- RT @Charli_H: "Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, 'What? You too? I thought I was the only one!'" - C. S ...
Ceci n’est pas une vase.
Published May 10, 2012 | 
Depression is a dark beast. It comes raging out of nowhere, heedless of what might be standing before it and uncaring of what remains when it is gone. I could feel it thick in my throat, making my voice too deep, too raw. I couldn’t talk. I always think I’m “past” this monster, but it’s lurked in my shadow for well over a decade.
But I don’t pretend that it doesn’t exist. I acknowledge it. And I typed to my best friend:
It is weird, how sad I get sometimes. For no real reason. I have got to do something vaguely meaningful with my life.
Nothing triggered this. Nothing ever does. I sat there eating lunch in the sunshine with my daughter. I listened to her tell me how she was sucking the “carrots” out of green olives. A breeze skirled across us, set wisps of her hair to flitting about her wide, dark eyes. I looked up, and away, and tried to understand how the fuck I could feel so absolutely despondent when all we’d done was walk out of the house, away from computers and television and stale office air, into the sights and sounds and scents of spring.
At the back of our yard, there is a magnificent lilac tree in full bloom. They’re beautiful blossoms, pastel and perfumed, and having fresh flowers around is an easy way to bring about a few moments of gratitude and happiness. So when Maia grew disinterested in her food, we went to grab the empty vases out of the house.
I clipped flowers. She put them in the vases.
I set the largest one with other things that make me happy: sweet, hazelnut creamer-laden coffee in my favourite mug. A notebook from my mother, filled with notes for my novel and a diagram my husband drew to help my brainstorming last night. My favourite type of pen. I took a picture.
As I lifted my phone to check the picture, the wind blew.
It took less than a breath, and my picture was the only evidence that the moment had existed. A simple puff of the sweet springtime air that I hoped would fight off these feelings and the things that made me happy were forever altered, lost.
I remember buying that vase.
It has travelled with us through many apartments and homes. It was with us before we were married. It was one of the very first things we purchased together as a couple, to decorate our home, and I remember it sitting there on the clearance shelf with several others, how we twisted and turned them all to compare the sweeping brown striations, how we studied the petals of the flared top to pick out the one we liked the best.
Now it’s gone. It isn’t a vase any more, it’s just a bunch of shitty glass shards that hold no meaning, no shape, tossed into garbage bin to be discarded among other memories and trash next week.
And the beast laughs, hoarse and proud and mocking.
Re: Gina Barreca / Hartford Courant – “Women Falling for Fifty Shades of Degradation”
Published May 5, 2012 | A feminist hating on women is abhorrent. And from the byline of this article to the very end, all Gina’s doing is laying spiteful judgement on the women who choose to read this book.
Let me start with this: I -loathe- 50 Shades as a piece of writing. I cannot believe that such a poorly-written, unrealistic glorified bit of fanfic is being upheld by some people, who are apparently new to erotica, as an enjoyable, “hot” read. I’m glad that women are widely admitting to reading and enjoying erotica because of this book/trilogy, and I have my fingers crossed that the repercussions to the fanfic community (not only for Twilight, but ALL fandoms) are positive and encouraging. 50 Shades is still a mockery of good writing and whenever I think about the millions ELJ is making off this in comparison to the number of amazing authors out there going unacknowledged, I feel nauseous.
That said, Gina isn’t judging the book here. She’s judging the women who read it. For a ‘feminist’, there sure is a lot of misdirected vitriol and unfounded accusations towards other women who made the decision to pick up a book and read it.
To begin with the title: women ‘falling for’? Are we so incapable of making our own choices? Nope. Is BDSM ‘degradation’? Nope. So before we even reach her words, we’ve got a stranger’s fierce, unjustified judgement laid on sexual preferences. That’s the opposite of feminism.
Then we immediately get into how women — but not ones between the magical age of 16-26 where life is apparently full of crazy sex and no time for reading — are “sneaking off”, “swatting away” children, “staying in sweat pants”, ordering take out — why? Because they have to hide to read the sexy bits of a book? Have women really become so disempowered simply by reading that they can no longer take care of any other aspect of their lives? No, of course not. But making those accusations sure does create a powerful bit of attention-grabbing writing, and of course, plays right into the ‘mommy porn’ bias created in the beginning of this article by reducing women readers to solely being domestic creatures, confined to the home and child-raising. To quote Gina, “Wouldn’t our suffragette grandmothers be proud?”
Of course, part of being a feminist is not actually hating men. Feminism as I know it is more about equality for all gender identities than it is about the destruction of everything masculine, but it does make for fun writing to reduce men to being either 1) powerless husbands who really wish their wives would stop spending money at a salon trying to look better for some imaginary man in a book, or 2) “cute” billionaires who don’t have time for light reading because they’re too busy expanding their power by analyzing the Wall Street Journal.
I understand and absolutely agree with the concept that our culture encourages women “to look for men who will provide them with an identity” (despite its cisgender wording). I know that this can be harmful and potentially result in violence. However, I think that it’s a horrifyingly misleading to write that all women who CHOOSE to read this book are WANTING to be abused, marginalized, and disempowered, and to tie those three traits to the BDSM community as a whole is, once again, abhorrent. BDSM is about consent and exploration, not degradation. Hell, healthy sexuality is about consent.
Let me describe who Gina seems to think is the only person reading this book: a heterosexual woman over the age of 26, a housewife with children who likes to pretend she’s a virgin, with a husband who is little more than a walking dildo. They have a boring sex life because somewhere between hooking up and reading 50 Shades, they stopped communicating with one another about their desires and fantasies. And now that she’s somehow been introduced to the world of BDSM via a book, because nowhere on the internet or television has it been accessible before, and our housewife has seen how dirty Christian and Ana get, gosh, she really wishes her husband would “degrade” her and give her an actual identity.
TL;DR version: no self-respecting feminist should be writing and publishing this sort of misogynistic drivel. Women, keep on reading what you want to read, keep screwing the way you want to screw, and know that your ‘suffragette grandmothers’ would be proud that you’re all entitled to share your opinions and judgements on how other women do those things.
Holy drama llama.
Published April 23, 2012 | Friendship break-ups are weird.
I had this friend. We’ll call her Cara. She’s probably seven, eight years younger than me, a university student, and we bonded because of a mutual hobby. Eventually that bonding led to a real friendship based on a shared sense of humour, an appreciation for feminism, dislike of the same people, and a liberal open-mindedness. I find a lot of people who are ‘open-minded’ are so busy applying labels to gender, sexuality, and their mental/physical state that they actually end up excluding others. See, this is the thing: I’m not going to jump on you for saying something seemingly harmless and accepting like “the boy who believes he is a girl” (the correct ‘open-minded’ terminology is something like “the trans girl”, but even that is probably somehow wrong). I think that if you’re trying to love, and trying to be accepting, word choice is less important than actions.
ANYHOW.
Cara felt like this too. We’d bemoan the state of popular feminism, then get to fangirling over one thing or another. After a year and a half of talking almost every day, we started up a Tumblr together dedicated to sexy pictures (awwwh yeh) and she borrowed an idea of mine that’s ended up being wildly popular in a community we were (are still!) part of. We wrote fiction together.
Then one day, after a month or so of admining this blog, she comes to me with a complaint: I’m posting too much blatantly heterosexual material.
People.
Sexy is sexy. I don’t care if it’s one person, two people, multiple people; I don’t care about their physical bits, their gender identity, etc. I’d posted pictures of gay men, threesomes, lesbians, solo play, group sex, and yes, hetero couples. It really didn’t matter to me. I didn’t keep count, like “Oh! I’ve posted a few m/f pics lately, better go find something m/m.”
It mattered to her, though. I don’t know why. I really don’t.
(And isn’t this just about the stupidest argument you’ve ever heard people have? Don’t worry, it gets better.)
Then I referred to her posting four m/m pics in one night as “gay spam” and oh my god people, oh my god. She flipped out. Ended up kicking me out as an admin on the blog and telling me I’m a homophobe because it was very “telling” that I used the word “spam”.
Listen, I refer to someone tweeting three times about their dinner as “dinner spam”. I refer to my daughter singing the ABCs over and over as “ABC spam”. It’s not a word used with extreme prejudice, and while I could have perhaps considered my word choice more carefully, Cara and I were arguing. I was on the defensive. Shit slipped out. Plus, didn’t we constantly have conversations about being accepting and forgiving of word choice?
She said she needed “space”. So we didn’t talk for a few weeks.
Because I don’t love gay porn as much as she does? Whatever.
Eventually we reconnected. She had a cancer scare, I did my best to help her through it, having no fucking clue what to say to help comfort her. I literally googled “how to talk to someone with cancer” because I wanted to try to learn the things to avoid saying. And we got along fine! We got along great!
Then one day I told her I didn’t like a Tumblr that someone else made, not anyone who happened to be a friend to either of us.
And she didn’t reply.
So I figured she didn’t see it. So a few days later, I mentioned it again.
She didn’t reply.
And I’m kinda like ‘hmm okay, something is up’. So I add that I’m starting another Tumblr (because seriously, who doesn’t need 10 Tumblrs?) to “do it right” (because what’s the use of bitching about something? might as well take action) and she doesn’t reply.
I thought maybe she was AFK.
20 minutes later I asked if she was back.
She didn’t reply.
An hour later I asked if she was okay.
She didn’t reply.
I went to work, I come home, I asked if she’s ever going to tell me what’s going on, because I’m worried.
She didn’t reply.
So I told my best friend forever, who also happens to be a friend of Cara’s, that something is up and I’m panicking and I don’t know what the fuck I did wrong.
BFF went to Cara and asked what’s up.
Cara flipped the fuck out and said it’s “telling” that neither of us can leave her alone. Oh, pardon the ever-loving fuck out of us for trying to understand what’s going on, right?
Then she told BFF to fuck off.
…
THIS DID NOT SIT WELL WITH ME. At all. I went to Cara and told her that if she needed “space” again, I could give her space. I can’t give her something I don’t know she needs, and I can’t read into her (passive-aggressive) lack of response, (because hello, I’m an adult, I can use my words to communicate with people.) And also, attacking my bff is never ever ever acceptable behaviour, especially when she’s trying to mediate. Can you guess what happened?
Cara didn’t reply.
Cara immediately began cutting off ties with me.
All paths of communication I had with her? Blocked.
Any comments she’d ever left on my blogs? Deleted.
The writing we’d done together? Edited.
And you know what? It sucked. It fucking sucked. It still sucks and it still makes me upset and I still get goddamned nauseous when I think about it. Because I did absolutely nothing wrong. Certainly nothing worth destroying a year and a half worth of friendship and creativity. Sure, a little break for some unknown reason, okay, whatever, I could deal with it. But it’s been months now.
The thing is, I was getting over it. I really was. I figured, you know, this would just be an unclosed chapter in my life, something that never had resolution.
Then she escalated it. A manager of the community we’re a part of came after me & bff, demanding that we change some of our achived intellectual property on the site because it makes reference to old work done with Cara. Work that was done with Cara’s consent and knowledge, before any of this bullshit started. If we don’t comply, we’re banned from the site, which bff & I have been a part of for two years and is, in fact, how we met.
I send an email to Cara at this point, saying listen, I understand we probably can’t be friends again (although not why), and I understand why you want this stuff changed. I’ll do it gladly, if you can PLEASE tell me what went so wrong.
Of course, she didn’t reply.
And of course, we complied, because no amount of defending ourselves or saying “wait, can we get an actual reason why this is happening?” seemed to have an impact.
Now, myself & bff have other mutual acquaintances coming after us, making vague accusations (because who knows what she’s telling them), not including us in certain opportunities that one or the other or both of us would love to be a part of and would have, before this bullshit with Cara, and not a one of them is willing to say exactly what it is we’ve done that is so wrong (probably because we haven’t done anything wrong at all). It’s fucking infuriating. It’s irrational. It’s stupid and childish and holy shit people, I had no idea friend break-ups were THIS horrible.
Disappearing Act.
Published March 30, 2012 | While driving with my husband yesterday, I announced, “Twitter was the death of blogging for me.”
It’s accurate. I remember vividly the realization that, on Twitter, I could simply send out little thoughts, hold short conversations, and never have to force myself to put down enough words to keep people’s attention on my blog. And therein lies the problem: I wasn’t blogging for myself any more. I was blogging for an audience. I wasn’t writing simply to get my thoughts and memories recorded, but rather to fulfil this mysterious label of ‘mommy blogger’. I can’t count the number of times I started writing a post only to cancel it because it didn’t fit my “personal brand” and wouldn’t suit this blog.
It took me awhile to realize how fucking stupid that is. This is my blog. My domain. My identity. I can write and publish whatever I feel like, and people can come or go as they please; this isn’t something I should be doing to cater to anyone else’s expectations.
I have this habit, or personality quirk, or problem — you can call it whatever you like.
When I become a part of something, I withdraw from it.
I don’t like to be a face in a crowd, even if that crowd is a group of four or five people I adore. I don’t know why. I have a horrible time maintaining friendships, and always have. Eventually I pull away. Eventually I run out of things to say and I disappear back into myself. Once upon a time, my sister-in-law told me (and this is not an exact quote, because my memory’s not that good) that Chris and I only need one another, that we’re happy with having just ourselves and Maia, that our little family unit works for us. I took this neither as a compliment nor an insult, only an observation that has nestled in my mind, nurturing itself, for years now.
Chris. My husband, my rock, the rock-star daddy. Things between us get rough more often than they’re smooth it seems, and I forever have the words familiarity breeds contempt stuck in my head. We can hardly talk without one of us taking something the other says as an insult. I hate it. I hate it, but I encourage it and I play in to it. This is how marriage — our marriage? — goes. It is an eternal up and down, the peaks so high and rapturous that I hope we never descend from them, the valleys so dark and heavy that I’m convinced everything in our life together is a mistake. Everything except her.
Maia. Our darling, sassy, smart little girl. The one who calls both of us her “best, best friend” and yet has no qualms informing us “you’re ruining my life“.
Seeing the two of them interact is one of those subtle blessings of everyday life. He loves her so much that he doesn’t have to say it for anyone to know it; it shows in his attitude, his behaviour, the way they spend his days off having adventures together. He wants to protect her. Sometimes it’s subtle: telling me he likes the generic pink-and-orange flowered swimsuit more than the blue Hello Kitty one, and later on, when I say it’s because the blue one is a two piece, he just nods. Sometimes it’s not: he reads about a child’s murder and chokes on a father’s rage, unable to digest the gory details in silence; he needs me to listen, even though every word makes my heart clench and my stomach churn.
We only need each other. This is what works for us. It was true when she said it, and it’s still mostly true today.
But you know what?
Today, I have friends.
There’s Carson. I’ve known him since the spring of 2006, and I remember telling him I’m a shitty friend, we won’t be friends a year from now. Moreso, I remember him answering, I won’t let that happen. He hasn’t. There is not a thing I can’t talk to this guy about; he’s seen me at my best and worst. He’s listened to me ranting in both frustration and enthusiasm. He’s my husband’s friend, too. He knew us before we were married, he knew us before we had Maia, and I think he’s going to know us for a long, long time to come.
There’s Cina. I’ve known her casually since the summer of 2010, but it’s only about a year ago now that we really connected with one another. She’s my best friend, my writing partner, and the parallels between our lives are eerie. There are also a ton of ways in which we’re dissimilar that can be summed up in one sentence: I’m a liberal who proudly calls myself a ‘feminist’, while she’s more conservative and would never want the feminist label laid on her. Nonetheless, we work, and I can’t imagine what a hole would be left in my life without her.
There’s Jesse. I’ve known him since the spring of 2010. He’s young, enthusiastic, and he writes with the sort of wild passion and energy that I wish I could muster. We connect and disconnect from one another easily, and sometimes I feel more like a mentor than a friend.
There’s our neighbours, new to us as we’ve only been here about a month, who are sweet and kind. We’ve spent hours sitting in the sunshine while our daughters play, discussing work and geekery and fashion, education and diet and gardening. When I first met the wife, she was in workout wear with her face lightly made up; when I met her a second time, she was in lounge wear without a whit of make-up. They’re real. They’re genuine.
And yes, there are others, women whose conversation and presence I adore: Maria, Jinxy, Myg. My mother, my sister, my (almost) sister-in-law.
But here’s the question:
What have I lost by letting other friendships fall by the wayside?
More than can be measured or put in words, I’m sure.
I am trying. I promise. I am trying to reconnect. Not just with other people, but with myself.
I’m tired of disappearing.
Ten years.
Published September 11, 2011 | Giggle. “Dat puppy so cute, Mama,” she says, swivelling all the way around in her stroller to watch the raggedy white and gray mutt bounce away. It is an absolutely gorgeous day. We’re out for a walk to the grocery store to pick up a few things for the roast chicken dinner I’m planning to make tonight, along with a bottle or two of wine. We’re both in jeans and t-shirts and sneakers, she with a purple leopard print hoodie and I with a red one that declares CAN ADA across the front.
I feel like a Canadian. I am an American citizen by birth and for the first twenty years of my life, I resided there. But Canada is where I’ve become so defined: I am a wife, a mother, a writer. A failed student, a part-time worker, a terrible housekeeper. A daughter, a sister, and with in-law suffixes on those as well. The most powerful experience of my life happened in this very room, where I sweated and screamed and snarled, nude and all the stronger for it, to bring the baby in my womb into the world. A world where danger and fear exist, yes, but hand-in-hand with love and beauty. A world worth being a part of.
*
When I woke up this morning, I didn’t think about the day. I knew it was coming, but exact dates are tenuous to me. My world and my time are not defined and structured, even though they ought to be. My cell phone alarm, bearing the eloquent title of wake the fuck up, went off at 7:33, and when I reached over to turn it off, the date popped up there. Innocently. 7:33am, Sunday, September 11. My heart clenched, fluttered for a moment.
And I fell back asleep.
I dreamed about my father. The last time I saw him, the towers were still standing.
I’m not one of those who feels like 9/11 was just yesterday. It happened so long ago that the memories are foggy; I was a completely different person in those days. I was shattered and trying to pretend like I wasn’t. I had been beaten down so far from the girl I should have been that, at eighteen years old, I bore not the self-pity of an angsty teen, but the world-weariness of a woman who was trying to convince herself that my failures and my poor decisions would not define me.
That morning in Michigan, his five year old nephew woke me up from where I laid sleeping on an air mattress on the floor, in need of a shower and some clothing. I was naked under those blankets. I don’t remember what happened the night before, which means I probably don’t want to, but I remember those circumstances, and his excited, strangely raw voice: “An airplane hit a building!” he said. “It’s on fire!”
Within a few minutes we turned on the television to CNN. It stayed there for the next several days.
When I took the shower I so desperately needed, I cried. I cried for the victims, their families, the country. I cried for myself and my family, because I wanted to be with them. I did not want to be here. The images of people hugging and sobbing and seeking comfort in one another’s arms impacted me greatly; so too did the desperate plastering of lost loved one’s pictures on walls and street posts. I wish I could be there helping, I said to him at one point. And his ghastly blue eyes flicked at me with the most dismissive of glances as he sneered, There’s nothing you could do to help anyone.
*
The tattoo parlour is perfectly clean and well-lit, gorgeous artworks sketched across the walls. The glass counters are immaculately polished, and the various rings within them each clearly labelled where they rest within a display of pillowy white. I’m here with a friend, Anna, to get our navels pierced. We met online, and we’re not close enough to see each other often, so this mutual alteration of our bodies is how we’re going to commemorate our friendship. We don’t know that it’s the first and last visit we’ll ever have with one another.
“I can’t take this,” the tattoo artist says, handing the broken ID back to me. “Your birthday’s not clear.”
“But it was good enough to get me on a plane,” I plead. It’s been eight months since air travel was stained irrevocably by the events of that day, and we both know what I’m implying. ”It’s gotta be good enough for me to get a piercing.”
He shakes his head. It’s not. We go to another parlour, where the gruff man says something that impacts my self-esteem to this very day: Your belly button is crooked.
A few months later, Anna and I stop talking. She’s in denial that she’s in an abusive relationship and feels like I’m lecturing and not understanding her when I tell her that she needs to escape it, when she knows that I’m warning her. She knows I’m in one, too. We’ll get a place together, away from them, I tell her. But she only says, I don’t want to be away from him.
*
In an almost eerie coincidence, we walk past the local fire station at a rather specific time: Sept 11-11, 11:11am. The text is orange and blocky, soon enough fading away into reminders delivered with the kind tone of a parent: Going to college? Check your dorm for a fire alarm. Learn your school’s fire exits. In her stroller, my daughter gasps and points at the red and white trucks. “Mama! Dat truck go naptime?” One sits there, dormant, in the wide driveway; behind it, in the garage, are two more. Yellow-green suits lashed with reflective orange hang from hooks on the walls.
“Yes, those trucks are taking naps,” I agree.
“Dose trucks so silly,” she informs me, and giggles to highlight her point. It is the most beautiful sound, but it’s drowned out by the cars rushing past us as we pause there on the sidewalk. ”Why dey take naptime?”
How can I explain to her? ”Because no one is hurt right now,” is the only answer I can come up with.
“Ebbybody okay!” she cheers, in that sweet, tiny little voice. “Let’s go shopping!”
Is everybody okay? Am I okay? I don’t know.
*
It’s been ten years. I will never forget.
Booty.
Published June 13, 2011 | There’s something weird going on with our downstairs neighbours. By “weird”, I mean that there’s a woman who is always drunk, a man who is loud and cranky and hates when Maia or the little girl next door play on the balconies, and frequent police visits. Living in an apartment building is full of such joys.
Chris and Maia are bffs. Once he gets home, she latches onto him and wants nothing to do with me. So the other night, they’re out on the balcony together barbequeing and chatting with each other, and every time I try to come out she looks at me, holds her hand up, palm out, and demands, “Shoo, Mama! Shoo!” Of course, this results in me coming out just to make her tell me to shoo, because it’s hilarious.
Then the police pull up because there’s another call about the dumbs downstairs. Chris comes into the house and tells me, “There’s a kinda hot policeman out there, you might want to take a look.” I love my husband. I also love eye candy. So I go out there to look.
Miss Maia walks over to me, grabs my ass, and starts shouting, “BOOTY! BOOTY! BOOTY MAMA!” The somewhat hot policeman looks up at me. I look down at him. I’m ten thousand shades of red, have no makeup on, no bra, mom hair, and a toddler hanging off my ass informing the entire world that I do, indeed, have a BOOTY BOOTY BOOTY in between giggles that resulted from her father’s boisterous laughter. I fled back into the house so quickly.
These are the joys of parenting that no one ever tells you about.
Mezzanine
Published December 19, 2010 | I can fly… but I want his wings.
I can shine, even in the darkness, but I crave the light that he brings
Revel in the songs that he sings
My angel Gabriel.
I remember linking him the song. “This is how I feel about you,” I said. “I’m okay without you, but I need you around to make me whole.”
There was sorrow in his words, the weight of the thirteen years of life experience he had over me, when he replied: “No, you don’t.”
I can love… but I need his heart.
I am strong, even on my own, but from him I never want to part
He’s been there since the very start
My angel Gabriel.
We lived 248 miles away from one another, but we might as well have been separated by oceans. I was 18, living with my abusive boyfriend, working as an electronics salesperson. He was 31, living with a girlfriend he didn’t love, working on his PhD in political science. Still, we clicked. We matched one another well. We were vulnerable people on the verge of mental breakdowns who took solace in each other’s unquestioning, unwavering love.
There was a library in the mall I worked at; the librarians there came to know me well as I arrived for lunch every day, logging into a computer and hopping onto AIM to talk with him on an account I made just for that purpose. We didn’t always talk about love or life. Sometimes we talked about music or gaming or books. Sometimes we talked about mutual friends.
But every conversation ended the same way: I love you, firefly. I love you, pixie.
For lunch, I’d eat a soft pretzel on the way back to work.
Bless the day he came to be
Angel’s wings carried him to me
Heavenly.
He broke up with his girlfriend on very positive terms. I sobbed to him and confessed every horror in my life that I didn’t have the courage to flee from. He kept my heart beating. He made me feel worthwhile. Even as the monster I lived with kept me teetering on the verge of death, I took comfort in the fact that someone out there knew what I was going through … but still thought me worthy of being loved.
We never physically touched in a romantic way.
I can fly… but I want his wings.
I can shine, even in the darkness, but I crave the light that he brings
Revel in the songs that he sings
My angel Gabriel.
There’s no question that I still love him. It’s a comfortable love, tucked somewhere in that part of my soul that I retreat to when I’m feeling wounded. We’re healthier now than we were when we were in crazy love with one another, and all I want for him is happiness and security. I still feel warm every time I see him post on Facebook, and he still leaves comments here and there telling me I’m beautiful, but our relationship is calm. Peaceful.
Because we’ve survived the storm.
We saved each other’s lives.
No, seriously guys, she came from my womb.
Published November 27, 2010 | She just, ya know, doesn’t look like it. At all.
Webcams are fun.
Published November 20, 2010 | This post could also have been called “Obviously I love my super cute coffee mug”.
I love all of these pictures, but the second one is probably my favourite because that’s so totally me once I have my coffee in the morning. I’m all like “This shit is magic, and it’s mine. Cheers!”
Naked
Published November 8, 2010 | I’ve been quiet lately. In fact, I’ve been quiet for about a year now.
Maia is nearly 21 months old. That’s almost two years and I feel as if I’m not half the mother I should be. I know, I know we all struggle with this, but I feel like somehow I’m not doing enough for her, I’m not loving her enough, I’m not teaching her enough. I feel like I’m failing her.
My marriage is over seven years old, and there’s no question that I’m a disaster of a wife. I’ve not held a full-time job outside of a stint bartending, I’ve not gone to school other than a semester when I first moved up here, and I’ve not done a damned thing to advance myself as a human being. And it’s wearying on both of us for me to be this way. These things, at least, are easy to remedy, if I’d put the effort into them.
And there’s the rub: making an effort.
Being motivated.
NOT procrastinating.
These are other things I fail at. I know I can change them — I have the greatest motivator in the world, if only I could look her in the eyes and feel like I’m worth giving her everything I can. And it’s not just her I owe this to: it’s Chris. It’s my family. My friends.
Myself.
The truth is that after I had Maia, I fell into a deep depression. I never admitted it, because I didn’t think I had PPD — who wants to? And how could I? I mean, sure, I have a history of clinical depression, but all the books say you only have PPD if you want to hurt yourself or your child, and I never did. I never wanted to hurt anyone, I never wanted to run away, I never wanted to change my circumstances — so I couldn’t have had PPD.
I just lost myself.
I lost my voice.
Last January, I published my story on Violence Unsilenced. I thought it would help me, but it hasn’t. I’ve thought about that part of my life more in the months since then than I had in the years since I’d left. I’m not happy that part of myself is out there. I don’t feel empowered. I feel like somehow, I’ve betrayed and violated myself. I feel fucking horrified that part of my life is out there for anyone to see, and judge, and they can come right here to my blog.
Maybe this is all because I just loathe myself right now.
Or more accurately, I loathe what I’m not:
A good mother.
A good wife.
A good friend.
I need to get my head on straight.