On Being Fat

For the first time in my life I don't worry about my weight.
At least not in the same way I used to.  I think I'm a damn cute pregnant lady.  I wear this baby, and the accompanying weight, well.
Even before the pregnancy, I have only ever been concerned with being a healthy weight.  I never aimed for a particular size, or "look." For me, it has always been about how I felt physically, how fast or far I could run, how high I could climb, not leading myself toward heart disease or cancer.

My husband, on the other hand, is another story.
Last night, as we lay in bed in the dark, side by side, talking as we usually do before falling asleep, I mention to him that my family has been asking about his shirt sizes, as they prepare for Christmas shopping.
"I told them you think you're a large, even though you and I both know you're a medium."
"You told people to buy me a size medium?!"  He replies, alarmed.  "I'm going to have to squeeze into clothes like sausage into a casing!"
He's slightly overdramatic.
"Baby, I used to be a medium, before we started dating and you stuffed me," he explains.
"Well, at least I cook good food!"  I laugh.
"Ugh, I just worry that I'm going to gain too much weight and end up fat," he sighs.
"Come on, baby, let's be real.  My brother just looked up all of our BMIs the other day and you're perfectly fine.  As long as you stay in the 160s you have nothing to worry about," I reassure him.

Silence.

Then he says, quietly, seriously, "I'm 177."

Oh.  Oops.

Pregnant Women Really Are Crackheads

Well, at least first-time pregnant women.

Since I got my first real kick from the baby last Monday night, sitting in front of my computer, she (yes, we now know that she is a she) has been moving around quite a bit.
When we went in to have our ultrasound on Thursday, both the doctor and the ultrasound technician remarked on how active she was.
This kept up all the way until Saturday night, when she seemed to peak after having her daddy's spicy chipotle chicken dinner.
Kick, punch, head butt, elbow, knee.
This little one pound girl was moving and shaking to some spicy Mexican rhythm only she could hear.

Then Sunday came around.  And.... nothing.

I thought I felt the occasional kick or punch, but truly nothing compared with what I had felt throughout the week.

"Oh my gosh!  Was it the spicy food?  Was my bath too hot?"  I asked Carlos nervously.  "I mean, she's okay, I'm sure."  I said this more to assure him than myself, because all I needed at that point was for him to be freaked out too.

I spent the whole day trying to sit in positions in which I usually felt her best.  Then, I woke up multiple times throughout the night shifting and moving to see if I could detect a kick.

I could, of course.   She kicked me a few times in the night, but for some reason I had already driven off the cliff of sanity and could not calm myself down.

Now, to be clear, none of this stress or anxiety was apparent from the outside, but my psychological state was frantic.  On the inside, I was quaking.

I woke up this morning, smiled and kissed my husband goodbye... and looked up everything I could find on spicy foods and warm baths during pregnancy.
Obviously, neither of these things are a anything to worry about.  My baby is fine, and she began kicking away again today.
Apparently that hard surface I felt in my belly yesterday and last night when I would touch it was my baby's butt.  She had her back to my hand and her feet facing inward, so I couldn't feel all her rambunctious activity.

All this to say that now, honestly, what I'm "trying" to do most of all, is stay sane.

Fairy Tale Character

I never really thought of myself as a princess.
I certainly never imagined myself as living in some sort of fairy tale.

But yes, if I had to imagine my husband as a fairy tale character, I would likely have placed him among the Prince Charmings, the heroes, although certainly one of the nerdier, more comical ones.

Until last night.

My husband has been nursing the beginning of a cold for the last couple of days.  And when Carlos gets a cold, the cough is the worst cough he has ever had, he's colder than he's ever been, then he's hotter than he's ever been, his throat hurts worse than ever before, and on and on.
I'm used to this.  I make some chicken soup, heat him up some Theraflu and pet his head until he falls asleep under a mountain of blankets.  Kind of like a toddler.
Hey, it works for us.

This is the first time, obviously, I have experienced my husband with a cold and a pregnant wife.

"No!  Das okay!  I god id," he says through his stuffed nose with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders as he rushes to make himself tea before I can.

"Baby!  Sid down!  I'll take id," he insists, with same blanket wrapped around shoulders, hacking up a lung, as he carries our dishes to the sink.

"I'm fine.  I'm fine.  As long as I can still walk, I'll be fine."

To which I say, "Oh, yea, that's a great measure of health.  Can I walk?  Yep.  I must be fine."

But still, my hero, right?  He absolutely insists that he can still take care of both of us even with his wretched cold.

Then bedtime arrives.

He rubs himself all over with Vapor Rub, which he uses as a cure-all in the same way the father from My Big Fat Greek Wedding uses Windex.  He's not only wrapped in his shoulder blanket of the evening, but also buried under a mountain of covers in our bed, sweating profusely.  And this is all before he falls asleep.
So here I am, with an extremely sensitive sense of smell, overwhelmed by the menthol fumes, assaulted by the waves of heat pushing at me from his side of the bed.

And then the tossing and turning begins.
His knee continually comes *this* close to my belly as he thrashes about, tossing off covers, pulling them back on, trying to cuddle with me (don't you dare!), throwing one leg off the bed, scooting higher, then lower.
He can only breathe out of his mouth, in this panting, raspy, loud and labored breath, which conveniently lands directly on the back of my neck.
He sneezes repeatedly, elbows me in the rib at one point.  All of this while I am trying desperately to be patient and fall asleep.

Finally, after what seems like hours of sweet, loving, wifely toleration, I get up, wander into the kitchen and notice that it is only 12:30 AM!  It has barely been two hours.  I still have all night to deal with this.

It did eventually get better, and I got a couple of hours of sleep, as did my poor husband.

But this morning when I woke up, it hit me:

"I'm married to the seven dwarfs."

Mistakes and Regrets, Part 1

I have none.
Part of being a fighter is building on your weakness as well as your strengths.  I have fought long and hard to get to where I am now.  And today, of all days, I cry.  Like a weak, pathetic thing, I cry.
Why?
Mostly because I have enough hormones racing through me to make a statue of granite burst into tears.
But also because my mother cannot deal with the past.
My last post on this blog was a harsh look into my own past, which happens to also be her past.

This is not something for which anyone in my family should be unprepared.  I am the trouble maker.  I bring up history when everyone else would rather sweep it under the rug and smile and eat turkey.
Why do I do this?

"Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."  ~Winston Churchill

I believe this as much as I believe in anything.  Unequivocally.

So too do I believe that I myself have made bad decisions in the past, and difficult decisions that make me sad to think about.  Am I happy that I didn't leave my first husband before starting a new love affair? Of course not.  But I don't know if I would have left that pointless relationship if not for the lust that drove me into the arms of another man, which ultimately led me to my independence, and the horrible karma I paid in return.
Do I look back with tears in my eyes at having made the decision to abort my first pregnancy?  Of course I do.  But I know beyond doubt that I would do it again, crying the whole way there and back.  It was not a good life for me or for a potential baby to be in.
I have traveled a rocky road, I have paid penance for hurts that I have caused.  I look into the past not with regret but with open eyes, determined not to retrace my steps, determined to be a better person going forward.  And what my mother doesn't understand is that she is one of the people that taught me to be this way.

Which brings me to the issue of the cycle.
I vow not to be wife to an abusive man.
I vow not to allow my children to be victimized by anyone.
I vow not to live in a loveless marriage.
I vow not to abuse drugs, to hit, to terrorize, to ignore, to pretend.

These are things I learned from the people around me, the people closest to me.  I learned how not to do what they did.  And yes, my mother is one of those people.
Does this make me love her less?
No.
I know she was a victim as I was, and broke the cycle in the only ways she knew how.
I also know that a failure to look back with eyes open, as well as a failure to face the present with the same clarity, condemns us to repeating, rather than breaking, the cycle.
And now it is my turn.

So, mom, and anyone else who has a problem with what I write, I'm sorry that people make us feel bad for wanting to understand our past.
I'm sorry that people deny us our truths.
I'm sorry that being hurt makes us want to hurt, even the innocent, in return.
I'm sorry that facing our own truths is like reopening a wound that won't seem to stop bleeding.
I'm sorry that it's easier to pretend than to take off the mask.

I know it is difficult to be the agitator.  I know it is crushing to confront a painful reality.  I know how hard it is to say "no" when everyone else is saying "yes," to say "listen" when everyone has their hands over their ears.
I know what it is like to be on the outside.
To hear over and over, "oh you're just being overdramatic."  (Yes, because it is highly overdramatic to be outraged at the memory of having my pants pulled down and spanked with the bare meaty palm of my stepfather at the age of 14, right before we leave for Disneyland, the happiest place on earth.)
I do not blame anyone for not wanting to live the life of the agitator.

But I learned who I wanted to be as a result of watching, and listening to, those closest to me.  Especially when the advice was cautionary.

"Be social.  Be strong.  Be a fighter.  Stand up for the weak.  Speak out for the voiceless.  Learn from my mistakes.  Be passionate in everything you do.  Write what you know.  Do as I say and not as I do."

Now, today, years later, you cannot be upset when my life clearly says, in response, "okay."

Why Do I Love the Rain?

Is it because bad things don't happen during colder times?
Certainly not.
My stepfather was just as violent, just as ferociously capable of tearing apart our household on a gloomy day as he was on a sunny one.  More so even.  He hated Christmas.
Is it because I have some inner sentiment that the bad guys of the world can't come out into in and hurt people in the rain?
Perhaps.
Perhaps I have some bizarre belief that good people looking for refuge can find it better in the rain, under cloud cover, in the middle of a chaotic storm when the evils of the world are consumed with themselves and with each other and only wait to prey on the innocent when we least expect it.
Yes.  I think that's what it is.
Bad things happen to good people on sunny days.  And it sucks to cry and be sad with the sun mocking you with its brilliant rays.  Happy children running through sprinklers and nice daddies washing their cars on the front lawn while your world is the antithesis of theirs, a world they never even imagined existed, something they read about in sad books or catch in a flash on the ten o'clock news.
"Girl Races Out Front Door After Being Repeatedly Stricken by Stepfather while Mother Looks On."

Oh, how horrible, they would say.  Look away, honey, there's nothing we can do for her, for people like that, they tell each other, as the sun turns their tans a soft golden brown.

She runs and she runs and the sun follows her everywhere she goes, shining a spotlight on her location, making her easy to find, easy to recover, easy for the police to say, "domestic dispute, troubled teenager, nothing to be done."

The sun shines down on the man punching his fist through the driver's side window of the car, punching to get to his wife trying to take her children and flee.  The sun shows him the way to come home early and catch them before they escape.  The sun gives him power.  The sun makes her scared.

So yes, I prefer the rain.  The rain makes me strong.  The rain makes me stand in the midst of it and dare you to come after me, dare you to try to find me, fight me, at my best.  Even if I cry, even if I'm afraid, you will never know, because the rain will hide me from you, will make me seem strong even when I'm at my weakest.  My curtains always block out the sun and stand open willingly, revealingly, for the rain.
I can feel at home anywhere in the rain, instantly.

The beaches are at their boldest in the rain.  The forests at their greenest and most magical.  The cities seem to equalize all of its citizens under their gray pallor.  Life begins with rain, and it can be wiped clean with rain.  You can't get to me in the rain.

Bring on the rain.

I Am Not In Control

I have been on my own for a long, long, long time.  Even before that, I was always taking care of people, having people in my life who need me.  And I got really good at being dependable, being needed, stepping up to the plate.  I have never really felt like I needed anyone, probably because from an early age I learned that there was not one person who would consistently and constantly be what I needed him or her to be.

This is not to say that there have not been, and are not now, amazing people in my life who have been there for me and helped me out when I was down.  For the most part, though, I have been alone in that way, and damn proud of it.

As a result, all of the intimate relationships I have had have always consisted of someone needing me, and me needing no one, refusing, outright, to depend on anyone.  I realize now that I was terrified of being let down.

Now, 19 weeks pregnant, I had the first real moment of clarity with regard to this life inside me and what this pregnancy means to the future of the family that my husband and I are forming.

Saturday morning I had a dizzy spell.  I must have gotten up too quickly, or not had enough water, or perhaps too much coffee, and my world spun for an instant and the little white lights danced on the periphery of my vision.
I sat down, had a glass of water, and the dizziness passed.  I decided to take it easy that day and had no real occurrences until Sunday morning.
I had another dizzy spell, this time while sitting down, and it scared me.  I had read that dizziness, even passing out, was quite common in the second trimester, but I had only had two other occasions in my life like this, once I had pneumonia that landed me in the ER and the other time was right before I found out I was pregnant with this baby.
What is worse is that those two times are the only times I have ever really felt utterly vulnerable, and the explanation was simple, and my vulnerability passed like a distant memory, or a vague dream.

This was different.  I had no control over what would happen with this pregnancy.  No ER will give me a prescription that assures I have no further pregnancy symptoms that leave me flat on my back.  There would be no quick fix for this vulnerability that I was suddenly feeling overwhelmed by.
My breaking point was when my husband was up and about in our apartment, cooking and cleaning, insisting that I take it easy and to let him handle everything.  He had just moved the bucket of Pine Sol water into the hallway right outside of the bedroom, so he could mop the bathroom floor and the smell of the chemical was overpowering to me.  I desperately wanted to open the window, but felt too faint to lift my head and then my body to get off of the bed and do it myself.  So, I called to him.

He came into the room, and I started crying.  Shaking my head and crying, unable to speak.

Finally, I asked him if he could please open the window.  "Of course," he said soothingly, sitting down on the bed and trying to get out of me what was so devastating.

"I just feel so....  so.....  so.... vulnerable.  So needy!"  I was crying, pitying myself and my pathetic plight.  He spent a while reassuring me, calming me down, as I explained to him through streams of tears and hiccups that I had never needed anyone before, and now I needed him.  I knew that to take care of my baby, I had to take care of myself, and now I realized that I couldn't do that alone.  I needed him.  I no longer had full control over my life, because my life was not solely mine anymore.

"Thank God," he said.  He explained to me that he had felt for so long that I would never let go of this utter and complete control that I insisted on having over everything in my life and let him be a "full partner."  I was amazed.  I hadn't realized that by not letting him really take care of me, by never trusting myself to really depend on him, I was withholding something from him.  He needed me to need him.  But, he said, he had held out hope.

"I remember one time, long before you were pregnant, you asked me if I thought you would be a cute pregnant lady."  He said this very quietly.  "And I remember thinking that I didn't know if you would be a cute pregnant lady, hadn't really thought about it, but that I thought you would be a vulnerable one.  I'm so glad I was right."

Disconcerted after all of these emotions and this entire conversation, and a little bit bothered with this new, needier self I was developing into, I wiped my eyes, blew my nose, looked him in the eye and asked him, quite seriously:
"So?  Am I a cute pregnant lady?"