Her Brain on _____

It just did. I’m tired, I am SO tired. I’ve been a bit of a shit mom lately, though who am I kidding, I believe I will forever be ridden by mother’s guilt. Just another reason I will never have another child, I can’t bare to wear the weight of twice the guilt.

I’ve been having trouble sleeping. Today sucked just sucked and for no seemingly strong reason other than fatigue.

I woke up and made Dexee spelt banana cinnamon pancakes (used home made apple sauce instead of sugar). They tasted pretty good, but they made a huge mess. Dexee begged me to play with her a lot as I sat in front of the computer, not even on it, just staring at her and unable to move. I finally put her to nap but of course I couldn’t fucking find it in me to do the same. So I spent two hours browsing feminist frequency. When Dexee woke up I wanted to die. It’s like her waking me up was just enough to make my head hurt and my eye lids heavy. I called my mom to see when she was coming home. 2 hours. I found it in me to cook lunch (onions, green peppers, tofu, mozzarella, disappointment) while Dexee nommed on some fake organic cheerios and bananas. I was left with that mess as well, though I managed to do all of the dishes while Dexee complained in her high chair for me to take her out, leaving me feeling more burdened with guilt than before.

Finally my mom got home, I got a red bull, we went for a walk. Still tired. Patrick and I went for a walk, I gave up on cooking, got Taco Bell. Now Patrick is being awesome and understanding and watching the baby while I do what ever I want. I feel a strong need to vent, so here I am. Afterwards I will go to sleep, or I might even have it in me to take a bath with Dexee.

I am so tired.

If I ever get pregnant again I might literally kill myself. I’m so afraid of getting pregnant that I won’t take oral contraceptives because I’m terrified of it failing. We are strict with our use of condoms, though sometimes we don’t want to be.

I fear that one day our time and lust will get the better of us, we will skip the condom, and I will wind up pregnant again. I will then give birth to a baby I can not imagine loving anywhere near as much as Dexee. I will resent having to go through all of the steps again.

Or maybe I wouldn’t, maybe getting pregnant again would force all those maternal loving feelings to return.

But oopsies are what the morning after pill is for.

Though for now the horror of having to cater to the needs of another baby is enough to make putting on a condom the sexiest thing ever.

Being too tired for sex is a good form of birth control as well.

Today:

• Went to farmers market and bought some pickled stuff
• Went to Target and bought clothes that I didn’t understand how to wear until I got home and was relieved to find that I wasn’t actually the size I bought
• Picnicked at Great Falls and laughed as Dex stuffed her face with raspberries and mango
• Went to Taco Bell (enough said)
• Went for a walk to our favorite spot in the woods and chatted with the same Mr. Turtle for the third day in a row
• Hung out with Dex watching Blue Planet until she fell asleep
• And now to help Patrick organize the bedroom (he just took the bed off of the bed frame, hallelujah)

Good day.

I want to get out of here. I hate Northern Virginia. I want to be as far as possible from Washington D.C. I don’t want to raise my child here.

It’s void of beautiful things. Not completely…beauty is relative. But to me, every beautiful scene is spoiled by something in the back round. When Patrick and I go on walks through the woods, we try to find places that we can look far into, that seem endless…but we have to blur our eyes a little or we will see a row of town houses.

It took Patrick over an hour to get home today when it should have taken 20 minutes. The traffic is miserable. Completely miserable. Even when you go west where the setting is more rural and you can see the Appalachians…the traffic still remains. 

Everything here is so competitive. It floors me. People do all of these things for their children, like have them learn Spanish or an instrument as early as possible so that they can get ahead in life and get a scholarship to a great college. I want the same things for Dexee but not so she can get ahead of all the other babies I want it so that she will feel more fulfilled. (I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to want your children to get ahead by the way, not at all. Maybe it’s because I didn’t end up going to college like I thought I would. I have a different perspective. When my senior year came I never applied, I was in love. It was dumb from a mainstream perspective…but I’m glad it happened or I wouldn’t be here. It kind of kills me to think that I should be graduating with a B.A. or B.S. next year…but I don’t even have an associates. One day. Shit, one thing on my bucket list is to get a PhD. I figure I have a few decades to get that done).  

I want to be in a place where I can feel close to nature, content with my own pace of things, and far, far away from traffic. Far away.

Patrick and I think that we might move to Colorado as soon as we can. He has family out there and the state is beautiful. We have to wait until Patrick is marketable as an HVAC technician…which could be in 4 more years :/

My life goals:

Eliminate added sugar from my diet.

Become a vegetarian, maybe even a vegan, though I’ve just started eating veges so it’s hard for me to wrap my head around that

Exercise everyday

Meditate everyday

Go to church on Sundays (Universal Unitarian Church that is)

Eat organic

Get a PhD

Travel to every continent (well, actually, I’m impartial to Antarctica though I know Patrick would like to go to listen to the seals through the ice so, yuh never know).

Become a postpartum doula

Be a good listener

There is a lot more but I have to go make hummus before Dexee wakes up from her nap

:)

I just got Dexee to fall asleep by giving her a massage.

I wish someone would rub my legs until I fell asleep.

In other news, I realized last night that Dexee is going to die one day. She will become an old lady and I won’t be there with her anymore. I watched as her dad held her and she smiled at him, grabbing his lips playfully and I cried at the thought that this all goes away. We all become frail and wrinkled, plagued by wisdom and jaded by experience. She is no exception to that. I pray to the Universe that she doesn’t end up alone, that someone will be there for her, to love her as much as I do. I hope more than ever that consciousness can survive death so that I can be with her until her end.

Sometimes I think I love her too much.

I totally just sent an email asking my dad if he would pay for me to go for my postpartum doula certification through Childbirth International!

If he say yes that’s crazy awesome!

If he says no I completely understand and will find another way to fund it. It’s just as expensive as taking one 4 credit course and my community college.

Is my life going somewhere?

Maybe.

(Yes I know I’m a mom, my life is going somewhere, I need some independence though, sheesh, she’s not going to be little forever!)

I’m mad all the time. Never at Dexee and I don’t take it out on her but I’m overwhelmed and I don’t feel like I can get a break. I’ve been like this the entire week. I’m constantly snapping at Patrick. I even yelled at him last night. I feel like he can’t be with Dexee for more than half an hour with out needing to do something else and it stresses me out to no end. I am just plain stressed. Dexee has been grumpy lately because she never wants to nap. When she does it’s never for long enough. I think things would be different if I knew how to accurately explain how I feel and what’s wrong to Patrick but I can’t. I’ve never been able to do that. I’m not even sure of what exactly is wrong. Instead I just get angry. I should be getting my period in a few days so hopefully this is half PMS. We’ll see I guess. I finally understand why so many couples don’t make it after having kids. I have no doubt Patrick and I will stay together. But I don’t want us to be at each others throats all the time. Okay it’s just me at his throat. But I don’t like it and I don’t want him to resent me or hate being with me because I’m like this. I know things will get better (yeah, like when Dexee isn’t a baby).

Oh and I tend to eat my feelings (yeah, haha away) so dieting has been hard. Last night I literally stood in front of the cupboard eating half the things I can find and then some out of the freezer.

Also, don’t get me wrong. Patrick does try. He cleaned up that room after I yelled at him last night (which I apologized for by the way, you should never yell at people…especially who are sleeping lol). He does hold Dex while I do things but he is often eager to give her back to me. I get that she is happier with me than anyone else, and I love that, but come on. Also, I know a lot of him not always knowing what to do is my fault. When she cries I feel it in my core I really do. If I can’t help her I get moody and irritated and…I eat. So when ever she cries, pretty much from the beginning, I have always been the first one to her and if he ever had her I would try to take her or try to tell him what to do. It irritated him a lot. I think I took his confidence away when it comes to handling her. I wish I could go back and fix it. But the damage is done it seems. 

That is the end of my rant. Now I am going to go make lunch before Dexee wakes up from her freaking half hour nap.

I love being a mom. I love being a young mom. I feel like, for me, I had a baby at the perfect time. I wouldn’t recommend that most people go out of their ways to have babies at 20 but for some it works out.

There are 2 things I don’t like about the age I am and having a child.

1) I am incredibly unorganized. I’m not sure that I would have ever truly fixed this but having a baby makes keeping organized twice as hard, and being unorganized 4 times as easy.

2) I’m not sure what I want to do with my life. I’m always incredibly surprised when I meet a 20 year old that does. I actually don’t have a single friend who knows what they are doing. Most of us who ended up at community college are in this haze. We should all have our associates but now…but I can’t think of anyone who does. Even my friends at 4 year colleges, a lot of them are a bit scared because as senior year approaches they realize it is their last year at school and they still don’t know what to do afterwords. It’s frustrating not know. Luckily my boyfriend is on some sort of track. He works for an HVAC company as a helper which basically means he’s being trained to become a technician. He really loves it which makes me happy. I’m glad he didn’t get stuck with some crappy dead end job just to make enough money to support his unplanned family. I don’t want to get stuck somewhere…but I want to be (or go) somewhere. At least I have some focus now. My daughter Dexee. But she will grow (as much as I try to tell her to stop) and become less dependent on me for every little thing. I hope I find what I love. I might have but I don’t want to jinx it!

Oh and I’m pissed off because I live right next to DC so there are never any stars, but sometimes I think planes are shooting stars and than the lyric “we can pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars” pops in my heads and I want to chop my head off because I hate that song.

And I’m premenstrual so I want to eat everything! And bite everyone’s head off. That entire year I went without having a period was AWESOME.

Yeah, ha, life.

Today I am starting school. Granted it’s only one class and it’s a photography class (photo 101 to be exact) but I’m still incredibly excited.

I’m excited for one, because I love photography and I will finally have access to a dark room again! And for two, because I get a tiny break from the apartment and my mom job. Granted I’ll probably be freaking out the entire time hoping my Mom doesn’t have her hands too full with Dexee who, though she is an incredibly well behaved baby, really does not like drinking out of bottles. It’s definitely a struggle trying to feed her when boobs aren’t involved.

I am so excited for school that after giving Dexee a bath and reading to her (I’ve been reading her Grimm’s Tales, which I have never read before, and oh my god how random can some of the stories be?) I took a shower myself, put on a little bit of make up, jewelry, a new dress (well it’s new to me, I got it from Good Will for $3!), and leggings. I have always dressed up for the first day of school and I think I always will. I’m more excited now because I almost never get an excuse to brush my hair anymore.

Dexee is napping and I should be cleaning, doing laundry, and dishes, but I’m not. I’m probably the world’s laziest house wife. I really want to take a nap right now. I think I’m going to lay down next to Dex and doze off…

I think I’m the luckiest person on the planet…

It’s amazing what a filling breakfast can do for you. I feel functional and ready to go go go!

1 egg; sunny side up

1 piece of whole grain toast

1 serving of Quinoa

1 cup of Fat Free Hot Chocolate

Awesome.