The Aftermath
I found out I was pregnant right after Thanksgiving and went to Planned Parenthood just before Christmas. I opted for the medical abortion – you take a pill, you go home, you take more pills, fetus dies and is expelled. I think I thought it would feel like “less” of an abortion. Safety of my own home, no weird equipment, no doctors poking at my insides. I’ve always believed women have the right to an abortion. I just never thought that “women” would be me.
I never told anyone, not my friends, my family. Not Boyfriend. He would have supported me, my parents would have, my friends would have, but…I don’t know. I felt so ashamed. So stupid. I lied about what was going on with me, found another disorder to fit my symptoms. Boyfriend wanted to come out for the surgery – for what he thought was the surgery – but I insisted he stay put. I didn’t want to have to admit it to him, what was really going on.
The medical abortion was horrible. My uterus contracted for hours, hard and painful. I don’t know if that’s what giving birth would feel like (probably pretty close)…if it is, I don’t want anything to do with it. I laid in bed and I cried and I took pain meds and I threw up a lot. I suffered all by myself. I deserved it, I thought. If it hurt I had nobody to blame but myself. And then I laid in the shower for a long time, until the hot water stopped working, and when I stood up…plop. A purplish-red blood clot. I assumed it was the fetus, the tissue, but I couldn’t see. The water washed it away.
I bled a lot, over the next few weeks. I had to get blood work done twice to track hormone levels. They both came back abnormal, so January 9 I went back to Planned Parenthood. I hadn’t expelled the pregnancy, after all. Or not all of it. They ended up having to do a surgical abortion anyway, the quick and relatively painless procedure I’d avoided in the first place. It was over fast. The nurse held my hand.
I got into a program at one of the local hospitals. They give IUDs to women with no insurance who either just had a baby or just terminated. I got mine on Monday, had to say “abortion,” “terminated pregnancy,” had to face all the things I’ve been burying and ignoring for so long. My uterus is sore, crampy, aching.
I used to think getting pregnant would be like flicking a switch in a spiritual sense. I thought my body would just blossom and it would be beautiful and wonderful, things working the way they’ve been working for other women since the beginning of time. Instead I was tired. Exhausted. My boobs hurt. I was nauseous all the time. Couldn’t eat yogurt. Couldn’t stand the smell of cucumbers. I cried and cried and cried.
I wish I had told someone, at least a friend. My mom. Boyfriend. I wish I’d had someone to cry with. I wish I had someone to cry with now, but I don’t know if they would understand why I waited so long to say anything. I don’t know if it’s more selfish of me to keep something like this hidden from the people I love or to try to share my burden, try to lessen my own grief.
I don’t regret the choice I made. But I wish I’d done things differently. I wish I felt like it was getting better.
Looking forward to Monday.
Been a pretty shit weekend so far. On Thursday I got into an argument with my one housemate (he got a puppy and is training it himself, and reacted badly when I suggested it was time to consult a book) and he hasn’t spoken to me since. This is what he does when he gets mad…just shuts the person out. He did this to me once before, over the summer, and didn’t speak to me for two weeks. It was awful. It’s awful now. I spend a lot of time alone in my room, crying or trying not to cry.
I am so lonely.
To make matters worse, the things I’ve tried to do for myself this weekend have totally backfired. Yesterday I was supposed to get together with the local Browncoats, but couldn’t find the place. Drove and drove and drove and finally had to give up because I was too lost and driving the ZipCar and my time was running out. Today I wanted to go check out the local Unitarian church (been missing that lately) and missed the bus and when I got there finally, people were leaving! Thinking back on it, they might have been leaving from the first service or any other reasons, but I was so upset at the thought of missing it that I just cried and walked back to the bus stop.
I decided to go back on Weight Watchers. Last time my housemate stopped speaking to me, I ate my feelings, so I figured I might as well kill two birds with one stone: not fall into that old habit and work proactively to lose the weight. I’ve gained back all but 10 pounds of what I lost last time, but I remember how good it felt to get it off. It needs to be done. Shit is getting out of hand.
Plus all the usual stuff: stressed about school, missing Boyfriend, blah blah blah.
I never thought I’d be this anxious to get back to the work week. At least at the office I won’t feel quite so completely alone.
“Make it a six pack!”
So the Pittsburgh Steelers won the Super Bowl (naturally) and out of curosity I went down to watch drunk college students tear the city apart. Or at least that one neighborhood.Typical crowds of drunk, rowdy young men (90% male, I’d guess), yelling for women to take their clothes off and such. It’s one thing to rip up trees and light them on fire, but the amount of danger anyone could have found herself in if the focus shifted was pretty horrifying to think about.
For the record, I am too old and mature to participate in such shenanigans. I was neither destructive nor drunk – more than sort of lazy, stuffed feeling of eating all day and then trying to put beer on top of it and just giving up and laying around with the cats. You know. Super Bowl Sunday.
(In terms of SBs, it was a pretty sad one for me. My house got invaded for awhile I missed pretty much all of the commercials. I did demand that they chill the fuck out so I could at least see the 3D one, without sound, but it was kind of a let-down. I wanted my socks blown off. Oh well. Next year.)
I don’t know what that “gallery” thing is or how it’s supposed to work. We’ll see what happens!
I’ll take “My Idols,” for 100.
I’m sort of in love with women like Betty Dobson and Sue Johanson. Once I got to hear Sue speak when she was in town and it was wonderful. There’s too much cultural construction of sex as a big mystery. It doesn’t need to be that way, and I admire women like Sue and Betty for working to educate people and take the giggles out of talking about sex.
Plus I love to hear about other people’s sex lives.
I’d all but forgotten about it until today, when a post on Sociological Images (which I just started reading and adore) pointed me to this essay.
I want to be her when I grow up.
Winter Wonderland
So Pittsburgh has become something of a snowy oasis from the outside world. I went to bed last night and my house, porch, stairs, front sidewalk, etc. were covered in scary-dangerous ice and when I woke up this morning – the ice was gone! And in its place was a lovely layer of white snow.
Two steps off the porch quickly revealed that the ice is still there (whoops!), but it sure does look pretty.
Supposed to get up to 45 or so this weekend, according to one coworker. I guess that’s good or whatever? I’m a winter person, I love the snow. But I also love the spring, when it’s starting to get warm but it’s hot hot yet. So this back and forth weather stuff is making me crazy. It feels so nice when it warms up and starts to get me in the mood for spring. Then the snow and cold comes back. Then when I’m getting used to that again, it warms up. I can’t take it. I’m getting whiplash.
Some developments at work – mainly the threat of offering me a full-time, grown-up job with a salary and benefits and all that – have me thinking about this city more and more. I’m thinking about sticking around. What sense does it make to leave guaranteed employment to move across the country to a state with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country? I’m thinking about asking Boyfriend to move back. I’m having constant fantasies about the sweet artist’s loft we could live in, with our dogs and maybe my Girl Cat.
I love this city. Pittsburgh with Boyfriend in it again would be just about perfection. (True perfection would be if my student loans up and disappeared one day, never to be seen or heard from again.)
Oh, hey. Super Bowl this weekend. I hear our team is, like, in it. I won’t pretend to be a football fan, but I do love the ol’ SB. (Can you study marketing and not love the Super Bowl? Is it possible?) Looking forward to good food and beer and company. And, hey, if we win…I get to go rioting. Can’t beat that.
Wanna be on top?
What a day to be alive! What a momentous, incredible day! I struggled forEVER to get my work computer to cooperate, watched PRESIDENT OBAMA get sworn in (cried), then flailed in vain while that stopped working, then finally found an online radio that would at least give me audio, listened to the last bit of his speech (cried more) and was just generally thankful to be a part of it all. I can’t remember the last time I cared about a political figure, must less shed tears over one.
Yesterday I decided that this is the year I learn to walk in heels. I’m not sure why. I was just looking at shoes and they were pretty and they were heels and I thought, “dammit! I want pretty shoes!” So. I don’t know if my problem is that heels are just horribly uncomfortable by nature and I can’t stand that or if I’m just too lazy/impatient to adjust to the difference in walking and balance to get to the part where it stops being so horrible. Maybe a little of both. So we’ll see. Maybe I’ll get the hang of it.
I wore my itty bitty little nubbin heels to work today. I love the click-click-click of heels on the floor in the office…though I have to admit I live in fear of slipping and falling on my face and totally humiliating myself. It’s happened before. Not exactly the impression I want to make at the new job.
But I did notice today that I have the natural wind-in-the-hair runwalk thing that Lady Tyra is so fanatical about. I was feeling like hot shit after that. I must have gotten up to go to the bathroom or get coffee or put something in a far away filing cabinet like 800,000 times. It was a good day. A sexy momma kind of day.
This is way better than talking about how I sobbed to Boyfriend on the phone last night about how much I miss him and made him feel guilty about it and then felt like a huge asshole for being so intolerable and cried some more. Way. Better.
Happy non-holiday to me!
Started a new job today! Already it’s leaps and bounds better than my last one. It may be hard to believe, but getting paid to sit in a cubicle and surf the internet all day is not really a fulfilling existence. My new job isn’t brain surgery by any means, but at least I have things to do. I love to be busy. I miss reading all my blogs, but I love that my day flew by and I have something to show for it and I have more to do tomorrow. Can’t beat that.
I was initially annoyed at having to go into work today at all (goddamn racist institution that employs me!), but I’m not a salaried employee so I don’t get paid for holidays and I could definitely use the money. Plus it wasn’t so bad. Everyone was nice, there were baked goods in the kitchen and everyone else having the day off meant the bus was empty. All the makings of a perfect day.
I still feel pretty resoundingly miserable. I had a good cry last night (as “good” as a pity party can ever be) and woke up sad. Went to work sad. Came home sad. Got more sad while I watched my housemate and his boyfriend act all cute and snuggly. Got way more sad when my other housemate left to spend the night at his boyfriend’s place. Want to cry some more when I think about the cold, empty bed that awaits me.
I’m not usually like this. I don’t want to be this kind of girl. I love Boyfriend and I miss him all the time, but I’m not usually so one-track-mind about it. Now, suddenly, it’s all-encompassing. I hate this. I don’t want to do it anymore. I don’t want to be this person anymore.
But at least – and I can’t believe I’m going to say this – I can look forward to a busy day at the office tomorrow.
Oxygen: A study in failure.
Today the Oxygen network unveiled its first of the all-day America’s Next Top Model marathons. Basically they hawked it as a full season run all in one Sunday (with plans to run all the season in this way – 11 weeks of Sunday marathons!). As if that’s not enough for the Model-obsessed (guilty), they also promised new tidbits and interviews that would make the viewing awesome even for the most well-informed superfan.
I have literally arranged my life around this marathon. I did all my homework yesterday so there wouldn’t be any distractions. I decided to put off doing laundry this week so I wouldn’t have to tear myself away. I even got up “early” (you know, for being a non-work-day and a day-after-drinking) to make sure I didn’t miss a thing. What better than a day of Model madness to pull me out of my funk? Model makes everything better!!!
Not so.
For reasons unknown, Oxygen kicked off its marathon with the most recent cycle, Cycle 11, arguably the most boring of all the cycles. YAWN FEST. I feel like this one just ended. Why would they start here? Why not start from the beginning? Why not give us Cycle 1? Nobody ever shows Cycle 1! It’s the only season I haven’t seen start-to-finish! GIVE ME SEASON ONE!
Even worse, the tidbits are stupid (“Isis is the first transgendered model to appear on ANTM” – WHOA, what?!) and the interviews are online. Look, Oxygen: I don’t care about your online content. Give me my Model and give it to me on my television. Some kind of something starts tonight at 8pm, but that’s hours away. What’s my motivation for sticking around that long? Oh, gosh. There isn’t any.
You have ruined my day, Oxygen. You have ruined a Model marathon that could have (should have!!) been amazing. Those of us who are obsessive fans of ANTM will sit and watch marathons till the cows come home. We don’t even need special features. But when you hype it up as being super-amazing-wonderful, it had better deliver.
It didn’t. And now I’ve got nothing interesting to fill up the time.
Made it home, at least.
Yesterday was a friend’s birthday so of course I went out to celebrate. It’s the first time I’ve been actually intoxicated in a month or more. Exciting to get back on the horse, I guess. Mostly I was just happy to be in the company of people I don’t see often enough.
When I left to catch the last bus home, I was shocked to find a thick layer of snow on the ground. More than an inch, maybe two inches, had fallen between my arrival at the party and my exit. (It snowed all night, looks like – lots on the ground right now. Love it.) It was pretty but also strange. Fake-looking, somehow. Like snow in a movie.
I called Boyfriend and we ended up chatting for more than an hour while I waited for the bus and rode back to my house. It was really good for a while, always wonderful to hear his voice and his laugh, and then…I don’t know. I was drunk and tired and I sort of hit a wall. By the time I got home, I was so sad. I just wanted to sit down and cry and cry and cry.
Even this morning I still feel sad. This happens sometimes when I party. Plus I think it’s getting harder and harder to be away from Boyfriend. I miss him. I miss having him around. I’m so jealous of my roommates, who can go see their lovers, who can date like a normal couple, spend the night, meet up for coffee. Boyfriend and I spend months apart and then get a few days, maybe a week, to suddenly crash together again and try to get in all the affection and intimacy and good hard fucking that we’ve been missing out on. It’s not enough. I’m sick of it.
So I’m sad today. Sad and hungover and dizzy.
I don’t! I don’t!
The other night in one of my classes, a young woman was sharing details of her upcoming marriage. Since we found out she was engaged (a week ago) to the young man she’s been dating (for about five months), she has purchased her dress, picked out the venue, cake, colors (apparently weddings have to have themes that revolve around colors?) and photographer. Oh, and the wedding date (six months away).
But…why?
