Calls:

• car seat installation appointment (this brand sucks ass. I will never take it out until it is forward facing.)

Other tasks:

• anything else I should write for scripts & routines? Check in with care provider

I feel like I owe a lot of human beings contact of some sort. I should SMS people. I should call. I should write thank you notes and letters. I literally, completely can’t. It isn’t that I don’t care. I feel guilty as shit. But I have nothing to give. I feel so empty and tired and worn to a nub. I feel like if I tried I would end up needing to hurt myself in order to be more present with the reality that this contact hurting me doesn’t matter because I don’t matter. So I continue to be shitty about responding to everyone. It’s not you, it’s me.

My bucket is empty and I remain entirely unsure of what to do with that. I don’t know how to fill it. I don’t know how to feel better right now. I don’t know how to ache less. My body and my mind and my soul all hurt. I keep waking up to these brutal dreams where I mutilate the shit out of myself.

I am so terrified of labor that I am unable to put it into useful words. What in the motherfuck was I god damn thinking.

I want to meet this child so badly. I love how active she is. She’s rarely still and never for a full hour at a time. She wakes me up from a dead sleep kicking the shit out of me. She’s here motherfucker.

I love her completely already. Even though I am scared I don’t have enough to give her. Somehow I am going to have to dig a new well in order to fill her up the way I have my other kids.

I read a neat article about adulting and queer identity.  It made me wonder how much of my entire concept of “adulting” is centered around ideas I got from Marion Zimmer Bradley around Maiden/Mother/Crone. I was absolutely devastated recently when Jenny told me that Bradley was actually a sick motherfucker who helped abuse children. I feel like a piece of my childhood is shattered.

If you can’t find a way you make a way. That’s been a lot of my approach to parenting. “I’m not strong enough to do this.” Well then motherfucker get your sorry ass to the gym and fucking work out until you are god damn strong enough. Don’t be a fucking wimp. Just do it. I wasn’t strong enough to chase my kids. So I trained for a god damn marathon so I knew I could have the stamina to keep up with their little asses.

I didn’t have the patience for this shit. So I learned.

This next stage of motherhood is going to be brutal. I know it. And I know that step one is finding a place to dig a new fucking well and I don’t know how yet.

Yet. That word is so important. I tack it on to every complaint my children have about their own incompetency at something. “I can’t do ____” “Yet.”

I am terrified of labor. And I’m also really chill about it in a weird way? I want to labor without medication until I decide I’m ready for medication then I want it freely fucking offered. I want to see if I can medicate myself to sanity/calm/relaxation and have another vaginal birth if I can do so in a reasonable length of time. If I can’t–cut me the fuck open and get this shit over with.

I am not going to die over this god damn birth. But I’m scared.

What am I scared of?

I wish I fucking understood. It’s not really the pain. The first 2 days of labor really isn’t that painful. And that’s contracting every 6 minutes for days without break. Pushing a baby out… well it’s uncomfortable but I’ve done it medication free and I still say I’ve had more painful things happen to me.

The pain isn’t the scary part. It is being trapped for days in my own inability to help myself. It is feeling inadequate and like a failure because it is so fucking hard for me and it isn’t for other people. I feel stupidly bad about the fact that labor is harder for me than it is for most people. I need so much god damn support and I feel ashamed of that.

I’m not a 6 hour, show up, bam here’s the baby, go home kind of case. And I feel embarrassed for existing. I don’t deserve the help I need. I’m too much fucking trouble.

I’ve been trying in the last few days to be more… assertive about asking Noah to do things for me. It’s really hard and sometimes I feel like I’m going to choke on my tongue as I say the words. But I’m two god damn weeks away from my due date. I’m getting to the point in pain cycles where… I need to ask for more touch. I need him to clean up the ant infestation because I have gotten over my phobia of ants but leaning down is painful and hard and I just don’t want to crawl through bugs at this stage of my god damn pregnancy.

But I feel really bad for every single thing I ask for. Because I am such a burden. And I don’t deserve any of what I get. Noah gets such bad trade for his effort.

Why am I so completely obsessed with starting sentences with prepositions? It bugs me about myself. And the word “really”. I use it way the fuck more than anyone needs to.

In some way I suspect it is because I dislike how self absorbed I tend towards being and I don’t want every god damn sentence starting with “I”.

Self.Absorbed.