Life Happens

What a difference 24 hours could make.

Just after writing about appearance, fat, and beauty for Sherry one day, the very next I had a huge surprise. Well, for me, more like a nightmare.

I found out I was pregnant.

I'd been excessively tired for days and ignored it given the stress of early recovery. Given our wishy-washy birth control techniques for the last 11 years since Mariah was born, I was always a bit leary of my red ribboned present arriving each month. Anxiety was always overkill, though. It always arrived to greet me within a day or two of the expected time. So when I was tired.....AND late, I thought Okay, quit stressing. Just get a test. Be done with it.

You can't imagine the shock of seeing those two horizontal blue lines.

No. Way.

No FUCKING way.

It made all the rest of the concerns I'd written about in my journals, talked about in therapy, shared around the tables in meetings seem ultra trivial -- or paradoxically ultra meaningful because everything that I'd felt to get me to where I was now was tied up in the finality of this very real and tragic situation. A situation that I, for the life of me, never had wanted - yet allowed to happen. It was the epitome of what I'd done in my life; to ignore or be SO unaware of my needs and the importance of standing up for them while devoted to the process of meeting other's expectations of me. Allowing myself to be just carried by the wind and where fate should take me, letting the chips fall where they may without taking active control over MY life. Allowing others impressions of me or their possible disappointment/hurt to rule my actions.

I stupidly, niavely thought that this couldn't possibly happen. And at 41, I most surely did not want to be here!

WHY?!

I'd enjoyed my kids growing independence and ability to regain some of my life. I was finally able some time during the day to explore the me I'd left behind.

Even though it took Jim and I five years to have Ian, I could see that I had so little sense of who I was was and what I wanted out of life at that time. I was 29. And then, waiting so long to have children, feeling the rollercoaster each month of hope, when Ian finally arrived and Mariah two and half years later, I completely lost myself in them. I sacrificed myself, not knowing how to seperate or ask for more from Jim. I dug my head so deeply into the sand with loving them, I wondered why I felt so unfulfilled. I mean, come on! I loved kids! I felt gifted in my ability to relate to them. Why in the world wasn't I gaining satisfaction in my role as a mother? It was one of the tasks in my life that I really felt accomplished at! I'd heard so many moms say that motherhood was the light of their existence. The most rewarding job they'd ever experienced.

What the hell?! Why didn't I feel that??

I felt that our children had been the stimulus that allowed Jim and I to grow distant with each other. Our focus on them, their struggles, and the exhausting energy to keep up with them left little for us as a couple. Add to that Jim's and my inability to unify in our parenting role made me feel so alone, isolated and often overwhelmed with my job as a mother.

How could I.....WHY would I want to repeat that?!

This was a major example of one more thing that Jim wanted of me when he really had no clear understanding of what that was asking of me.

It was the biggie. Jim was getting his way again. This was a MOMUMENTAL request forced upon me....and another lifetime long.

Too, given my thoughts the previous day about weight and body image, that was surely out the window. I would have to admit defeat. There was no dieting or diet pills allowed now. Nine months of growing out of control then a struggle afterwards to drop the weight. In your 40's. When metabolism is slow as tar. I was currently at the acceptable edge of my tolerance for my body. I really, REALLY didn't want to lose what I'd gained by that point -- though understandably, it was done unhealthily -- I really wanted to remain a size 8. I'd grown enough. There was no guarantee, I thought, unless I chose meth amphetamine again - that I'd get back there again.

Through my drug use and ultimate recovery, I'd been awakened to SO much about mysef and I'd felt a freedom to be able to seek out answers for myself. Seek MY needs/desires. Now I felt as though everything would be put - once again - on a halt. I'd be sacrificing myself again.

Jim and I would have been back to JUST US in just 7-8 years. The freedom to rediscover, be together without the interuption that sadly, by no fault of their own, children caused in a marriage.

The thought that this was God's will was difficult to accept - but I wanted to try to accept that possibility. I knew deep down in my philisophical side that babies were not a choice.

These were damning thoughts.

Am I just being selfish? Whining about the trivial when this is given to show me that there are more important things in life?

Would termination of this child be snubbing my nose to Him and His will for my life?

It put me in a forced position of being truly healthy about my body. I'd have to quit smoking. No coffee. There go the rest of my addictions! I'd not felt ready to do that. I knew I'd been using *them* as a crutch...and another method of appetite control. Even though I knew they *were* an addiction still in my life and that I needed to drop them eventually through God's help and AA/AlAnon, I really didn't feel ready to have it forced upon me now.

Is it really God's will for our life? For Jim and I???

Or was it through our own choice of inaction that allowed it to happen? My own fucking stupidity for not standing up for having my tubes tied! I'd had the date set! DAMMIT!! What the hell?! Not pushing him to have the vasectomy.

FUCK!!

I just didn't feel I had the tools and the power and the awareness to see me through the tragedy to not repeat the same mistakes.

Then.....Did I really need to have all of it now? Or could we develop them together in the next 9 months so that we were more prepared parents of a newborn?

I really didn't think I had the stamina and endurance for this now in my life; the lack of sleep, being a floor-playing mom, playing chase, tolerating the tantrums.

I didn't want to be fucking SIXTY before Jim and I were done and "free"!

Dear God forgive me, but I just DID NOT WANT TO DO THIS!!!

Luckily, Jim and I had a therapy session that night. Sur- priiiiiiiiiiiiiise!!!

And this time, I was fully prepared....and I wasn't going to be naked.