Tuesday, May 26, 2009

What the fuck.

I can't even think of what to call this post. All I know is that it will not be eloquent. It will not be pretty - not that any of them are. I am just so goddamned angry. (Oh. Yeah. There's going to be more profanity than usual. This is your warning. There are also very strong opinions, and I'm sorry if you don't agree with them. Please, please know that I am absolutely consumed by anger right now, and that whatever your opinion on this issue is, I respect it. No matter how many times I tell you to go fuck yourself with it.)

Today, the California Supreme Court ruled to uphold Proposition 8.

I am furious. Dumbfounded. Confused. So, so disappointed. But most of all? There is rage.

I think the rage comes not only from the absolute disbelief that the system could do this to anyone, that they could uphold something that is ENTIRELY UNCONSTITUTIONAL, but also it is born of my fear for my unborn child. How in the hell are we supposed to protect our children from bigotry and hate when it's being woven into our JUSTICE SYSTEM? How can this have happened?

Fuck you, California. Fuck you and your inability to seperate Church and State. Fuck you and the right you think you have to tell an enormous chunk of your population that they don't deserve love, or happiness, or families, or the benefits that they would collect if they could only manage to be straight. Fuck you for boning it up when the entire country was looking to you to set an example, to pave the way. As I said earlier, commenting on a blog I read and love: For a state that is supposed to be full of liberals and hippies, you don't seem to understand that it is not RECYCLING to shred the CONSTITUTION.

You know, I have a question: WHAT THE FUCK HARM ARE THEY DOING? Huh? Seriously! HOW COULD IT HAVE HURT ANYONE to say, "You know what, this is wrong. It's wrong to seperate people this way. It's wrong to tell people that because we don't all approve of what they're doing, they aren't going to be allowed to do it in the way they deserve to because WE ARE BIGGER and THERE ARE MORE OF US. It's wrong to do this to people, to hurt them this way, to tear apart families and make legal decisions based on our religious beliefs. THIS IS WRONG and WE WILL NOT DO IT."

How FUCKING HARD would that have been?! Who is anyone hurting by being gay? Who gives a shit who another person loves? Who has it EVER HURT to LOVE SOMEONE? The more love in the world, the better. Who could it hurt? How could there be a LAW passed to prevent people from being together in the way that we are all entitled to be, regardless of the reasons?

Listen, for god's sake... I'm straight. I'm a straight, unmarried, knocked up, skinny little white girl that lives in the midwest. I've never known adversity because of my belief system, my sexual preference or the way that I look. Members of my family certainly have, my friends certainly have, and it's certainly possible that my child may someday. But I can PROMISE you that if you came to me and told me that my rights were going to be taken away LEGALLY, or the rights of my family members, or my friends, or my child?

I would motherfucking kill you.

I would. I really would. Because for some reason, it's one thing to simply quietly deny people something, to pretend that basic human rights don't exist for some because of a skewed goddamned sense of right and wrong, to leave the possibility open that because it's unconstitutional to deny people something that SOMEDAY they will be able to HAVE IT. Then it's ENTIRELY ANOTHER THING to PASS A LAW DENYING THOSE RIGHTS. You know? One is terrible and bad and awful, the other is like BURN DOWN YOUR HOUSE wrong. The level of WRONG is astounding! I cannot wrap my mind around it! How dare they do this? How dare they pass a LAW denying people their rights?! This is the single most outlandish, terrible, blatantly hateful thing I've ever heard of. You don't have to agree with homosexuality, but not agreeing with something is not a LEGAL REASON to decide anything!

JESUS, you guys! Just... we all deserve happiness. We all deserve equality. Everyone deserves to spring from the same board, have an equal and fair chance to go whatever distance they can make it to, uninhibited by hate and fear and this terrible sense of a class system where WE'RE better and THEY'RE worse because MY GOD SAYS SO and there are LAWS TO KEEP IT THAT WAY.

Fuck this shit. Especially fuck the people that are hiding behind their giant puppets of what they think their god is: some hateful, discriminatory giant full of anger and judgement. Shame on them for using anyone's faith to get them to hurt. GOD IS NOT HURT. There is NO PAIN in god. Not mine, anyway, and I look forward to the day MY god kicks the shit out of that puppet god in some sort of Vulcan fucking death match and we can all be the better for it, able to love and live and be happy. Shame on these people, twisting the word of god (ANY GOD!) into something hurtful, something cruel.

We do not DO this. We do not pass laws to hurt people. We do not use the LEGAL SYSTEM, which only exists to protect people, TO HURT.

I know that 48% of voters were against this. But man... What the hell happened to the rest of them?

This cannot stand. Jesus Christ, tell me it will not stand...

Sunday, May 24, 2009

This is me, trying not to panic.

I'm losing weight. Not much, but enough to look at the scale and go, "Huh. I should weigh more than that normally." Like maybe five pounds total. So not much. But enough.

I haven't been sick, really. I'm one of the lucky girls that doesn't have to bellow like an elephant seal into the toilet before or after every meal. Me and ol' Thunder Bucket have only had a small handful of serious chats... and they weren't terrible, and occurred weeks ago.

Is this normal? I'm 13 weeks pregnant and losing weight without being sick, and eating constantly.

I know there are women out there that would kill to have that problem, but seriously. I'm not that girl. I don't randomly lose weight - quite the contrary. I can beat the hell out of myself and diet until I want to faint, and my body stays the same size. Because I'm Bohemian, this is my curse: I do not lose weight for no reason.

It's a holiday weekend -- I can't talk to my doctor until Tuesday. I fly to New York for a week on Friday. I'm trying really hard not to freak out right now.

What in the hell am I doing losing weight? What if something's wrong?

I'm scared. I'm trying not to be scared, but I am. I really am.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Scars.

The other day The Boy and I were talking about our childhoods. This isn’t that unusual—we each know things about each other’s lives during those years that no one but the closest family witnessed and so knows… They weren’t all sunshine and roses, either of our lives at those times. There wasn’t any A Child Called It kind of shit going around, at least not really, but it wasn’t a pretty time. Being pregnant, it’s a natural thing that we’d find ourselves talking about these things and how we swear not to inflict what we went through on our children.

I got misty thinking of it all… All of the things we went through that this baby won’t ever have to deal with. All of the things that hurt us, made us want to die, but taught us to do better. Our child won’t have to feel that kind of pain because we did, and by some miracle it didn’t kill either of us.

His worst scars come at the hands of his step father, and it all started when he was quite young. It didn’t stop for a lot of years, until he was into his teens and started fighting back, and even then I think it only stopped completely because that man was in the process of a divorce with The Boy’s mother, and so he was gone for long stretches of time. I think if The Boy’s fucked up little family unit had stayed together much longer, that man would have killed him. They have an alright relationship now because The Boy is of such kind heart that he can’t turn down a peace offering, and that man is in declining health and in the mood to mend fences. I hope when he dies, he realizes what he almost did. I don’t wish him pain but am afraid I would inflict a considerable amount of it if we ever met, and so I’ve requested for that not to happen. I won’t say any more about his story, because it is his and not mine to tell. I only mention it here as a note in regard to what happened in his life: One of the many traumatic, terrible things that has somehow shaped him into an incredibly giving, loving person.

My wounds came later than his, not starting until I was about 10 years old, and then ramping up exponentially until I was 17 and moved out of the war zone. Mine was never a physical battle, but an emotional one that left me fucked to the bones, raw and flayed open and destroyed on every level. My mother was not capable of caring for me. She cared ABOUT me very much, but could not care FOR me- she found great difficulty in understanding anything I ever was or said or did, and so she was rendered a cripple when it came to nursing or tending me in any way. Because of this, I was largely left to my own devices, ignored for the most part unless we were locking horns. Which was frequently.

I understood at a young age that the problems between my mother and I stemmed from her mental illness. I never blamed her for that, never held it against her. I understood that nothing she ever said or did was intentional, that she was a victim of her traitorous mind just like we were. All of us together, held captive for years by her illness and our responses to it… It took so many years to become peaceful in regard to what was always happening at her hands, what I in turn did with mine as retaliation. So many years, when I should have been having a childhood and growing up, were spent instead parenting my sister because our mother often could not. They were also spent parenting my mother, as our roles were frequently reversed

Although I understood her, sympathized with her, made the conscious choice not to hate her for what she did, it made a person tired. The constant trauma turned itself into a blade and cut down deep to the core of what I was, and it cauterized everything on its way out. I was burned alive, everything inside scarred and dead or dying for a very, very long time. I was angry, terribly angry, FURIOUS even that she refused to acknowledge her illness and get help, thus making herself available to the daughters that needed her. The rage was useless, however satisfying. It broke both of us, turned us into feral things.

When I moved out and moved 3 hours away, the distance was enough for us to be able to see each other clearly for the first time in my life. We became very close – as close as we always were when we weren’t doing our best to kill each other, only now that closeness wasn’t tainted with bursts of terrible rage. She apologized frequently for what happened between the two of us (my sister was spared- only a target for perhaps 6 months total of our child hood, and only then when she was protecting me) and I always told her it was okay. And it was. It is. Everything that happened, I understood and understand. I never felt like she needed to apologize to me, regardless of the pain all of it caused. She would have stopped it all if she could, of course she would have. She would have smoothed it all over if she had the ability, she just simply did not have it. I loved her fiercely, and love her still 4 short years after her death.

I write all of this here because… I don’t know why, really. Because I love her so much, so terribly much, EVEN THOUGH. I don’t want my children to love me DESPITE the things I do, I don’t want them to be afraid of the things I’m going to say, constantly trying to get out of my way while always trying to be good enough to pacify, but constantly falling short.

The things people do to their children can reach out and burn, leaving a scar there forever. They are molded and shaped and then shoved off into the world, able only to move how we teach them to. We might show them what to do only by doing the things they never should, instead of teaching them to mimic our correct and right steps.

I don’t want to be that kind of teacher. I worry that I will be, that I won’t be able to control it, like she wasn’t. I would never be able to forgive myself, the way I forgave her.

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Shitbags.

My right eye is twitching.

Not the eye itself but the lid, I guess, to be specific.

I've been up since 3 AM.

Do you think the two might be related? I do. Let me tell you a story. No, really. LET ME. I need to, or I’ll die.

This morning (early enough to be considered last night) I made myself feel very old for scolding complete strangers. I didn't mean to scold them. I wasn't going to do it, I was just going to ignore the situation because I didn't want any hurt feelings. So what if I was woken up at 3 AM and kept awake for an hour and 46 minutes (I was watching the fucking clock. So, too, would you have been. Watching the clock, that is, not tired, but THAT TOO) by total strangers, when they KNEW I WAS THERE SLEEPING? So what if someone LITERALLY would have gotten SHOT if I’d known where a gun was because they were making so much noise, it sounded like they were kicking the door in? (I’M NOT EVEN KIDDING. I would have shot someone. Because I don’t give a shit who you are, if you sound like you’re breaking into the house I’m sleeping in, I’m going to shoot you in the face if that is an option- as opposed to even entertain the risk that you’re going to hurt my unborn child. Yeah. THAT’S HOW IT IS.)

Aside: DUDE. If you are a guest of a friend who was nice and STUPID enough to let you crash at a family member's house without permission when she does not live there and has not requested permission to be there herself, let alone with company, TRY NOT TO BE A DICK. Seriously. Work on it as hard as you can, or you're going to have someone who's a scant FOUR YEARS OLDER THAN YOU ARE treating you like you're a fucking CHILD. Ha! Literally.

So, like I was saying: I honest-to-god wasn't going to say anything because as nasty as I can be, I have that whole STRANGER ISSUE that I've talked about here before, wherein I don't like them. I seriously, really, really don't like strangers. It's not that I'm afraid of them, necessarily (but sometimes I am) it's just that I don't really want to impose upon them (EVEN WHEN THEY'RE KEEPING MY PREGNANT SELF AWAKE WITH THEIR DRUNKEN B.S) or like, have them touch me or anything. Ever. And I don't like to make people feel bad. Even when, like I may have mentioned here very subtly, they are keeping me awake. When I'm pregnant. At three AM. And their “host”? SHE'S GONE TO BED, AND WAS NEVER BEING AS LOUD AS THEY WERE. So their loudness was INFINITELY MORE IRRITATING.

Another aside! : DUDE AGAIN! So, like, when I was a partier -- which I was, semi-professionally for a very short time, and on an occasional basis for many-a-year -- and I was at someone else's house after the bar? I kept my noise level where their noise level was. I did not throw myself into the house, proceed to slam every door I saw, and yell. Nor did I (and this is the kicker) have very loud, drunken adult activity sessions on the couch I found in the living room if A: my host wasn’t a GREAT friend, B: that couch did not belong to my host, and C: it wasn't obvious that I was going to be using the couch as a vehicle to get my rocks off, and I wasn’t given express permission to do it. IT here being USE A STRANGER'S COUCH FOR SEX. Because that, right there, is trashy, and I don't care how young or drunk you are. Have some self respect. Also? Maybe some respect for the person who's house you’re in, or the person sleeping 15 feet away from you would be cool. Just an idea. (I know having drunken sex on a stranger's couch is all hot and sweaty and impromptu and spontanious and just really young and super sexy, but not when there's a pregnant girl who practically owns the couch you're sexin' on trying to sleep 5 yards away. And you're being REALLY LOUD. Like, JUNGLE NOISE LOUD. And the couch is slamming into the wall like you're trying to break that fucker down. Seriously. Not cool.)

Feh! So! To continue! I wasn't going to say anything. After all, NOT MY HOUSE. And like I said: I don’t like to be mean to people. So, I was just going to like, get up and go on my merry way. (At 4:45 in the morning by then. You guess exactly how merry my way was by that point.) But then I was looking for my flip flops in the dark, because I didn't want to turn on the light and embarrass the people that had been keeping me awake (!??!) when I realized that there was no more noise. (There had been a lot of noise.) Which made me realize that while I was fumbling for my shoes in the dead of night, the two people that were in the dark room at my back had done the FREEZE AND PRETEND WE’RE ASLEEP thing, so that I would be polite enough to leave them alone.

Let me stress that, because I don’t think I have: They were pretending to be ASLEEP (the thing I had been, before they had totally disrespected everyone in the situation by being loud assholes) so that I would not confront them (about being loud assholes)… So they were relying on my decency and humility (of which they had none) to keep me from confronting them about what they had been doing. Which meant they knew they were being assholes and didn’t want to get called out. (F'in WHAT!?)

So, like… Obviously, I had to say something. It literally wasn’t even an option because all of this occurred to me in a split second, and I couldn’t really stop the INSTANT RAGE that bubbled up and out of my mouth. Before that second, I had not been angry. I had been put out, because I had been sleeping before they decided it was appropriate to be rude, but I was understanding because dude – young and drunk. Whatever. We’ve all been there, or near there, or can understand the motivation or lack thereof. I personally, pre-gestationally, had quite the love affair with Mr. Jack Daniels and was known to sing Elton John loudly while falling down the sidewalk. What the fuck ever. I generally try not to harsh out someone’s buzz. Judge not, and all that.

So, with my back to them (Still not wanting to embarrass the little fuckers -ha!) while getting my shoes on, I said very calmly, very clearly:

“Do either of you even KNOW the person who’s house you’re in right now?”

…Silence.

WELL FUCK THAT, YOU LITTLE SHITBAGS.

I’d not two minutes before heard them making some very specific noises that only happen when two (or more!) people are doing very specific things (And we ain’t talkin’ about whittling here, folks,) while making an incredibly active effort to destroy the property of someone I’m protective over – and so, obviously, am I protective over his shit - and they were going to pretend to sleep when I was addressing them? AFTER THEY WOKE ME UP AND KEPT ME AWAKE, they were going to pretend they HADN’T been so incredibly rude? Hell to the no, home skillet, I don’t even think so.

I flipped the bedroom light on, turned around, took a couple of steps further into the living room and leaned toward them. They actually had their eyes squeezed shut. Like babies, pretending to sleep. (If you’re going to be brazen enough to hole drunken, naked gymnastics on a stranger’s couch, be brazen enough to make eye contact with that stranger’s pregnant, tired girlfriend when she confronts you about your bullshit, children. And yes, suddenly, apparently: The Girl, THY NAME IS CONSEQUENCE.) So I raised my voice a few million decibels and repeated:

“YOU. BOTH OF YOU ON THE COUCH. Do either of you KNOW the person WHO’S HOUSE YOU’RE IN RIGHT NOW?”

They actually flinched, both of them. Thus unable to ignore me or continue this little I-can’t-see-you-so-you-can’t-see-me game, the guy gets up OFF OF THE GIRL (Yeah. YEAH.) who was seriously covering her face with one hand because the light was burning her poor rude little drunken eyes, and he goes, “What? Yeah. Um, dumb-girl-who-put-us-up-out-of-the-kindness-of-her-misguided-heart-even-though-the-homeowner-wouldn’t-have-approved-of-this’s-name-here’s brother. Yeah… Um, I met him once.”

You don’t even know his name? Well, fuck that, too!

“Oh, awesome! Well, just to be clear, THAT’S NOT WELL ENOUGH TO KNOW SOMEONE AND FUCK ON THEIR COUCH. You guys are NEAT.”

Then I left. And if they’d had a car, I would have slashed its motherfucking tires, because I was so angry that my chest was aching. I seriously thought “Am I going to have a heart attack from rage? I haven’t been angry in so long that it’s actually going to kill me?” I have rarely experienced something SO. DAMN. RUDE.

And from what I hear, the father of my child came home shortly after I left and regulated some shit… Which makes me feel bad for his sister, who was just being nice to her friends, but just for a second because come the fuck on. Those friends were really, really disrespectful. And if I’d still been there when he lost his shit? I would have been right there with him, chewing ass. I’m really proud of him for standing up for himself because he doesn’t always, because he really doesn’t like to be angry. But this situation? This was OBVIOUSLY going to make him angry. You can’t know him and believe otherwise. You can only have hoped to avoid getting caught doing something that would make him this angry. Which, um. No. There’s some strangers bodily fluids on his micro suede couch. Pretty sure he’d catch on one way or the other, being paid to DETECT shit like he is. WE don't even have sex on that couch, you stranger assholes!

Word to the third aside: If someone came out of the bedroom they’d been sleeping in, in a house that was like a BILLION PERCENT more their property than mine, scolded me for being seriously stupid, and then stormed out into the dark because oh my god, it’s not even DAWN YET? I’d probably get the hell out of Dodge. Not these two geniuses. Nope. They stuck around to get their asses reamed by someone who does a much better job than I do. I yell a lot, so the impact is lower. He NEVER yells, so it’s shocking and terrifying. And he hates having to yell, which makes him angrier.

Most of all, he really hates disrespectful people. Some of us aren’t new to the whole drunken scene (and are, you know, ADULTS AND SHIT) and realize that it’s never cool to be disrespectful. It’s ALWAYS a dick move. ALWAYS. And these people weren’t only being disrespectful, they were doing it in his house. Without his permission to be there.

Dooooode.

Not a good plan. Such a bad plan that it comes with sirens, on fire, flashing neon, with stickers that say BAD FUCKING PLAN and a midget to read the REALLY BAD PLAN stickers repeatedly and in various ominous accents.

Moral of the story: Don’t wake me up at 3 AM. No, scratch that. That wasn’t the issue. Don’t wake me up and KEEP ME UP for close to TWO HOURS with your bullshit behavior and then try to pretend you haven’t done anything, or I may be forced to break my foot off in your stupid, stupid ass. Furthermore: Don’t piss off my boyfriend. He never gets angry, and when he does it is a terrible thing. Terrible.

Also: My eye is still fucking twitching.

Friday, May 8, 2009

Baby, or Plague? Potato, po-tah-to.

I'm starting to wonder if instead of pregnant, I might be infected with some strange disease. I have good(ish) reason for suspecting this, some of which include:

-I itch. A LOT... Especially from the knees down. My skin itches so bad, it burns. I kind of want to peel it off and start over.

-I'm hot. Wait, no. I'm cold. Wait. Hot. Fuck... do you have a blanket? But one that won't keep me warm when I want to be cooled off? Why are you looking at me like that?

-I'm really stuffed up. I know that doesn't mean I have the Black Death, but it doesn't mean I don't.

-There are random pains everywhere. Just now, it feels like someone poked me in my orbital bone. Hard. Earlier, my right hip was stabby-ow for a split second. My whole body seems to be on the fritz.

-My eyes are really dry. I've always had a phobia about rubbing my eyes and now I can't stop doing it, and every time I do there's this voice in the back of my head screaming "YOU'RE GOING TO GO BLIND!" because my mom said rubbing your eyes too hard could sever your cornea, or something terrible like that. Because she was an alarmist. And now so am I. Jesus save me.

-I'm super sensitive to light and sound. The darker and quieter a room is, the happier I am.


...Obviously, you see, I'm dying. These aren't hormonal reactions. They're clearly the symptoms of plague and death and misery and woe.

(Except I'm not miserable, or ... woeful. Just amazed how much being pregnant can resemble being really sick with something pretty nasty, except without the nasty. It's all very strange.)

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

I make no sense.

You know when you intentionally do something that you know will make you sick?

Like drink tequila or whiskey until you think your name is Jimmy and you can fly? Or take your prenatal vitamin and antibiotics in the morning, as opposed to before bed when you would usually take them because they rock you like a hurricane, but you got paranoid because you forgot to take them the night before and WHAT IF THE BABY'S BRAIN IS TINY BECAUSE YOU FORGOT TO TAKE THE FUCKING PRENATAL LAST NIGHT, AIEEEEEE!?

Yeah. I'm kind of stupid. Also? I'm kind of sick. And it's not going to go away for like, 4 or 5 hours. So fuck my life.

Great thing that happened yesterday: Heard the baby's heartbeat. Wooka-wooka-wooka, little Bean said, and I heard him (her?) loud and clear. It was the single most incredible moment of my life. Amazing, enchanting, awesome. There aren't enough words in my mind to express how very cool. Soon, I might express exactly why.

Right now, however, I'm going to go try not to throw up.