"Any true pleasure comes with a price"

"What feels good, comes with a cost...at the end of the day the question is, how much are you willing to pay?"

It's Day 8 after the abortion.

I feel defeated.

I joined that PASS forum (link) and ti's great, although it can be triggering for a ton of feelings that sort of didn't even think of, perspectives that i was like 'Wtf'. Plus, the thing i hate about chick-type forums (i.e. non-tech ones) is that women do things like put glittery auto-signatures...ummm in the workforce, your autosignature is short and simple. For a reason. An auto-signature that's huge, glittery, and has a ton more text than the actual forum entry, is impossible to read and distracting.

Okay that aside, it's definitely comforting to know that the crazy feelings i have for something that was my own decision is common.

Also that I'm not the only married woman who had the "oh gee, who knocked me up" moment.

I feel like I robbed myself of the wonderful opportunity to tell someone that they're going to be a father...like going out to dinner and handing him a baby rattle...or even being funny and just taping the pregnancy test to the shower door in the morning...don't cry don't cry don't cry....

What's weird is that I have no idea how my husband would react.
Whereas...i can see Chandler's face perfectly. Then again, i DID tell him, but his was more like Ralph Wiggums in that "I choo-choo-choose you" episode and Bart freeze-frames the exact moment where Ralph's heart breaks...since i said all 3 bombs in one swoop (i'm pregnant, i don't know who the father is, and i'm having an abortion. Uh well at least i'm not like a typical girl at times...i get right to the point).

Damn Chandler for being so hard to get over him. Him and those blue eyes (effing blue-eyed people always know they have great eyes, like a bmw driver parking right next to a pinto for us brown-eyed people) that pierce right through me...they can melt me when he's crazy in love with me, but they can terrify me when he's angry.

I should rename this blog to The Life and times of a girl going through an abortion unsure of the baby daddy and her breakup with her non-husband while unsure of wtf is going on with her marriage.

Maybe "I'm really having an abortion" is just better.

One thing I read that was interesting was how women who have a miscarriage are allowed to grieve and people send them flowers, etc. Whereas abortions aren't like that, but it's the same feeling.
I don't know how much I subscribe to that. Most of my friends who've had miscarriages don't tell people until long after the fact, they suffer in silence too. And I think there's a huge difference when it's out of your hands vs. making the decision to do something crappy.

There was a girl going through a miscarriage when I was there, and she said she didn't want another child (there was a high chance of problems, and she already had one autistic child who took up all her time which was alienating her other healthy child) but that she felt relieved that she didn't have to decide to abort it, that she was miscarrying anyway.

Then again, I guess a miscarriage when you didn't want it is like an abortion jackpot of sorts. As opposed to a miscarriage if you wanted it.

Here's the thing:
When i was pregnant, I didn't feel pregnant. I felt gross and fat. And with an alien in me. I didn't have a glow, I was breaking out.
I didn't feel associated to what was inside me. But then again, I didn't allow myself to. It was never a moment to consider that it was mine to keep. Well that's not true...I tried to consider it, and I just felt like that kid would have a lifetime of hell and resentment against it, and it would be shortchanged of all the things it SHOULD have. It wasn't about inconveniencing me like pro-lifers always say.
But in a perfect world, i would have kept it...maybe if I knew who the father was for sure i would have kept it...maybe maybe maybe.

You can't anticipate the loss you feel for something you spent the whole time planning to get rid of.
I want to hold my stomach and not have that "bomb inside me going to explode" feeling that I had. I want to feel like I was able to nurture something.

It's not just a baby that i lost out...I gave up an entire experience.



Last night, one of my girlfriend's brought her one year old over. Ever since I've been wanting to be pregnant, I've felt awkward around other people's kids. Like, it's just embarassing holding something that everyone always ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS asks you "so when are you going to have one?"...Maybe other women who want to get pregnant love to be around children, I wanted to stay as far away as possible because i felt like I was being taunted.

And now...even though it wasn't mine to keep, it was just renting a spot in my uterus...I feel this incredible sense of loss, not just emotional but physical...i can't explain it...like something physically is unfinished. Almost like a phantom pain.

Argh, Joey just came in to watch tv, I can't even fucking mourn without interruption. 24 fucking hours...i need a weekend away in ahotel where i can have a box of kleenex, this diary, and NO interruptions. Fuck real life.

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Rather than make eighty posts a day, I'll just keep adding to existing ones per day.

It's like I have to allocate time just to feel. I've always had to do that. Growing up, household crap, especially in a home where crying = vulnerable = weak. And now, what am i supposed to do, just bawl 'cause I feel like it and tell my husband "oh, it's nothing. Just leave me the f*ck alone"?

So he was showering, I was blow drying my hair, I had to stop, sit down on the toilet lid, shove a towel in my face, and bawl for all of one minute. All while listening for the shower water to stop. I don't know why I was crying earlier. Just a big ol' heap of unhappiness. Unhappy with teh Chandler thing. Unhappy with my marriage. Unhappy with my career (my job is great. Sort of. I mean, if I cared about something so ridiculously mind-numbingly boring and very, very technical).

I keep imagining running away somewhere. Somewhere where there's all 4 seasons (granted, i hate 3 of the 4). Where i can afford to be a stay-at-home mom (umm, that would require a husband who can afford to do that...i think odds are higher that i'd be the one working. sigh). I want to go out on an autumn day, with a stroller, ON A WORK DAY, leaves falling, baby all buttoned up snug warm, and just...relaxing. Being a mom. Neighbors all knowing each other. Preparing dinner, waiting for daddy to come home...him coming home, swooping our child in a big bear hug...having a relaxing night by a fire (of course a fire), glass of wine, baby sleeping.
Utopia.

Okay, I know that NEVER happens. I'm not naive. I know for the first few years you're sleep deprived. I that the instant baby goes to sleep, it's all laundry and lord knows what else. I know that romance is out the window.

And in this scenario, I can't figure out who the father is. I'm married, I have another man that i love, and yet, i can picture the unconceived child better than I can picture who the husband is in this image.

Oh, this image that takes place in Virginia. Although I have a strong desire to live in Savannah, i guess anything in a cute quaint spot.

My mother was a stay-at-home mom for the longest time, when i was in highschool she got some part time jobs to make extra cash. But she kept insisting to me that a job was important "in case something happens to your husband".
It wasn't until after I married that I realized, she didn't mean death. She meant, divorce. Something she could never do, or felt she could never do, because she didn't have the financial means to take care of herself and a family. (Hi, alimony much?)

Take a girl who's already got life issues, already has YEARS AND DECADES of regret, and add an abortion. That's a recipe for disaster.

oh yay Joey went for an oil change so it's okay for me to just lay in bed and bawl right now.

I walk around like Lady Macbeth, imagining the blood on my hands, thinking "unclean...unclean".


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1:30 pm

I need to wrap up the last bit of work. I have to. It was due yesterday to get in the project build. I can't even think. And all i have to do are TWO measely edits, then re-PDF the whole thing.

Watching Mercy. Story of my life, in a weird twisted way. Marine nurse has an affair with a doctor who falls in love with her and move to NJ to be with her, but she ends up reuniting with her husband, and now they're trying to have a baby. Chandler being a marine, every time they say that word i think of him, let alone all this baby stuff.

A commercial came on for NCIS featuring Rosie Perez, and the screen said something about "protecting her baby"...

And i start bawling all over again. I had something to protect. Something that was mine. That wasn't one of my cats. I know men are responsible for protecting their families and sh*t, but for the first 9 months, the onus is solely on the woman to protect what is inside of her at all costs.

I thought I was protecting it. From father issues, family issues, a mother harboring resentment (I never, EVER want to say what my own mother told me weekly: "I wish i'd never had kids, I wish i'd never had you"), everything.
So why do I feel like I did something reckless?

The 16-year-old version of me wouldn't have reacted this way. Maybe down the road i would have started to feel bad, especially after trying to have kids. But now..in my 30s, it's as if I murdered someone then ran off, and now i'm my own Edgar Allen Poe rhyme. Commercials and people around me are my own heartbeats and ravens screaming "nevermore".

I've spent my entire life trying to be normal, like everyone else, and now I go and do something to alienate myself even more. I hate being part of this club. I feel like I have a scarlet letter A on my forehead, but for different reasons.

I'm also desperately trying to avoid any physical contact with Joey. Really, NOW he decides our once-a-quarter sessions need to be upped? Well, i guess it makes sense, the last time we did was early September. Possibly during my fertile window. But I can't do anything till after my Nov 2nd appointment, and right now i don't want it at all (and doing it with him is depressing as it is. For me, doing it with him was for 3 reasons over the past few years: to avoid fights, to try and get pregnant, and hoping maybe THAT time it'll be good. Sigh.) ever again, let alone with him. Which is a whole other issue, how important is sex in a marriage. It's not like when you're 50 that it matters. So i should stop placing such importance on it. But for now...my thing was, i wanted to feel like i truly TRULY gave it one last effort. Which i don't feel i ever did after moving back home. And true effort means being intimate, even when you don't want to. Which I really, really don't want to. And tonight he's going to be at a bachelor party with strippers which means i have a wifely duty to take care if i don't want him to be bitchy, or to give into his own addiction which has caused problems, which i blame myself for as well.

Wow.
I'm pretty fucked up psychologically. I definitely did this baby a favor.

Funny how i call it a baby now, but at the time i didn't even call it a fetus. It was an embryo. Plain and simple.

Everything just feels like the motions.
even more than before.
Damn...I wonder if I weren't on Wellbutrin how i'd REALLY react.

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2:12pm

Would someone please tell me why I just sat through a hospital scene on tv where a chick had to deliver prematurely?

Oh, now i'm REALLY fucked up in the head.