All-Encompassingly

Hi, internet.  It’s nice to see you again.

The whole blogging thing is curious to me, and I don’t want to bore you with an “Oh I’ve been a bad blogger” post but it’s interesting to me how easy it is to keep going when you’re writing regularly and how difficult it can be when it’s been a while.  ’Tis not a sporadic hobby.

So anyway.  I have a bun in the oven.  Here is the latest belly shot.  We have 7ish weeks to go.

When I first saw that second line back in June, I wasn’t ready to go viral with the information.  I imagined I’d be one of those people that would shout from the rooftops and want to wear a sign, but surprisingly all I could do was retreat inward for a while and reflect on how things were going to change.  Come to think of it, there are a lot of things that I had sorted out in my head that didn’t happen at all or happened totally differently than I imagined.

It wasn’t until my mother-in-law begged me to post on Facebook (so that she could tell her friends) sometime in September that I caved and went public.  But in my head I would take baths every night, reflect on my swollen feet whilst admiring my painted toenails, listen to Enya music and meditate with my baby.  You’re probably laughing, but I’m not kidding.

It’s like when you first get engaged and you have this grand plan for your married life.  You’ll wake up on Saturday mornings together to a perfectly clean house and make banana pancakes together while you read the newspaper and plan your blissful day of errand running that will be not at all stressful.  I am well aware of how ridiculous this sounds.  When my husband and I were dating long-distance, I did the same dreamy thing.

The first year I was married, all anyone wanted to know was how married life was going.  That’s such a loaded question, isn’t it?  And if you respond anything other than “Great!” their eyebrows meet their hairline and you suddenly realize you’ve said too much.  Because “He fucked up my banana pancake fantasy” isn’t polite dinner conversation.  That’s not to say we were on the brink of divorce or anything, but living with someone after that little paper is signed is (as the late Mitch Hedberg would say) all-encompassingly different.

I started having lunch with newly married friends and telling them that they could call me anytime.  That it’s ok if things aren’t exactly as you pictured.  That it’s ok to be frustrated with learning how you’ll build your life together.  And not to let anyone make you feel like a marriage leper if you’re not all sunshine & roses honeymooner kissy face all the time.  To warn them that no one talks about these sorts of things.

So, not sure about anyone else, but this was news to me – life turns out not at all how you imagined it in many, many ways.  If you’re a person that previously lived in shoulds, like I did, it can be hard.  ”I should be able to handle x, y, and z without losing my mind.”  Because in banana pancake land, I don’t lose my mind.  ”I should be less messy, I should be more cultured, I should be able to lose weight and keep it off, I should be able to have it all and do it all.”

So where was I?  Oh right.  Baby.  A a funny thing happened.  I got pregnant and suddenly was able to stop should-ing myself do death.  It wasn’t a switch that flipped, and it wasn’t overnight, but I care much less about all the crap I wasted time building up in my head.  It’s been incredibly freeing.

Maybe that means I’m growing up, maybe that means I’m getting my priorities straight (whatever the hell THAT means), or maybe it means I got thrown for a big enough curveball I was able to recognize how I could be a better human for myself and my marriage.

But now I don’t “have” to review every book I read, I don’t have to plan a meal or cook every night (wanting nothing but brown rice, macaroni and cheese, and milkshakes for 20 weeks certainly helped), and I don’t have to make plans with friends on a weeknight if I have something going on the other 4 nights.  It’s ok to say no.  I don’t have to put on a happy face or pretend I’m fine if I’m not.  Because I realized that my husband would rather have me happy, laying on the couch eating ice cream than dusting the TV.

He actually said to me the other night “When was the last time you were sad?”  Talk about a kick in the clam for all that time wasted.  Because, wow, it has been a really long time.  I used to have breakdowns about useless shit like clockwork.

So yeah.  Life is pretty good.  I don’t have much else to say other than things are not how I pictured in pretty much every way imaginable.  They’re much better.