What Would Have Been

An invitation to a friend's wedding came in the mail last week.  It was a simple, whimsical card - a bird graphic in the corner, and spunky lettering spelling out the names of the bride and groom's six children (three apiece, from first marriages) that will be helping them celebrate their new beginning with each other at the end of June.  Happy doesn't even begin to describe what I feel for them, and yet, I clutched the card ever more tightly as my breaths grew shallow around the rising lump in my throat and my eyes stung with unshed tears.

Today was supposed to be my wedding day.

Instead, I'm visiting my dear friend for this Memorial Day weekend, sleeping on a makeshift bed on the living room floor of her new Brooklyn apartment, helping with furniture shopping and the seemingly endless task of unpacking.  Grateful not to be alone on this of all days, it is also almost unbearably surreal to be less than two miles away from Alix for the first time in months.  Knowing, as I wish I didn't, that she is happily ensconced in a new relationship certainly doesn't help.  For months now, I've waited for the other shoe to drop.  For the grief to hit me like a wrecking ball and knock me down to the place where you start to realize, on a cellular level, that you are not loved by that person, and never will be again.  Last week, it finally did.  I can say with absolute honesty that I never believed Alix and I would get back together.  But that doesn't mean that seeing a picture of her with her girlfriend didn't take my breath away so fast I didn't reflexively reach for my inhaler.  Realizing (and trying desperately to stop the runaway train of these thoughts) that she holds someone else's hand now, she brushes some other girl's hair out of her eyes, that she and someone else walk Rupert together around the streets of New York - makes the fact of our demise real in a manner so visceral and alarming that I swear it could make me pass out.  It's one thing to assume, abstractly, that she (and by extension, of course, that I, too) will find someone else.  But it's also remarkably easy to hold that thought so far at bay that you start to convince yourself that you can happily live out the rest of your life alone.  Because if you can do it, then so can she, and at least if we're not together, neither of us will be with anyone else.  Right?  Right.  Until she is.

Realizing on an intellectual level that a relationship is over is one thing.  It's what propels you to change your relationship status on Facebook, to take off your engagement ring, to change your speed dial settings, to take down pictures, and to pack up their things into neatly labeled shipping boxes.  I did those things, as if in a daze, months ago.  But absorbing into the cells and tissues of your very being the certainty that you will never be loved again by that person is infinitely harder and cannot be orchestrated, try as you might.  No, it comes when it comes, and late last Saturday night, as my body simultaneously succumbed to a raging stomach virus, it came to me.  For three days, while I vomited out every ounce of fluid in me and lay motionless in bed, the pounding in my ears rang loud and clear: She doesn't love you anymore.  She loves someone else.  She moved on.  And so should you.

I know that this is the beginning of what comes next.  Even as I was throwing up into a bucket last weekend while crying great, gasping sobs, I knew that it was the worst and most necessary kind of pain.  But holy hell, driving past a church today and glimpsing the bride inside, helping J. arrange her new kitchen for the domestic bliss she and her husband enjoy, and watching two girls walk hand in hand home from a yoga class this morning, I taste the acrid tang of longing and jealousy in the back of my throat as I think, That should have been me.  Maybe someday it will be.  But today, on the day when it all should have began (or culminated, as the case may be) it did not.  And that - if you'll excuse the expression - fucking sucks.

"Do you think I'll find someone else?" I asked J. this afternoon.
"Yes," she said.  "I think it's practically impossible not to meet someone right for you.  Besides, you wouldn't have wanted to be with Alix anyway."
A little nonplussed, I looked at her quizzically.  "But...yes, I did.  That's exactly what I wanted."
"I know, but she didn't respect that, and her incredible stinking loss of you is what she will live with forever, not you.  You," she said forcefully, "are on your way.  To something else.  Something better.  You're going to be okay."

Oh, how I hope she's right.

The Project

Last October, Hallie and I were talking via gchat late one night after Birdie was asleep.  It had been a rough day, one of many of the last year.  I was exhausted, I was frustrated, and I was feeling like I was running in circles with the eating disorder.  One step forward, ten steps back.  More than anything, I was feeling so achingly alone that it made me wonder how many other people were out there, struggling like I was and feeling equally alone.  So we came up with an idea.  What if, we thought, we could try to show people what this is like.  Could we possibly create something meaningful out of something so hellish?  The seed had been planted and over the next few days, the ideas started to flesh out.  The momentum grew and before we knew it, the project had taken off.  I started recording audio of whatever I was thinking, as often as I could force myself to do it.  When I couldn't sleep, when I had nightmares, when I was so hungry I thought I'd pass out, when I simply didn't know what else to do, I'd take out my phone and hit record.  Hallie started taking pictures.  Of the easy stuff first - me playing with kids, hanging out with friends, cooking.  Then, gradually, of the harder stuff - me trying to eat, crying over Alix, getting on the scale.  Meanwhile, life kept happening and things just kept getting harder and harder.  The project quickly became more difficult than I could have ever anticipated.  The camera was always there.  I'd scream at Hallie to put it away, to leave me the fuck alone, to get out of my face but she'd say she was sorry, but she knew how important this was to both of us, and she'd take the pictures anyway.  I stopped censoring myself in the audio even the slightest.  I said things out loud that made me shake with shame, but instead of shutting up, I kept talking.  Sometimes the roles would mysteriously flip: "Where's the camera?" I would snarl through the tears and snot running down my face, and Hallie, stricken, would slowly reach for the lens while I would stare defiantly at her, daring her to look away.  Or she'd silently hand me my phone and send me off to the closet or the bathroom or the sidewalk to find enough quiet to record what my mind was churning out.

It wasn't easy.  In fact, it was the opposite of easy.  But here we are, seven months later, and last night...we finished.  Almost.  There are some finishing touches and some tweaks here and there, but I honestly never thought this day would come.  I never thought we'd be able to sift through literally thousands of pictures and hours of recorded audio and cut and edit them down into a coherent project, but somehow, we did.  And when we showed it to her professor today, my hands twisted together with nerves while he silently watched and we waited to hear what he thought.  "That," he said slowly when it ended, "was fucking incredible."

I don't know where it's going to go from here, but I sure hope it goes somewhere.  More than anything, I hope that someone will see it and realize that they're not alone.  If it helps even one person, then it will have been worth it.

The Nose Knows

I've had my nose pierced since I was sixteen.  I thought I was being all bad-ass and rebellious when I went with my best friend to get it pierced without telling my mom.  My mom took one look at it when I walked in the door and said something along the lines of, "Oh, how pretty!  Can you set the table for me?  Dinner's almost ready."

Whompity shwomp.

I quite like my nose and I've always liked the piercing.  It's so unobtrusive that people will often notice it after we've known each other for months or years and remark on it as if it's new and then are shocked when I insist I've had it pierced for eight years now.  Kids also get a kick out of it.  Between that, and this very prominent mole I have on my chest that you can see in most shirts, there is always something for the babies to grab.

ANYWAY.

I've always worn a stud in my nose, except for one hilarious night in college when the seniors in my house took the first-years bowling and we all dressed up like exaggerated versions of teenage cliches and I dressed up as - what else? - a pregnant teenager, complete with black nail polish, fishnet stockings, and a gold hoop earring stuck through my nose.  If you're unlucky enough to be my facebook friend, you can go have a ball digging up those photos.  I've never worn a ring because my nose is pretty small and hoops always look huge and trashy.  Enter: a tiny nose ring.

Small enough that the babies can't fit their fingers through it.  And hey, who doesn't need a change in their look sometimes, right?

The Life Effect

When I was very small, my dad would play me lullabies on his guitar every night as I fell asleep.  Even my most vivid fears of the monsters under my bed would be tamed by his voice and the words to my favorite songs.

When I was a little bit older, our roosters would chase me around our yard, intent on attacking my short-legged and thus, not very fast self.  Screaming bloody murder, I would head for the nearest tree, flinging myself over the lowest branch and scrambling my way up to safety.  The rooster would circle the tree, and I would settle in until my dad would come home from wherever he was and I could yell for him to come over and walk me back to the house, keeping me safe from the dejected rooster.

When I was older still, my dad would calmly say things like, "Okay, let's try to let the clutch out a little bit more gently this time," as I would yet again kill the engine trying to get out of the driveway when I was first learning to drive. 

Utterly unflappable, with the patience of a saint, my father is the kindest, best man I have ever known.  No one can match him, and I can't remember a time in my life when I didn't think he was invincible. 

My dad has cancer.

I have sat, staring at this computer screen, for the better part of a week trying to write those words.  Sitting here, at home on my childhood bed, knowing I have to leave for Boston soon in order to be at work tomorrow, I wonder (as everyone does in these situations) how the world can possibly be going on as if everything is normal when clearly, everything is falling apart.

In the darkness of the early morning, when the only sound you can hear is the blood rushing in your ears and your heart pounding in your chest, you grip your pillow, clench your jaw, squeeze your eyes shut to keep back the tears and none of it helps, all you can feel is the fear.

One day at a time, people say.  Think positive, people say.  It's too late.  The world has cracked, the chasm has opened.  Fear has rushed in and it's here to stay.

Cricket Gems II

We saved the box from a big diaper delivery for Cricket to play with when she got home from school.  I was changing Dove, and Cricket's parents were both upstairs.  She was by my feet, squeezing herself into the box as best she could, finally asking me for help closing the last flap.  Just then, her dad came down the stairs.  "J.," I said, "I have no idea where Cricket is!  I think I've lost her!"
"Oh no, what should we do?  Cricket....where are you..."
*enter Cricket's mom, game continues, we're all looking for Cricket*
<faint giggling can be heard from the box>
J: "Hmm...I hear giggles...I wonder what's inside this big brown box..."
Cricekt, from inside the box: "NOT CRICKET!!!"


Yesterday, I brought home a board book for the babies that Cricket wanted to read with me before I went home.  We're sitting at the kitchen table, and I hold up the book to read the title, "There's a Cow in the Cabbage Patch...oh look, Cricket, the author's first name is the same as my middle name!" I said, pointing at the author's name.  Cricket glanced at where my finger was pointing (none too closely), then looked up at me with alarm, and asked, "Your middle name is Cabbage???"

Bitten

I have a propensity for letting my own housework, um, slide.  So when I get bitten by the productivity bug, I ride that wave like Kate Bosworth on Pipeline (No, you didn't watch Blue Crush? It's a lesbian cult classic!).  Because as everyone knows, once you do one productive thing, it's easier to do the next thing on your list, and the next, and the next.  This weekend was a virtual avalanche of productivity.  Saturday evening, I resigned myself to putting in laundry.  While the three loads were running, I started cleaning my room.  And cleaned, and cleaned, and cleaned.  I found my floor!  I found my chair!  By the time two loads were in the dryer and the third load was hung to dry on my enormous drying rack, I had gotten serious.  I vacuumed.  I emptied my trash.  I put things away that hadn't been put away since I moved into this apartment four months ago.  By midnight, I had clean sheets on the bed, nothing - that's right, nothing - on my floor other than furniture, the humidifier was clean and gurgling away, the candles were lit, and I was settling in to read a magazine that had been buried in my stuff for two months.  Then I promptly fell asleep.  Cleaning is exhausting.  Today, I was surprised to realize that the productivity bug hadn't left me yet.  I made my bed, I went grocery shopping before 10 AM, I made vegan carrot cake pancakes, I showered, I met an old college friend for coffee, and then I put the grand finale on this weekend by making a kick-ass dinner: linguine with a garlicky-lime sauce with broccoli, arugula, and avocado.  Serious yum.  The highlight of cooking dinner came in the form of me actually attempting to peel two heads of garlic in ten seconds.  I saw this video a while ago and was convinced it was a hoax, so I decided to give it a try.  It actually works!  Here's the proof:



Clearly, neither of us is cut out to be a film producer.

Here's to another week!

Coasting

As I stood over the stove this evening, stirring a pot of oatmeal and enjoying the faint whiff of cinnamon blooming from the oven where a batch of granola was baking, I glanced idly to the retro clock on the wall, and below that, the bookcase that houses (mostly) cookbooks.  I paused, and counted.  Twenty.  I own twenty cookbooks.  Plus a recipe box that's more than halfway full.  Which doesn't even begin to extend to the hodgepodge of recipes I keep filed in my internet cache, through bookmarked sites and cooking blog posts.  For someone who has food issues, I sure like to cook, I thought wryly.  Indeed, for as long as I can remember, I have always enjoyed cooking - for others.  I grew up watching my mom in the kitchen, standing on a stool to crack eggs, gripping a wooden spoon in my two small paws to stir whatever it was she was working on.  Eventually, I graduated to cooking and baking on my own, mostly things for my family and eventually treats for friends, school events, and bake sales.  In college, it didn't take long for my friends and I to start a Thursday night supper club that usually consisted of steaming bowls of pasta (cheap, and feeds a crowd) clutched in our laps while the Massachusetts winter would rage outside.  We would collapse into each other while we ate, fitting into the curves of shoulders, leaning against knees, and talking endlessly as we fell into the easy physical fluidity that characterized our circle of four.  Food, and the experience of it, was a refuge.  A haven of nourishment and safety in the midst of the emotional turmoil and academic challenges that Smith presented.  I hold these memories close, even while the four of us have geographically dispersed to almost comical distances.  After college, I jumped for joy at the prospect of having a kitchen again, albeit one that was wedged into the corner of our studio apartment like an afterthought.  I started cooking for Alix with gusto, attempting to recreate elaborate dishes from her childhood, crafting four course birthday dinners, and creating towering stacks of dirty dishes that took two hours to wash in the tiny sink.  I have cooked and baked for every family for whom I have ever nannied, held many a small hand while we cracked eggs together and encircled little arms that strained to stir a bowl of batter.  These days, I bake for my roommates and I cook for Hallie, making food on the weekends to last the two of us in the week of work ahead.  I make everyone else's favorites because I don't know what mine are.  I ask what people like, what they want for dinner, for their birthday, for anything at all, because it's far more straightforward than attempting to cook for myself.  I cook for others.  I always have.  I want the food to show how much I care for these people in my life.  Maybe this means I play to people's most base selves, but it's what I do, and I do it well.  Talk to me about cooking for myself though, and all bets are off.  When it comes to me, I hate it all.  I hate food, I hate needing it, I hate eating it, I hate what it does to me, I hate everything about it.  I get angry about it, and my brain's completely twisted way of conceptualizing food and turning anything and everything about it into permutations on the idea of BAD.  Same story, a million different incarnations.

My therapist asks me when we talk, "how food is going," the way one might ask after the welfare of your child, or your pet.  What she means is, "Tell me what you're eating and then let's talk about it."  In other words, saying "Fine" and expecting her to say "Great" and move on her merry way is laughable (I know this because I've tried and she has laughed and I still have to talk about it.).  Have you ever had to tell someone what you eat, every day, in excruciating detail?  No?  It's tons of fun.  No, it's not sufficient to say you had a smoothie for breakfast.  Your therapist would like to know what the smoothie is made out of and how many calories are in it.  Don't pretend like you don't know.  Often, the fact reporting part of these conversations is rather short, for the obvious reason that I don't eat a lot, and for the maybe not obvious reason that I eat the exact same thing every day.  It's simpler that way.  Week to week, the combination might change slightly, but I will eat the same thing every day for up to two weeks in order to avoid having to recalculate calories for new recipes or foods.  If I heard of other people doing this, I'd think how sad it was that they didn't know how to cook different, yummy things for themselves (or didn't have someone to cook for them).  But honest to blog, swing the camera back on me and my brain says, "Nope, nuh-uh, doesn't apply to THIS person right here."

Dealing with an eating disorder is like doing an elaborate dance to which you don't know all the steps.  You see other people doing the dance and you know that it's not that hard, but when you try to do it, you keep taking the wrong steps.  So you watch other people, again, and try, again, and maybe this time you get the first part right and you mess up a different step.  It's exhausting.  So you have all these rules and security measures in place to try and keep you from completely collapsing on the dance floor (i.e., eating the same thing every day for weeks at a time) but even with these in place, your disordered brain finds ways to knock down your carefully constructed little house of cards, and you're back to square one.  Again.

My therapist isn't all that happy with me.  She says I'm "coasting" right now.
Coasting, as in, I'm kind of attempting the dance, but my heart's not always all the way in it.
Coasting, as in, this works for right now because everything is just fine the way it is, thank you very much.
Coasting, as in, what's going to happen when things change?
What happens next in the dance?
You think I know?

Red Choice, Blue Choice, Your Choice, My Choice

Hey guys, guess what?  I'm pro-choice.  (I know, hold on to your drinks, huuuuuuge shock.)  I'm not pro-abortion, or anti-baby, or anti-life by any stretch of the imagination.  In fact, I'm going to school for three very intensive years and taking on potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of debt (Yale ain't cheap, y'all) to become a health professional whose life's work will be devoted to maintaining the health and well-being of women and babies.  That is, babies that women choose to have.  Because, thanks to some very brave people and the blessing of social progression, we, as women, have a right to choose if and when we would like to have children.  We have the right to use contraceptives in order to prevent pregnancy and we also have the right to have an abortion to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.  There are people who want to take away those rights.  As a future midwife, as a future mother, and as a woman whose body is my own, that frankly scares the hell out of me.  In Texas and other states, there is a law being introduced that will require a woman seeking an abortion to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound before she may proceed with the abortion.  As you might have guessed, the idea behind this law is that forcing a woman to see the fetus on an ultrasound screen will make her reconsider the abortion.  I have a pro-tip for anyone who supports this law - the woman lying there on that examining table, yes, that one, with the ten inch probe in her vagina - she has considered this decision.  More than you can imagine.  It is not a choice that she made easily or lightly or without thought.  But here's the thing - as much as you might not like her choice, it's still hers to make. 

You know how I know so much about what goes on in women's heads who are choosing abortion?  Because I spent an entire summer assisting at a myriad of obstetric and gynecological procedures, about three-quarters of which were D&C's (Dilation and Curettage).  In southeastern Kentucky, there are very few resources for a woman seeking an abortion.  The tiny hospital that I volunteered and shadowed in was lucky enough to have one doctor willing to perform D&C's (both for women who had had a miscarriage and for those who needed an abortion).  Early on Monday mornings, I would show up to the OR and change, shivering, into my scrubs.  I would tie my hair back while I looked in the mirror, and I would tell myself that if those women out there could be brave enough to face what they were facing, I could damn well walk out there and help them as best as I could.  I held the hands of women as they were prepped for the procedure.  I sat with them in the OR waiting bay before they went in, and listened to some of the hardest stories I've ever heard.  I watched procedure after procedure, until I could predict which instrument the doctor would pick up next.  Each procedure took about thirty minutes, start to finish.  Thirty minutes, and the groggy woman would be rolled out the door, the doctor and nurses would leave, and it would just be me and the janitor, cleaning up.  I was part of the clean-up crew.  Of the fetus.  After each procedure, the doctor would wordlessly hand me the basin into which he'd just deposited the contents of a woman's uterus.  The first time he did this, he only looked at me seriously and said softly, "Make sure it's all there."  After each D&C, it was my job, and mine alone, to very carefully examine the contents of the bright orange BIOHAZARD container and look for recognizable parts of the human being that would grow no more.  A hand, a miniscule foot, shreds of placenta - all were good indicators that the procedure had been performed correctly.  I would check, swallowing hard each time, then seal the container and leave the room.

You might wonder, how after all of that, I could possibly still be pro-choice.  Because when push came to shove, when the stakes were high and I was forced to step up to my beliefs and really look them in the face, what I saw was this: face after face of women who were making a choice, that whether I, or anybody else liked it, was theirs to make.  Becoming a parent is a huge choice.  Taking away an avenue for making that choice doesn't help mothers or babies.  As a midwife, I will not perform abortions.  But - given they are still legal - I will refer women who seek them to a doctor who will provide them.  I will do this having seen far more of the reality of abortion than most people who oppose my viewpoint ever will.  There are better ways to help mothers and babies than by removing our rights to contraception and abortion.  I will fight for those.  I will work for those.  I will go into debt for nursing school, I will labor over my own children's births, and I will help as many women as I possibly can that face the decision to become a parent themselves.  I will ease the entry of new life into this world, and I will surely mourn the loss of more than one during my career.  With every slippery baby that I catch, with every hand that I grip through contractions, and with every rapid heartbeat that I search for with a Doppler, I will never stop believing that becoming a mother is a choice too big to take away.  I will continue to fight for the right of a woman to make a different choice.  Because it should always be hers to make.

Ache in my Heart

Today is Monkey's second birthday.  If I hadn't quit that job, I would still be taking care of him until at least this summer.  That was the original agreement - a two-year contract.  I would have had two years with him instead of ten months.  I would have seen him grow from a tiny 3-month-old infant into a rough-and-tumble toddler.  He would know me.  He would know my name, he would talk to me, he would love me in a totally expressable and tangible way.  I would be hefting around a chunky little boy on my hip, chasing after him at playgrounds, and showing him the New York that I fell in love with for the year and a half that I lived there.

Things are so different now.

I still miss him.  So, so much.

Happy Birthday, Hal!

A year ago, yesterday, in a what-the-hell moment of desperation and inspiration, I sent an email out into the universe.  I sent it to the writer of a blog about being a nanny that I had been obsessively reading for weeks during Monkey's naps while I slowly went more and more stir-crazy and desperate to find some level of commiseration with anyone who could understand what it was like to be a full-time nanny.  I had Googled "nanny blogs" and after a few hits and misses, I landed on this girl.  After reading her entire blog's archive, I sent her a note basically saying, "Hi, I'm a nanny too and you seem cool and can we be friends?"  It's still a mystery to me why she replied to such a desperate, weird, stalker-ish email, but thank god she did, because if she didn't, I'd be out one hell of a best friend.  Who's birthday - by the way - is TODAY.  Oh yeah.  She's the big two-three today (which, by the way, is a pretty unremarkable birthday in our society, unfortunately) and I have already solidified my place in her heart by making her banana pecan pancakes in the shapes of farm animals.  Oh yeah - I am that good.  And she is the only person for whom I'd ever put that much effort into making pancakes (except for maybe my future children).  Now, in keeping with the - albeit, brief - tradition she and I have of embarrassing each other stupendously on our birthdays, here is a vlog for your viewing pleasure.  Here is The Nanny, in all her twenty-three-year-old glory: