I haven’t been blogging lately because I’ve been angry.

Angry at Chris.  Maia. My family. Myself.

I’ve just felt so utterly low-spirited that coming here and writing about it seems stupid.

Every day — in fact, maybe even every hour — I find myself angry at Chris.  It’s gotten to the point where I just don’t respond when he talks to me, because I’m afraid I’m going to say whatever bitchy thing is going through my head.  I won’t say he’s perfect, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t deserve me being uber-bitch to him.

Every night, I’m angry at Maia.  Ever since her goddamn nursing strike ended, getting her to sleep is miserable.  We’re lucky if she’s in bed within an hour of starting her bedtime routine — which we’ve had to move back to 8pm because getting her to sleep anytime earlier than that is apparently impossible now.  It’s frustrating.  Then she’s up four or five times a night, nursing and refusing to lay back down.  I don’t know what’s changed, I don’t know if it has something to do with the fact that Chris had to put her to bed without me around twice last week or that the fingers she self-soothes on are burnt (pic here) but now every time I lay her down in her crib she starts to cry.  Eventually, I can rub her back and soothe her back to sleep, but that’s usually after she stands up and cries for me to hold her a few times.

Which, of course, means Chris can’t put her to sleep.  He’s tried.  He ends up just leaving her crying.  He comes stomping out here: “Fuck it, she can learn to cry herself to sleep,” which of course is not an option, and I have to go in there, calm her down, and help her go to sleep.

I’m angry at my family, because they don’t live close enough to see my daughter growing up.  It’s not their fault; it’s mine, I moved away.  But here I am, here we are, alone.  I’m angry at the goddamn USA for not being good enough for me to raise my daughter in, because if it were, there would be some chance of us moving there, closer to my family.  It takes a village.  IT TAKES A VILLAGE and I never understood the abiding truth of those words until I became a mother.  I’m angry when I hear people rant and lie about Obama’s agenda, because he would take the shambles of the USA and make it into a country I could live in.  I’m angry at the sensationalist pundits who have, since last November, nurtured and encouraged fear and fury in an uneducated, reactionary population.

And yet I’m angry at some “educated” people I follow on Twitter.  I’m so fucking tired of all the self-righteous indignation going around.  Every time these people declare their opinions and mock others who do not hold the same ones, I hover over the Unfollow button.  Their crusades have become so meaningless to me because these people seem like caricatures in an editorial cartoon.

I’m mad at myself for feeling everything I do.  As if life is really so horrible?  I have a healthy, beautiful family.  We’re keeping our heads above water financially.  The next few years should really see life looking up for us, and yet I sit here and think about all the things that frustrate me.  I hate our apartment.  I have no education.  I’m working retail.  My fucking video camera still isn’t here after four and a half weeks.  We’re uninvited to a wedding this weekend, one I didn’t even want to go to in the first place, because we can’t bring Maia.

I’m so tired of WAITING for things to get better.  The last six years of my life have been about waiting.  I feel like I’m wasting away.  Whenever I tell Chris this, he says get out, go find clubs and groups to join, but he doesn’t seem to understand that I’m angry about the wasted years.  I am usually more zen than this.  I usually take a very “what will be will be” attitude, and consider the past to be a learning experience that has shaped who I am today.

The past.

Maria recently posted about her therapist asking about the most significant moment in her life.

I can think of two, and I’m not sure which is more powerful, which is more meaningful, and that indecisiveness infuriates me.

One: A man who had hurt me, intentionally and regularly over the course of four years, said “I love you” over the phone… and when I didn’t reply, asked “Don’t you love me?”  I said “No, I don’t.”  I knew that finally, after all those years, all the manipulation and all the mistakes, I had escaped him.

Two: Giving birth.

Shouldn’t bringing my daughter into this world be more significant?

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. I was a victim.  I hate typing those four words.  I don’t feel liberated or empowered by claiming that title; I feel dirty, weak, and embarrassed.  I’ve erased them and re-typed them more times than I can count, and every time, the little knot of nausea in my stomach has tightened.

Someday I’ll share my story. Not today.

Today, I am going to be angry.

Tomorrow, I will try not to be.