeking appreciation, desperately. I asked her if she regretted having her children when she did and she sort of laughed me off, and said, "What else would I have done?" I once wrote (I love quoting myself, FP used to say), except this was not at all an original sentiment and probably verbatim plagiarism, so obvious an idea it is, that when I have children I want to feel there is nothing I'd rather do. I started to feel like maybe that time would never come and being who I am I'd always feel pulled in a lot of directions. I have no intention on telling the little one these things and every intention in proceeding regardless of the feelings of the moment. In my "condition," I feel much more like the one on the enneagram I'm supposed to integrate to, than a 4, at any rate, which seems wholly the domain of single people...
I can't write half of what I'm thinking, there isn't the time, I'm not coherent enough. But after the too rich dinner in which I was dull and morose and felt hopeless, I took a walk, up the side street that leads to Sand Hill, past the church, my old apartment before the former Sunset Deli (that corner with its shifting businesses that never work out), and past that intersection. I walked quickly in the snow, holding my too big wool coat shut, with mittens from D's sister, and decided, rather firmly, to adopt out. It seemed foolish to get pulled into a life with someone just because of an infatuation, someone who was essentially rigid and maybe even chauvinistic, and to have a baby mostly because of my own desperation and loneliness and desire to feel normal. I decided I'd be a horrible mother, with my depression, and that I didn't want to pass on the heaviness of my temperament which would be patently obvious to any child who had to spend lots of time with me--even in the best of circumstances. I cried very hard and even had regret for my own impending physical ordeal and pain, and the way I might walk the earth like a zombie, knowing someone was out there who would not, really, be my child. I started singing, very softly, alarmed by how much I sounded like my mother when she was young. "I don't want to use you for ex-per-ience. / I've loved many men, not one was a dunce. / But it's still / a boy's world. " I can't remember what else I sang. None of it was at all brilliant, but singing in the winter night air, and walking briskly, and crying, revived me. It made me remember myself, buried under all this heavy thinking, and by the time I was done walking my feelings had mostly passed. I don't know if it means I will be a horrible mother but I do know that I've been ambivalent about almost everything I've done and many things have worked out okay. I really have to stop speculating so much. That's why it's good to take a walk, and to sing. I'm planning on resuming my groups at the jail Friday. I want to get a job, I'm just sort of waiting to see if E. hooks up the car he has promised, and if not, to buy one.
And D. came over and it was hard at first, because I shared my worries about not being able to do it by myself, and about his laziness, and he got very upset and said that he cannot handle my back & forth, that he wanted to do well, to thrive even, and to be inspired by this, that he wanted to be a family (it seems like a taboo, in this age/generation, to even say such a thing, and he & I are such unwholesome characters), but that he needed my support and that I had to accept that he was sensitive, that I already knew this so what was I doing? He says he needs to hang out with people with larger aims than getting high, and to really disengage from those folks who place this at the center. There is a lot of talk between us of not saying we regret what we did, and it's only been a few days. I think we ought to get everything on the table as soon as possible. We do have a lot of time to think. I said even if I chose adoption he ought to still support me. I don't think that will happen but sometimes I interpret my Aries North Node as meaning it would be a death sentence to the person I have to become to do what I'm thinking of honestly doing. He said I ought to read more "Baby's First Year," less astrology bullshit. About this he may be right.
And his parents, who don't know yet, seem to be (instinctively?) warming up to me. There was an awkward, protracted, and painful scene recently in which his mother told me I couldn't stay at his apartment, but this involved many factors, such as RF rising a false cry re: some not at all stolen musical equipment, and D pulling one of his miraculous disappearing acts, which, to his credit, he has not done since. But, unsolicited, his parents recently reneged on this and said I could stay/live there anytime, though, thankfully, we are in agreement about living somewhere distinctly Else, since that place is, though large & rent-free, a depressing and decrepit piece of shit. But a hell of a safety net. Also, his sister and parents gave me Christmas presents, which I did not at all expect, even though I was not at their celebrations nor expected there. I actually like the earrings they gave me, which were quite classy, and then there was a black beret and a red scarf & glove set, White Stag (the quintessential Walmart brand), but the colors were bold and the thought was, I think, nice. They aren't, certainly, compulsive present givers, so I think they may be getting wise to something rather serious brewing. I just want to make the right choice. Could it be that any number of arrangements could work just fine? It's very sad, but also beautiful, to see how a person who has hurt and rejected you so much (I think also of my father) can be, paradoxically, incredibly vulnerable to the rejection themselves. I'm really not even remotely enlightened, but somehow this seems to hurt even more; I can find no pleasure in vengeance, despite expansive fantasies.
