I'm always surprised by one, totally unexpected emotion during the significant events in life. Like when my ex-husband disappeared--literally up and dis-da-fucking-peared--and it became clear he was gone (you know, for good), I knew there'd be emptiness, depression, fear, the 'I'm unattractive and unlovable' combo, the certainty I'd never find love again. But who knew I'd feel so embarrassed. I was unable to look my friends, my family, the grocery store clerk in the eye because of a crushing sense of something not unlike shame. I felt as if I was wearing a big, scarlet letter A (for abandoned) on my forehead. Losing someone I loved enough to marry was brutal and hard, but the embarrassment was crippling. I'm still a little ashamed to this day. You'd think I was Catholic.
This significant event around, the pregnancy I mean, the unexpected emotion is loneliness. I guessed I'd experience emotions that are indescribable to anyone who has not had a person grow inside of them, and I have. I never knew I could love someone so much, on a hunch really...that and a few shared genes and corporeal space. The whole process is indescribably awesome, mind-blowing, life-altering, holy in the truest sense, but, come to find, also cruelly, brutally lonely.
There's the part where unless you already have babies and all your friends have babies, people fuck off like you've got the plague. Couple that with the physical inability to keep up your old lifestyle (particularly if cigarettes and booze and bending over a pool table featured prominently), and your new, freaky primordial urge to focus your attention on things that matter, are 'capital i' important, where you arrive is alone. A lot. Spending the vast majority of your time in your own head.
It's depressing as hell at times, truthfully. And although I'm delighted to be on this adventure, and am equally delighted to see where it will lead, I do, upon occasion, wonder what the fuck I was thinking.
And then I'm all happy again because I discover this, my most dark emotion, has its own theme song.
Posted by Antigeist at October 13, 2006 12:31 PMYup.
Posted by: monk at October 16, 2006 08:28 AMIt IS a lonely time...and unfortunately, your friendships do shift a little when you're going to have a child. You're changing into someone who worries about schools and public education for all children, and who writes letters to the editor...but you do have a great theme song!
You're in the between-time now, when you've changed enough that your old friends don't quite know what to say to you, but before you've met enough other young parents or just new, sympathetic people. That is a lonely time...
There's an on-line magazine that may be somewhat interesting to you...it's hipmama.com. And no, I don't work for them, or have any financial interest in it.
I'm an empty nester now, so I never used this online magazine myself, but the young mothers I know seem to like it.
Good luck, bittersweetie. If New York ever pales, please move here to Minneapolis! There are lots of NYC artists who've moved here to raise their kids!
Posted by: Pam in Minneapolis at October 16, 2006 09:30 AMThanks for the invite. Minneapolis will be put on the short list. Because, as you seem to know well, in addition to schools and the environment and public official letter writing campaigns, you also change into someone for whom the lure of affordable housing with crazy amenities like a *yard* are suddenly a necessity.
Posted by: antigeist at October 16, 2006 04:02 PMYou're so not alone in how you feel. I don't know you, but I can tell that you're gonna make a kick-ass mommy....Enjoy your new extended family. Oh, I absolutely love your theme song! Mind if I borrow it???? Best.
Posted by: Jody at October 20, 2006 07:51 PM