9/27/21
I could watch his face all day…it goes from smile to grimace to eyes rolling back as if dreaming, to almost crying, to peaceful… it spans so many different expressions over the course of like, a minute, when he’s sleeping.
9/29/21
I thought something this morning, and the darkness of it surprised me. I just woke up (well woke up for the 3rd, 4th time all night) and looked at the time and was laying there thinking how my mom would probably be here soon (she comes over every day to help with the baby), and my mind thought of a scene she might find when she let herself in and pushed open my bedroom door. I don’t know why I thought it. I don’t think I ever thought something like this before. I won’t say what it was; I would never do it – Never. But I thought it, I imagined it- my mind even started imagining the details of it –the “how.” And that my mind was so interested in the technical, real-world details of “how I would do it” at that moment upset me – that’s what made me start crying – not my present state, not waking up all night, not my precious, precious baby – just watching how interested my mind was at the moment, how when the thought occurred, it kind of…enchanted me/swept me away- how I didn’t immediately push the thought away – how in the moment I thought it, it seemed…like a real option, like an escape. “An escape from what?” I asked myself. And I realized I’m just afraid (and not to mention tired/out of it from not sleeping through each night, still). I was afraid…I don’t know. I’m afraid of…being a parent, maybe. I’m afraid of how hard it will be, how hard the future will be. Schools and teachers somehow scare me the most. What will he learn? The wrong thing from school? The wrong thing from friends? How to be fake and tough and macho from friends and only reveal a very narrow side of himself to the world? How to put up emotional walls, from public school? What will happen to him, to fuck him up? Stuff happens to everyone—everyone has some type of trauma, I think. Why would I bring him here, to this world, to go through trauma? Does he even want to be here? Did he even ask to be here? What can I give him? What can I possibly offer him to make his life better? I’m just scared…I won’t be enough. That I won’t be good enough for him…what he needs… or something. I feel like I don’t know enough; that I should know more. I feel unqualified to be such a huge influence on someone’s life. It’s such a responsibility, I think: guiding and raising a totally innocent mind – a blank slate. What if I do something wrong and it hurts him—then his pain and misfortune is my fault. Again, I think it’s this lack of sleep/messed-up routine I’m currently caught in/plus hormones probably, that’s contributing to the dark thought I had. Again, I didn’t realize how grounding and necessary sleep and routine are, for me, and I don’t think I’ll ever take them for granted after this season passes. Ahh…stretching out in my own bed, all to myself, all the time I want to sleep – what absolute fucking luxuries I never realized, until they were gone.
I just also realized: before I left for the hospital to give birth, I had said Psalm 23 out loud to myself in the mirror, because I thought the birth would be the hardest part of all this—the culmination of difficulty. And maybe in terms of physical intensity, it was. But what I realized is that …mentally and in all other ways, I think that THIS time right now—this like…dark cycle that seems endless sometimes, of: getting woken up by his cries every two hours, wanting so much to go back to sleep but knowing I can’t- that I have this duty, then forcing myself up in bed to feed him, feeding him for an hour or more straight sometimes- trying to keep my head up/awake, legs falling asleep from staying in one position, getting up & changing his diaper, trying to get a moment to eat/go to bathroom, the days and nights passing outside my window, doing this over and over and over every few hours, with just a few hours’ break when my mom comes or R can help—I realized that THIS is “the valley of the shadow” that I have to get through, for me. It’s THIS that I need the most help with: it’s long, slow, drawn out, and in a way, painful. It’s also kind of a mindfuck, because it FEELS so forever. But logically, I know and understand it won’t be forever. That nothing is forever. I will fear no evil. I know you’re with me.
10/2/21
Tonight was signing up Hunter for the tuition rewards program with my health insurance, and commented to R that it’ll be the year 2039 when our son graduates high school. R replied that he didn’t even think he (himself) would live that long, and said “now I have to make sure I stay alive so I can see him graduate.” we laughed 🙂 I never fathomed myself in the year 2039 either, until now. I never planned or saw myself so far into the future, because I didn’t have a reason, before.
Tonight, we got some rare time together bc Hunter fell asleep and we had just finished dinner. I wanted to get more chores done, clean more, but R pulled me down onto the bed. He wanted to cuddle and held me. He said into my ear, “I miss my wife.” And his words paired with our laying there wrapped up together just made me think about how much everything had changed, how we never got moments like this anymore- never got to really choose these moments for ourselves anymore – they just spontaneously came along like this if we were lucky…and I started to cry. I said, “what if it never goes back to the way it was?” And R said that it would, that of course it would. then we did some stuff, but couldn’t go all the way because I haven’t had my postnatal checkup yet (which actually, I’m kind of loving the temporary restriction of this- the “rule” of no penetration- something we CAN’T do forces us to be more creative- but I think R is frustrated by it lol). Anyway afterwards he said, “I love your body.” And he added, “I think you got prettier since the baby. You’re even prettier now than before.” I don’t know why he said this…I’ve been feeling like I’m barely surviving, barely making it through each day- but maybe he really thinks this. It melted my heart. And I believed him. I believed it like a repeated affirmation that came true.
Marriage Journal 