1/11/26
Last night was the first night that I did not need to soothe feet before going to sleep. Just took off socks, wipe-cleaned feet, and put on new socks, and felt no need to itch. did have minor itchiness throughout night, but nothing major, so this was a milestone. Still eating whatever food groups I want, incl dairy, gluten. When it’s convenient, I will go for gluten-free, but it’s usually not convenient. despite this, skin is smooth and healed now. It has to be the pollen.
1/12/26, 3 am
I really wanted to go to a thing for Renée Good when i got an email link to events. there was an evening candlelight vigil on 1/10 at the municipal court in the city where we’re at in Arizona. i at first excitedly thought I’d walk there, but then Google mapped where it was – it was about a 20 minute drive. so we’d have to take the truck. which I have never really driven – it’s huge – I gladly let R do it. Then also saw there was no business or anything open around the time the vigil would happen – 6 to 7 PM – where R and H could wait for me nearby to keep themselves occupied – I wanted to attend alone, so as not to put them in the middle of anything. then around the time it was supposed to be going on, R was still away (much longer than I thought he’d be) at Home Depot and places looking for something we needed for our new backup generator to work and had the truck, which is our only vehicle, and I was at home with Hunter, finally able to start to cook a meal for all of us after he’d pleaded with me to keep playing with him for most the day (and it was only because I intentionally put him in front of his iPad that I got this break – I hate putting him in front of a screen, but if I didn’t, we would have never stopped playing). felt a bit trapped there by the situation and the no vehicle thing and the only one watching the child thing.
I feel guilty now, about not going to the vigil and “not doing anything” about something that just happened in our nation’s history that was so important. I could’ve planned it better, more forcefully maybe? I could’ve told R that I needed him back by a certain time, so he could watch Hunter. Then, if I didn’t want to drive myself, I could’ve called an Uber or Lyft – I think where we are now, it’s not as remote as where we were back in Arley – and I could maybe have found a ride. I certainly wouldn’t regret spending money on the ride, for something that important to me.
i know in my childless days, I could have and would have headed out without a second thought and no problem. but with a child, I guess if I really wanna do something, everything has to be planned out now, to make sure the time is carved out. like if I wanna go somewhere, there have to be concrete plans around that event that R and H know about in advance, or else it probably won’t happen because playing and chores and errands engulf everything.
then just now (about 3 am), I was having a kind of nightmare about our friend being treated ill at the detention center he’s at, and then looking up if the detention centers receive care packages, and not being able to find any results, then I woke up – I think from being too hot/had to cough or wipe nose (i’m currently sick with a cold). In real life, i feel guilty about being able to eat whatever I want when the food he’s eating where he is is probably shit, and having a comfy bed to sleep in all by myself, when he probably has no privacy and a really uncomfortable place to sleep and is probably just so uncomfortable in every way all the time there, wherever they’re holding him (I don’t even know where he is- will try to find out more tomorrow). what even socks is he wearing? The same socks he was in when they took him five days ago without warning? What underwear?
1/13/26
I was just finishing up some work on laptop and felt upset, and after a few minutes of typing, I realized what it was: earlier today, Hunter had lifted my shirt, poking and squeezing my belly as usual, calling it big, and I retorted, “well it’s only big because you lived in there and were doing punches and kicks and somersaults, but before you lived there, it was nice and small and flat.” I had started out saying this response playfully, but towards the latter half of it, I noticed my voice start to get a tinge of like bitterness. And then later today, I felt a tingle on my upper lip and am 99% sure I’m getting 2 small cold sores there, probably in response to just getting over this bad cold/flu. that upset me a lot because besides being a bit painful and uncomfortable, as it dries it’s unsightly, and I hate that- things that affect my face/appearance are probably the worst discomfort/insecurity for me, making me feel low and defeated the entire time until it finally goes away (which in this case can take about two weeks), so I was just dreading it, and I started thinking about it and got a little angry, and I realized the reason I was angry was because it also related to the belly thing: before I became a mother- 39 years of my life – I never got cold sores. I would sleep perfectly every night. I would quickly bounce back from every injury or virus with no repercussions. My balance, my eyesight, my hair, my weight – were all healthy. Then after the birth, which around-the-clock breastfeeding with no sleep made me so sick that it all erupted and I went to the hospital, my health has never been the same. I feel like I gave too much. I feel like I gave more than I could give. I feel like the birth unleashed this era in my life of all kinds of boundaries being constantly and too numerously pushed, every day. I feel a kind of resentment for how worse off healthwise I am now after birth than I was pre-birth. i feel a longing for how much stronger I was before healthwise, and then i feel a tangible guilt for feeling all of that, because I have a healthy, beautiful, handsome, smart and perfectly funny baby (toddler) that I would never give up and would protect with my life. Sometimes I ask myself like: if I could go back in time, and no one would know and no one would get hurt, but I knew what I know now- how sick I would get and how much I would suffer after the birth- if I would still choose to get pregnant and have him, and I…..don’t know the answer. Like I don’t know…if I would still do it. I don’t know if I would say yes or no.
Because it’s so hard….and I feel so bad about that. I feel like I shouldn’t feel like that. I feel like a good mother would immediately answer that question with, “yes, despite all the pain I went through, I would still have my baby- of course. no question.” But when things get really hard like this- like today, or one of the 730 days when I was still breastfeeding with wrecked sleep, or one of the 730 days after that in constant skin pain/cold sore pain- and you asked me that question, I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t tell you. Physical pain and discomfort make me just want to hide, run away, isolate, give up, retreat… they’re really difficult for me.
alternatively: because of him, my understanding of the world and children and humans is expanding, my care for the world has expanded, and because of the sickness that followed him, my geographical horizons have expanded and are currently expanding, and I’m falling in love with our traveling life now – a life we probably would never have attempted without him (because I never would’ve gotten so sick to the point that it pushed me to see that doctor who tested for and found my pollen allergies). Life would be so different without him: definitely quieter, calmer, definitely slower, not as filled with joy or laughter or playing, and we’d probably still be in New Jersey, forever, because that’s where all our family are. Traveling now though, it feels like we are always exactly in the place we should be. I feel divinely guided when we’re all three together, and I feel content beyond words and so happy just being with him, looking at him and holding him every day, being a family. Maybe these twinges of regret I feel exist because at this point in my motherhood-life- only four years in- the period of pain and discomfort does still technically outstretch the happy times. But maybe as the years pass, and my health gets under control- if it ever does- and maybe if we continue to rack up good times, maybe the good times will come to outweigh all my early pain, and if I think back on that same question say ten years from now, my answer will be an immediate “yes, I would still do it, no question.”
1/15/26
there was a moment yesterday that softened my heart towards R and made me love him even more. I had woken up yesterday morning feeling pretty bad, I guess I slept wrong or maybe it’s part of the sickness I still have that i think is at its tail end, but my neck hurt, as well as my head a little, and I told R, and he immediately went, instead of normally coming to cuddle in bed with me, to make me chicken soup, which he brought back pretty quickly, filled with spices and garlic, steaming. and I put it to the side to let it cool. But the moment that melted my heart was a few minutes later when he came in to check if I liked the soup, and I said I was waiting for it to cool down, and he was like ok and just had this kind of bowed stance, and backed away quietly from my room, and closed both the separation “doors” quietly. He just had such a servant’s heart and attitude in that moment, and that made me want to do the same for him, to serve him. I think I’m very wary about, as the woman, being the only one with the servant’s attitude in the relationship – I super don’t want that dynamic of one-sided servanthood in a marriage. But he really does, if I need it,take care of me, and doesn’t hesitate. I really glad he’s like that, and it makes me want to reciprocate. and the same goes with cooking, for me. Like if I notice I’m the one that’s cooking more, I start getting angry that we’re falling into the traditional gender roles of the woman doing more housework. I guess since he doesn’t have work now, he really can do so much more, and he does. He cooks most the meals now, does more of the laundry than I do, takes care of all the propane obtaining and switching out the tanks all the time, all of the RV maintenance. I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m so much happier about the division of chores now compared to when we lived in our house. It feels more fair, which in turn makes me feel softer and more open towards him, instead of underlying resentful.
*
The other day, when I was first angry about getting my cold sores, and R was nearby, I felt anger with him and thought “if he never got me pregnant and let me get into all this mess, this would never have happened.” But even at the time I thought it, I sensed off logic. and now with more time, I see that that thought is equivalent to me enthusiastically agreeing to run a marathon with him (I was 100% in favor of marrying him and even starting a family with him), and then blaming my marathon partner for everything when the race got too hard. I know it’s not his fault, and I know I just turn to the closest person and blame them when things are hard, maybe. And I know I shouldn’t do this, I know.
*
I wonder if most people, before they die, wish they had just one more moment. or just one more day.
1/16/26
slept w the baby the last two nights, and both nights i heard him laughing in his sleep.
Marriage Journal 