anxiety – Sconnie Molly

How

How do you eat pumpkin pie and turkey and mashed potatoes with people for whom rape isn’t a big bright un-crossable red line?

How do you smile and hug people from whom you expected so much better?

How do you balance this reprehensible, unconscionable choice they made with the many real and concrete ways they have shown you love over the course of your entire life?

These aren’t hypotheticals; I really want to know. Because I don’t have any kind of answer yet and a vanishing amount of time to figure it out.

“Don’t let politics get in the way of friendships or family.” I certainly agree with that when we’re talking about the finer points of income tax rates or zoning laws or transportation policy. There is plenty of room for friendly good-faith differences of opinion in those areas. If we’re talking about very real threats to my son’s education and general future – and very real threats to the literal air we breathe and planet we exist on – and very real threats to my own bodily autonomy and health – and good God, so much more – well, sorry not sorry, the political is personal as fuck and I can’t pretend otherwise.

I often wish that everyone had been required to take a women’s/gender studies class in high school or college, not only because everyone should be a feminist (or womanist), but because of this central lesson we learned early and often throughout those studies: the personal is political, and the political is personal. It’s one thing second-wave feminism got absolutely right. And yes, I know at this point I’ve risked sounding like an absolute parody of myself, but it’s the goddamn truth.

To willingly make the clear-eyed choice to support kakistocratic government because…because…because you’ll get anti-abortion judges and justices? Because you think gas is too expensive? Because you think Kamala Harris is a scary woke San Francisco lib? Because…???? How could I pretend to respect that?

I could go on and on and literally forever on, but I’ve deliberately ignored federal news as much as humanly possible over the last week and a half, and don’t plan on changing that anytime soon. What’s going to happen is going to happen. I don’t need to borrow worry from the future. My brain thinks if it tries hard enough, it can come up with all the right contingency plans for every potential disastrous policy enacted, but of course that’s not how any of this works.

I think we learn pretty early on in adulthood that part of ~maturity~ is being able to hold space for two opposing facts at once. In this case, the facts are these: 1) People in my family have made a decision that I abhor with every fiber and cell and atom of my being. 2) I still love them. I don’t think either of those facts are really changeable. So here I must sit with it, and it feels like one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

***

What I’m reading:

My most recent completion is Jia Tolentino’s “Trick Mirror“. It’s better than a lot of personal essayist memoirs I’ve read. Respect.
Now I’m in the middle of Ann Petry’s 1946 classic “The Street” and have just begun Kara Perez’s “Green Money“. I’ve got to figure out how to ethically strike it rich sooner or later.

What I’m watching:

We continue our sojourn through Suits, now mid-season 6. It’s so great and often pretty dumb but still so great. However, if Harvey and Donna don’t eventually ride off into the sunset together it’s all completely dead to me. Don’t you dare spoil it.
Someone I know very wisely saved up all the current season episodes of Great British Bake-Off to watch this week in case things went, well, how they ended up going. I wish I’d had that level of foresight, as we are sadly all caught up with it, but every minute in that tent with Allison Hammond is a balm to the soul.

What I’m baking:

This exquisite little dream of a coffee cake.

What’s getting me through:

all of the aforementioned things +
Ashwin
- watching him figure out how to write ABCs
- getting amazing progress reports from his speech and OT folks
- seeing how much his classmates love him and vice versa
- supporting his random and ever-changing obsessions (currently: dinosaurs, Peppa Pig, “Spooky Scary Skeletons“, the solar system)
my dad and me sending each other smart-watch screenshot proof of our daily-ish walks
my work group chat
Halloween candy
commiseration with every like-minded person I meet
finally, finally, F I N A L L Y sweater weather
we’re seeing Jon Stewart in Milwaukee next week
we’re visiting my Michelle in February
having successfully kept Twitter and Threads deleted from my phone for the last 9 days
acknowledging to myself that even though by many measures it’s been a pretty bad year overall, I’m still here and I’ve done a lot of really fucking hard things and I’m more confident in and proud of myself than I’ve ever been.

It’s the hope that kills you

It’s 3:34am. I went to bed around midnight and was nudged out of light sleep by V joining me. He didn’t say anything though, and as my brain processed that, I knew things had to be in worse shape than when I finally closed my eyes a few hours ago.

I’m crying a little less this time, so far. But of course the day is still very young.

More than anything I wish I didn’t care so much. I wish I could shrug it off. I wish this were 30 years ago when we could still plausibly say, with clear eyes and mostly intact hearts, “Ah, tough luck this round, but we’ll live to fight another day.”

Virtually all of my friends are politically engaged. I didn’t do as much loving harassment of my people as I have in elections past, because I really didn’t need to; everyone knew what had to be done and they all did it. We did our part. I spoke to a couple of people I thought were maybe, just maybe reachable. I guess they weren’t.

When the top of the ticket changed in July (or was it June? I’m sure as hell not looking it up now) the vibe shift was immediate and intense, so much joy and relief. It had felt as though we were sliding inexorably toward an inevitable crash and burn. Suddenly a dizzying injection of positivity, real empathy, real action, enough to fuel 100-odd days with feverish, frenetic hope. And, well, there you go – the title says it all.

I suppose we will indeed live to fight another day. We don’t have a choice. We still share this country, this world. But the long, long arms of systemic racism and internalized misogyny and the deep desire of so many to scoot and squeeze themselves under the umbrella of fascistic xenophobia that appears to offer safe harbor have again won the day, seemingly. That wasn’t my most poetic metaphor but I stand by it.

My son is still too young to understand any of this and I guess that’s a small mercy I’ve been given. But thinking about him makes the pain so exponentially worse. In a few hours he will wake up blissfully unaware that anything has changed, unaware that people who profess to love him have bargained away his future for the promise of cheaper eggs and owning the libs. To some, that will sound terribly over-dramatic, and I would be the gladdest person of all to wind up being wrong. It just doesn’t matter right now. When he wakes up I will give him a thousand kisses like I always do, get him a banana and an apple bar and cuddle while we watch Peppa Pig before school. I will try desperately to keep it together until he leaves and then I will crumble again. Maybe just maybe I could even get a few more minutes of sleep before he wakes up. Probably not. But I’ll hope anyway.

Not too late for a 2022 recap, is it?

Hey, friend.

I missed the 2022 Nagappala Book Awards (NBAs) and I don’t have the energy to do it now. You can haunt my Goodreads if you’re really starving for my book opinions.

We can do a quick 2022 rundown though, I guess.

I didn’t travel as much in 2022 as I would’ve liked, for all the obvious reasons: it’s challenging to travel with a 2 year old, everything is wildly expensive, work schedules, and did I mention it’s really fucking challenging to travel with a 2 year old. We did have about 5 days in Boston in the spring for a family wedding, which was fantastic because V also has family in that area, so we both got to see cousins we love. But parenting in a different environment is not actually a vacation.

To scratch that itch as best we could, we continued our tradition of taking “solo weekends” – where one of us goes away for a few days, decompressing and doing whatever the fuck we want, and the other gets 1-on-1 time with Ashwin. If it’s feasible for you, as a parent, I cannot recommend doing this any more strongly. I have tended to stick pretty close to home for my trips, to maximize the relaxation and fun and minimize the tedious travel time, but I might branch out in 2023.

In 2023, V and I will have been married for 10 years and together for 15 (!). For a long time I’ve said I wanted to do a big trip for this anniversary and so we are, in early March, to a very warm and lovely place we’ve never been. Of course, this is only possible because my parents so generously agreed to take Ashwin off our hands for a week. I am honestly not trying to humble brag – I’m just endlessly, endlessly grateful for my mom and dad. I do not take them for granted.

I guess if 2022 had a theme, for me it might well be gratitude. All sorts of not-great things happened this year; I cried, argued, maybe slammed a door or two, rescheduled therapy appointments way too many times, definitely made far too many trips to Starbucks for strawberry acai lemonades, despite buying the ingredients to attempt making it at home (whoops, never did). Loved ones got covid (though thankfully all mostly recovered), the ex-president still isn’t in jail, and Ron Johnson still represents me in the Senate. But nothing truly calamitous happened and for that I can’t be anything but thankful.

I didn’t see my friends often enough, but I’d like to think we made it count when we did.

I’ve loved my new job. The only thing I don’t like about it is it leaves me pretty much no time to write and/or pitch – which I knew would happen, and it’s fine, but I do miss it. I suppose I still have this good ol’ blog that 5 people read, maybe that’s enough of an outlet.

I did some personal healing that was a long, long time coming and I’m now a lot more at peace because of it. Shan’t get into the gory details, but maybe 2023 is the year you confront your trauma? It’s better on the other side, I promise.

Even with the daily grind and stressors that life brings – parenting, household management, marriage, friendships, family, self-care, career – I’ve found myself feeling…pretty good. So much so that I’ve been considering a sloooow taper off of my meds. Longtime friends/readers may remember that I tried this in 2015, as I started trying to conceive, and it did.not.go.well to put it mildly. As scary as that prospect is, I want to try again, because minus that ~6 month experiment, I’ve been on some type of antidepressant/anti-anxiety medication my entire adult life. I think I’m more stable than I was in 2015 and I really want to see if I can do it. If I can’t cope, I can’t cope, and I’ll go back on them without an ounce of shame. I’m mostly including this here because if I do end up tapering, I may track it somewhat here on the blog. Would that actually be interesting to anyone? Unlikely! But that’s not why I write here, really, though I hope it’s at least mildly entertaining for whomever stops by.

What I’m Reading

I just started Screaming on the Inside, one in a new-ish genre of “hey, modern motherhood is kind of a fucking shitshow?” A lot of women are writing about that right now and I’d certainly like to be one of them.

What I’m Watching

After a very, very long period of refusal, I’ve started watching the most recent season of Stranger Things with V. I don’t exactly remember why I tried to boycott; I think at the time it premiered, a school shooting had just happened and I couldn’t deal with violence of any kind. Still don’t love it, but am looking away when I need to. I’d rather be watching Bridgerton, tbh. (Kind of joking kind of not?)

What I’m Looking Forward To

Uh, most definitely our vacation in March. Only 51 days to go!! (I have a countdown app, of course)

What I’m Fuming About

This fucking idiot.

Missing the small stakes

I ended my social media sabbatical after about a week, but I’m still actively avoiding the news and depressing media of all sorts. We saw Hannah Gadsby two nights ago and I gotta say, it wasn’t that great, but I don’t know if it’s her or me. I have trouble laughing at the “everything has gone to shit” genre of jokes, even though I sometimes make them myself. The apocalypse is nigh, hahaha. The world is a dumpster fire, hahaha. All that goes through my head is that auto-tuned Madonna refrain from “Sorry“…”I’ve heard it all before, I’ve heard it all before, I’ve heard it all before.”

*me + jen + this album in 2005-06 = thick as thieves*

Like…I 1000% understand joking to cope with hard things. It’s what I did with our ~*infertility journey~* (Jesus Christ is there another way to name the 5 years I tried unsuccessfully to get pregnant? because that phrase is the woooorst) and what I still sometimes do with depression. So I absolutely get the impulse. But if that’s all we’re doing, how is any of this supposed to get better? At some point, don’t we have to move past the jokes and get to actual concrete strategies?

How is any parent supposed to be okay? How are we supposed to drop our children off at daycare and elementary school and middle school and high school and just…leave? I’d feel that way a little bit even if there was no such thing as mass shootings. But reading the emergency protocol for “intruders” in your 2 year old’s daycare really ratchets things up, and by “things” I mean the knot in my stomach.

He’s two. He’s TWO. He’s growing in every way every day and it’s so amazing to watch. I know he needs to be among his peers, and I do think daycare will really be good for him. The thing about mass shootings is that they are terrorism – the goal, outside of killing whomever is on that shooter’s particular menu, is to terrorize. I know intellectually that the probability of some psycho shooting up my son’s daycare is truly incredibly small. But it could happen, and I know that because I’ve seen it happen, so I can’t stop visualizing it as though it will happen. The terrorists have won, in my mind anyway.

What are my options? Keep my son in daycare as planned, tolerate the massive increase in daily anxiety, and just pray for the best? Keep him home, likely stunting his social and mental growth, until…college? Uproot us all and move to another country where this shit doesn’t happen and literally no one has to worry about it, but where I’ll know no one and probably not speak the language or be able to get a job?

I don’t know how every single person in this country isn’t straight up immobilized by grief on a daily basis.

***

I got rejected from another job today. A state job, but a communications position that I genuinely thought I’d be good at. I know that the answer here is perseverance. Michael Jordan got cut from his junior high basketball team, etc etc etc. But let’s just acknowledge that perseverance is very, very hard, yeah? By definition, obviously, it takes a toll. Rejections take a toll, especially when you don’t really know what you’re doing wrong. Maybe you’re not doing anything wrong – there are a million reasons why you might not get hired for any particular position that have nothing to do with your qualifications or resume. But maybe you are…

***

What I’m Reading

Primarily “Beautiful World, Where Are You” by Sally Rooney, though I’ve got a few books going on right now. I liked Sally Rooney’s previous books; the very specific (yet universal-feeling) world of Irish millennials loving and leaving one another while musing about capitalism, religion, and politics just does it for me, I guess. This one seems slower, less “plot-focused” – which is to say, not much is actually happening – than the others but I’m still enjoying it.

What I’m Watching

The Bear, and season 2 of Only Murders in the Building, both on Hulu. Re: the latter, You really can’t go wrong with Steve Martin and Martin Short. As for the former, it’s unlike any other show I’ve seen somehow. Compelling as fuck, but also borderline breaking my “no depressing media” rule. OMITB is my current palate cleanser, I guess.

We’re also watching Ms. Marvel, of course, and the South Asian representation is so exciting. I’ve *never* seen Partition depicted or even discussed in American TV or movies – so many people don’t even know it happened – and that was really powerful. It’s a superhero show, obviously, so it’s not exactly the Indian-American sitcom of my dreams…but Never Have I Ever still exists, after all (and is returning in August)!

What I’m Looking Forward To

Visiting our Lacrosse besties in a week and a half. Mulaney, still. Fall.

What I’m Fuming About

I got pulled over while driving home from Milwaukee about a month ago. I had been going ~12mph over the limit, but the cop actually wanted to ticket me for non-registration. Turns out our tags had expired, um…10 months ago? Oops? So whatever, you got me, Jefferson County. I paid the ticket. Today I get a letter in the mail informing me that I still owe the County of Jefferson $2.00. The ticket had been for $175.30, and for some reason I wrote my check (YES, a PAPER CHECK, because the county charges you exorbitant fees to pay online) for $173.30. So now I have to write them another goddamn check, for 2 goddamn dollars, and I am just salty about it.

Oh, it’s…December? huh

Ashwin has been sick for the last 36 hours or so. We took him to the ER last night because he was so incredibly lethargic and refusing all food/water and throwing up and had a fever. All of the things. I don’t know if I’d ever been in an ER before, and had heard horror stories of people being turned away during the pandemic (aka currently) for lack of beds and/or staff to treat folks. Fortunately that didn’t happen to us, and didn’t appear to be happening to anybody else there. He was eventually given an anti-nausea medicine and soon was acting like his old active self so we were discharged – but then this morning, it was back to Lethargy Town. He napped for 3+ hours and woke up much better, so basically it’s just seesawing and I’m really not a fan of this rollercoaster. I don’t want him to be sick when he wakes up again.

Seeing your kid – your baby – like that is levels of shitty that I was not prepared for. Anyone who has met Ashwin, or even seen him on social media, knows that he’s an active, engaging, curious, giggly dude. Yesterday and this morning he was exactly the opposite. Not interested in a damn thing besides being held, which of course V and I were happy to oblige, but it’s hard to enjoy those cuddles when you don’t know what’s making him act so out of character.

I know it’s only a stomach bug. It’s not the end of the world. He will be fine. All of that. I think both V and I experienced some Seattle NICU flashbacks waiting in that ER, so remembering how tiny and fragile he was then just made the whole night more emotional. But he’s come a long way, my boy.

***

Momming in general has me thinking lately about innocence. As a kid/teenager I thought “innocence” was such a crock, so overrated. Like please just leave me the fuck alone and let me learn things for myself. Of course, from the parent perspective, it’s about protection and not wanting any harm to come your kid’s way…literally the most understandable impulse in the universe. I skim Twitter and dread the day when I have to start explaining to Ashwin what anti-vaxxers are, who Brett Kavanaugh is, why the bad orange man fucked the country for decades to come, and where exactly all those people without homes at Reindahl Park are supposed to go. And that’s just barely scratching the surface. It’s a horrible goddamn world, and I know that really there is nothing new under the sun, but it sure feels like things are unprecedently bad right now.

I know there is a ton of beauty in the world; I know there are tons and tons of good people. I have seen it and I know them. I know they tend not to make the headlines and the headlines are a big part of what’s making me crazy and being on Twitter and the internet as a whole less often would probably improve my situation. But try as I might, I can never stay away for too long.

***

Our house-hunting journey ended up being much shorter than anticipated. We got an accepted offer less than a month after first meeting with our realtor (the esteemed and beloved Kelda Roys) and we close in a couple of weeks. At every turn, the sellers have been really accommodating and reasonable and it’s been miraculously different from the current standard real estate narrative of cash offers, paying way way over asking price, not getting an inspection, etc. And while we’re not exactly in the part of town I hoped to be in, we are in the city of Madison, and that was a big deal to me.

Sometimes I think this whole blog is basically just me saying over and over “something kinda shitty happened, but it’s not THAT bad, I’m actually super lucky, so you know what never mind!!!!!!! Here’s an ironic meme, byeeee” Not sure if that’s more or less annoying than just complaining all the time or just nonstop cooing about how fortunate I am. *shrug emoji* Guess we’ll never know!!!

***

What I’m Reading:

God, I’ve got like six books going right now and can’t seem to make headway with any of them. But I most recently finished The Laziness Lie, which I absolutely insist you read if you’ve ever felt exhausted and burned out by life. So yeah, 100% of us. It’s short, you’ll love it, it was a balm to my soul and I will probably buy it and loan it out to whoever will listen to me.

What I’m Watching:

Obviously Succession, which just keeps getting better and better. Also the Dexter revival, which…is a bit hackneyed so far but I’m willing to go with it and see what happens. Also Hawkeye, a true holiday delight, and when I get the chance, SELLING muthafuckin SUNSET. Maybe this is my version of watching the Kardashians. I can live with that. I eat that luxury real estate/incredibly petty drama/plastic surgery overload shit up.

What I’m Looking Forward To:

Closing on the house and moving in, which probably won’t happen until the new year, but that will give us time to do some painting and clean the carpets and yada yada yada.

Also I must admit that I’m very curiously and sentimentally awaiting “And Just Like That…“. Will it be actually good? I mean, maybe? Will it be schmaltzy? For sure I think. Part of me would prefer to keep Carrie et al forever in their 30s, where I am comfortable, and doesn’t really want to see the aging and the changing and the ~*mid-life discoveries*~ that seem inevitable and scary and very un-fun.

What I’m Fuming About:

I can’t read too much about this cynical partisan buffoonery that is incredibly harmful for democracy or I will really and truly lose my mind. Any news in this general category raises my rage meter like very little else, because it’s something I actually have intimate knowledge of and I used to deal with these people and I know just how much of an obscene clown show it all is.

What I’m Listening To:

The Phineas and Ferb theme song occasionally alternating with the Bluey theme song. I will spare your brain and not link to them.

Just a big wuss now, I guess

I started watching Maid on Netflix, because I loved the book a few years ago. I remembered it as an inspiring memoir of a single mom who worked incredibly hard at a really shitty job, so that she and her daughter could be okay. And that’s basically what it is. But I don’t know if it’s the really good acting or if I’m just a lot more sensitive than I used to be – and I have always been VERY SENSITIVE! – but I couldn’t really take it. I turned it off as the daughter was having a tantrum in the car because she lost her doll, and the mom had just been told she had to go back and finish a cleaning job because the client was unhappy with it, and she’s got like literally $2 to her name, and she hasn’t eaten all day, and she’s homeless, because her daughter’s father is a violent alcoholic. Like…that’s just so much shit. Just one of those things would be hard enough on its own.

Ever since Ashwin was born I’ve had a really hard time watching anything where children are endangered or in any kind of bad situation. It completely stresses me out, which is the opposite of what I’m looking for when I watch TV or movies. I never thought I’d be someone who didn’t want to watch something because it was “too violent” – like, that just makes me think of a very square little Victorian lady with delicate sensibilities.

I know that the plot of Maid is real life for a lot of people, because this country seems to believe that any kind of real safety net is socialism. I’ve read so many books to that effect, so much investigative journalism and muckraking about the innumerable ills of our world: racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, tax cheats, bad schools, an increasingly shitty environment, xenophobia, crumbling infrastructure.

But honestly? My daily life is pretty distant from most of that. My privileges have sheltered me. So to turn away from something like Maid, something that’s hard but very real, feels to me like I’m copping out. If other people have to live it, I should at a minimum be able to bear witness. That’s the literal least I can do. Lately though, I just can’t – not without going down a really dark rabbit hole in my psyche. I’m using my privilege to shield me from things I find simply too sad, because I have that luxury.

***

We’ve started house-hunting. Yes, I know how the market is. Yes, I am anxious about it. No, we’re not going to keep renting. We are somehow going to buy a home in the next few months, come hell or high water. We at least know some things from our first home-buying rodeo: namely, that corner houses are the worst November through March, kitchens are a big deal, and yard maintenance is an evil time suck best left to professionals.

What I’m Reading:

Most recently finished “The Heart’s Invisible Furies” by John Boyne. It’s basically the life story of a gay Irishman born in the 1940s or 1950s, when gay was absolutely 10000% not an okay thing to be or even speak of. It’s a beautiful story with a perfect happy ending.

Now I’ve started “You Got Anything Stronger?” by Gabrielle Union, because Gabrielle Union is one of those celebrities I’m weirdly fascinated by and I just like her.

What I’m Watching:

We finally finished Veep, which had THE BEST finale episode of any TV show I know. Now we’re catching up on Brooklyn Nine Nine (kind of dropping in quality as it ends) and Ted Lasso (brilliant, every week).

What I’m Listening To:

Random songs from mix CDs of decades past.

What I’m Looking Forward To:

More fall color. Actual fall weather.

Depression, but with memes!!

Something has changed in the last few weeks and I don’t really know what to think.

I’m…happy? But also VERY wary of happiness??

I’m eating well: tons of fruit, veggies, lean protein. I’m exercising, like, almost every fucking day whether it’s the circuit training I do at Orange Shoe or the walks I take with Ashwin. Sometimes I take two walks a day. I’m finally losing weight, little by little. I’m writing! I started a freelance writing course that I’m so far really loving and I published my first piece on Medium yesterday and as listicles go – true, they are kind of the dregs of the internet – I’m rather proud of it. I’m sleeping well. My skin is (mostly) clear. I have *energy*, which is the strangest feeling of all. (I still often nap when Ashwin naps, but not every day, and they aren’t depression naps!) I’m reading. I’m having fun with my son. I’m staying cleansed, exfoliated, and hydrated AF.

I don’t know if it’s superstition, cynicism, or your garden variety anxiety disorder, but when things are going this well, I feel very very nervous. Something is about to go terribly wrong. In therapy (I will never not want to make fun of myself after beginning a sentence like that) I’ve learned that anxiety is my lizard brain trying to protect me and keep me safe from danger. But there are really no predators to watch out for in the United States, circa 2021 (unless you count the unvaccinated! or the mass shooters! or the alligators! or the rapidly deteriorating planet!…) so my brain I guess has to come up with other threats to occupy itself. As it just did, without breaking a sweat.

*just gonna pretend this isn’t from LOTR*

Maybe part of it is just feeling weird about being 35 and approaching ~middle age~. I don’t want to get old. I mean, it’s always annoyed the shit out of me when people complain about aging – I always say “it’s better than the alternative!!” which is a glib way of saying “be happy you’re not dead”. I had a dream – nightmare, I guess – the other night that I was on a sinking ship and everyone was screaming and I was thinking “oh God this is really it oh my God I’m going to die this is actually going to happen what is going to happen what’s it going to feel like when will things just go black and how fucking terrifying is that”…and then I realized, as my head was underwater for a few seconds, that I hadn’t actually tried to swim. I brought my head up above water, breathed, and that’s when I woke up. Is there something profound there? Maybe. I don’t know.

I just don’t want to spend so much of my life worrying about death. That’s it. That’s probably the most intimate thing I’ve ever written here; I don’t like to talk about it OR write about it. But writing helps sometimes! So let’s give it a shot. Bow out now if you don’t want to hear about my history of death anxiety!!

When I was in elementary school, my parents went away for a weekend once and I stayed at my best friend’s house for a few days. We usually watched the TGIF lineup, but maybe it wasn’t Friday, because we watched Touched by an Angel instead. Remember that show? This episode’s premise was basically the storyline of that song “Last Kiss” by Pearl Jam – the song that made me a passionate hater of the band until I met V. (I’m still not, like, a fan but they’re okay. The song still isn’t.) It’s about some high school sweethearts who get into a car accident and the girl dies. Rock n roll!!! Anyway – I was traumatized by it. My parents spent so much time and energy sheltering me from “bad” TV and movies and music, and the thing that damaged me the most was this episode of Touched by a fucking Angel. I didn’t want to let my parents out of my sight for months. I wanted to go on every errand, every trip, because they wouldn’t get into an accident if I was there (so my thinking went).

Eventually I got over it – I guess just by becoming a teenager and all the self-absorption that comes along with that. And then for years and years I’d almost never think about death. It didn’t come up. I was lucky. In 2011-2012, we lost several family members in quick succession and while that was incredibly shitty and sad and depressing, it didn’t spur a return of my own specific death anxiety. Then in 2015, V and I started trying to conceive, and I gradually went off all of my depression and anxiety medications, which turned out to be a horrific mistake. I spent most of that summer crying. There were multiple days I left work early feigning illness after crying in the bathroom and then cried some more on the bus going home. Death was suddenly all I could think about. And I mean ALL. By the fall, I was back on the meds and slowly getting better. But it’s never completely gone away since then. I’m working on it in therapy.

Oof, that was a lot. And there’s oh so much more where that came from, but that’s for me and Dr. Sarah Byer to sort through. I guess I just wrote all this to…put it in perspective? I don’t know. Maybe I’ll write more about it some other time, or maybe I won’t. I don’t know if anyone relates or is at all interested.

Also: if you ever try to talk to me about any of this, I will change the subject to the Packers or my cat or something.

What I’m Reading:

I just finished Ace of Spades, which was described in reviews as “Get Out meets Gossip Girl”, which pretty much sold me, and that is accurate! It was good, entertaining, didn’t demand much from me.

What I’m Watching:

V and I have finished our Sex and the City rewatch but have yet to tackle the two movies. We’ve now begun a Veep rewatch. We binged the second season of Never Have I Ever in like two days, it was so so so good. Maitreyi Ramakrishnan FOREVER.

What I’m Listening to:

Still a lot of Olivia Rodrigo, but also a lot of random ’90s.

What I’m Looking Forward to:

Traveling to Detroit this week to visit family and show off this guy:

Limbo

I’m writing this from my phone, because my laptop is with the goddamn movers, so excuse any bad formatting. I won’t bore you with an entire blog bitching and moaning about our second horrible experience with a professional moving company. Instead I’ll bore you with my body issues, doesn’t that sound better?!

I saw postpartum depression/anxiety coming. I knew I’d deal with it. I am dealing with it. It’s fine.

But I kind of didn’t anticipate how much I would hate my postpartum body. More specifically, my post-pumping body, because for as long as I continued pumping, my weight was actually *under* my pre-pregnancy weight and ohh, did I feel good and smug about that.

But I only lasted 3 months pumping, because I am not built to live my entire life in 3-hour segments around the clock. That shit was brutal, so stopping when I did was the right call and I have zero regrets. I knew the weight probably would not be as easy to keep off once I stopped. It’s not even really so much about the numbers as it is about the… distribution. I’ve gained a muffin top that would make Jenna Maroney jealous. (You may or may not get that reference but I can’t link to the song from the 30 Rock episode because YouTube doesn’t have it and if there’s another way, I’m too lazy to find it.)

Clothes just don’t fit, man! If it were as simple as going up a size, I could handle it, it’s not like that’s never happened before. But even up a size (or two) nothing LOOKS quite right. Because my body isn’t right. It’s expanded in all the wrong places. I don’t recognize it. I look in the mirror and all I can think is uggghhhh.

I know, I KNOW, that it is wildly unrealistic to expect my body to look the same as it did before I incubated and birthed a human. That’s an unfair, sexist expectation borne of our massively misogynistic culture and designed to keep me in a constant loop of dieting, self-hating, weighing, falling off the wagon, and dieting some more.

It’s not actually very fashionable to say you’re “on a diet” anymore, in fact it sounds super ’90s/Kirstie Alley for Jenny Craig to my ears, but the focus on “healthy lifestyles” and “wellness” that we have now is really no different. It all means the same thing: thin. We might act like it means something more holistic, more enlightened, less rigid, but 99.9% of the time it still comes down to how good you look in a swimsuit or yoga pants or whatever. Nobody likes a mom bod. And it’s so dumb because mom bods are fucking HEROIC. If there was any justice in this world mom bods would be celebrated as the most desirable and the most impressive and the most coveted of all bods. This badass woman on Instagram said it better than I can.

Looking at my Facebook memories recently, I noticed a post I made several years ago as Kate Middleton was about to have her first baby. I was warily anticipating the usual “Check out how she lost the baby weight!” tabloid stories (“just portion control and lots of water!!!” Another 30 Rock reference for you) and I said something like new moms have 16,000 other things to worry about besides weight, how about we cut them some slack. And here I am, a new mom, worrying about at least 16,000 other things…but totally unable to cut myself even the slightest slack. I’ve always been terrible at taking my own advice.

***

What I’m reading:
“Party of Two” by Jasmine Guillory. Honestly, it’s like a cool drink of water on a 100 degree day. I don’t read a lot of this genre – and what to call it? Romance? I mean, I guess, because we’re sure as shit over my dead body not calling it ~chick lit~. But it’s pretty substantive romance, and it’s exactly what I needed.

What I’m watching:
Very little, because I’m at my parents’, and I just don’t tend to watch much TV or movies there because I prefer the comfort of my own streaming service profiles + a good Chromecast. But V and I have watched the first 4 episodes of Indian Matchmaking, and lord…I don’t know if I hate Aparna or want to be her best friend. Vyasar is adorable and deserves the best partner that horoscopes and numerology and Sima aunty can find. Nadia as well. I am kind of loving seeing Indian culture get the reality TV treatment. But it exposes (and doesn’t comment on one way or the other) several of the uglier elements, like the hardcore colorism, insistence on brides being “flexible” (by which they basically mean submissive), and the insularity of certain communities/castes.

What I’m listening to:
Well, I have heard the first few songs on Taylor Swift’s new album “folklore” and I…don’t hate it, but people are talking about it like it’s Album of the Year or something which is just hilarious in a 2020 where Fetch The Bolt Cutters also exists.

What I am seething about:
As I said…the goddamn movers are late. Like really late. We still don’t know how late. And I’ve said it before and I will say it again, I AM A CANCER, and Cancers need their own homes and comfortable spaces! I am nothing if not a slave to hygge.

Update #1 from Quarantine-ville

Well this sucks, doesn’t it?

Never did I imagine that I’d be spending my son’s first weeks of post-NICU life under quarantine. Neither did I imagine that he would be born 7 weeks early. 2020 is just chock full of twists and turns and frankly I am well over it at this point.

Ashwin was discharged on March 7, 5 weeks after he was born. We had gotten into a pretty good routine with the NICU – visit him from around 11am until 5 or 6pm, go home and rest, repeat. It was very much part-time parenting, which made the transition from NICU to home quite…jarring. We’d had way more preparation for it than non-preemie parents get, which is the huge upside to being in the NICU: constant help and resources right at your fingertips, plus (in our case), you get to go home and get actual sleep!

So yeah, those first few days of full cohabitation were rough. My mom left on the 9th, and V’s mom arrived on the 10th; the 24 hours in between were REALLY rough. My MIL got here just in time, thank God, before travel from Europe was banned and before we were under quarantine.

I want to tell you a little bit about that really rough 24 hours, even though I don’t want to and I’m genuinely afraid of judgment, because I hope it will help another new mom or dad feel less alone or less like something is wrong with them.

I had anticipated postpartum depression. I saw it coming like that acquaintance you see in the grocery store that you don’t want to talk to, so you hide out and hope they won’t see you so you can continue about your day. I hoped PPD wouldn’t see me, but it did, and as hard as the NICU was, the full force of the depression didn’t hit me until we brought Ash home. I couldn’t have prepared for the crying, the screaming, the constant anxiety and uncertainty, the lack of sleep. It hit me like a ton of bricks and honestly, I had some pretty dark thoughts that night, questioning everything – why had we done this? Why did we try so hard for this? What the hell did we sign up for? How can I be expected to function under these conditions? How does anyone do this?

Please understand how embarrassing/shameful it is for me to admit that, as someone who tried for five years to get pregnant. All the blood (so much blood), sweat (eh, not so much?), and tears (you better believe it) it took to get us here and now I feel…anything less than jubilant?? Like how fucking dare I? I tell myself that this is a hard stage, some people say THE hardest stage, and it will get better, and I know that that’s true. I think if will even start getting a little better as soon as he starts interacting with us more. It boggles my mind that people volunteer for this two, three, four, five times. I never ever thought I’d want just one kid, but now it feels like a real possibility. I don’t know. And I haven’t even touched on breast milk vs. formula.

And for all this to be happening during coronavirus…it’s just…a LOT. I’m truly at levels of anxiety I have never experienced. I just want to know when it will be over. I have an appointment with a perinatal psychiatrist on Monday and I hope there is something that can be done with my medications, like hopefully introducing a new one, because the two I’m on now are already at their maximum dosages. It’s scary playing around with different anxiety and depression drugs, though, so I really really hope whatever we do is helpful on the first try.

What I’m reading: Well, not much honestly. When I’m pumping in the middle of the night I’m too exhausted to read, and during the day there just isn’t a lot of time. When I have picked up a book, it’s been Daniel Lavery’s “Something That May Shock and Discredit You“, which tbh is a disappointment! I hate saying that because I absolutely love Dear Prudence and just like Danny as a person in general, but the book has a lot of highbrow literary/antiquity references that I simply do not get and therefore have skipped. I may not finish it. I’ve also been reading “Cribsheet” by Emily Oster, which is subtitled “A data-driven guide to better, more relaxed parenting from birth to preschool”. You can probably guess which word sold me on the book.

What I’m watching: V has The Office on whenever he’s feeding Ashwin, so there’s been a whole lot of that. But I’ve also checked out “Babies” on Netflix and am rewatching some Schitt’s Creek with my MIL who seems to enjoy it.

What I’m annoyed about: oh, where to begin. Well it definitely is annoying having to learn all these dumb little things that baby requires: how to properly strap him into the car seat, how to assemble the baby carrier, which of his cries means he’s hungry vs. he’s cold vs. he’s pooped himself. My brain feels very antagonistic toward learning anything right now, for some reason.

What I’m looking forward to: obviously, more than anything, for the pandemic to subside and normalcy to resume. I don’t know if that will be in weeks or months, and as much as I want it to happen, I don’t want it to happen too soon and have even more people get infected. Specifically, I am looking forward to getting my nails done, going to the library, taking walks without fear of accidental human contact, going out to eat, getting a massage…etc.

Please be careful and stay well. Please don’t go anywhere you don’t absolutely need to. Please send me strength and resolve and peace.

The dog days of fall

I am terrible at blogging regularly. But here we are.

And I am quite lonely. The Holidays® are approaching and we will not be doing anything for Thanksgiving. Maybe we’ll attempt a pie; I think that’s the least we can do. But there won’t be any family, there won’t be any decorations. There probably won’t even be a food coma – not that that will stop me from napping. Oh believe you me, it will not. I guess it’s just that I had thirty solid years of pretty perfect Thanksgivings that I apparently took for granted.

So I am trying to focus on Christmas, when we’ll be home for two weeks and will have time to see all of our people and do The Holidays® right, and my parents’ house will be a cozy, warm, softly-lit Christmas paradise like it always is. That image is basically getting me through right now.

Image result for perfect hygge christmas" — *it feels like this.*

They say motherhood, the early days at least, can be really isolating – just you and your crying baby, awake at 12am and 2am and 4am and God knows when else. That’s probably true, but I think pregnancy itself can be isolating too. I don’t have another woman to share any of this with, so I’m forever posting and scrolling around on my Facebook due date groups looking for some small piece of camaraderie/sisterhood/something. I pester my friends who are moms with tons of questions. I try not to talk about it too much with my friends who aren’t moms, lest they think I’ve become totally consumed with this nameless, amorphous creature that belongs more to the future than to the present.

What I’m reading: Just started “Over the Top“, JVN’s memoir, after finishing “The Witches Are Coming” by Seattle’s own Lindy West. She’s one of my favorite feminist thinkers, so her book of essays was a treat. I also recently finished Watchmen, the original graphic novel, and am now understanding, and consequently enjoying, the HBO version much more.

What I’m watching: Watchmen. Not much else? The Man in the High Castle too, but I feel like the gap between seasons has been so long that I’m not as invested as I had been, because I don’t remember some of the finer points. We also got Disney+ of course, and V’s first priority with that has been watching all the Star Wars movies, and I sort of dip in and out of that.

What I’m annoyed about: Oh God, so so many things, I am so glad you asked…

apartment maintenance for some reason put two big stacks of orange cones right next to our parking space in the garage, between our space and the door that goes outside, making passenger-side access to our car extremely difficult for, again, no apparent reason but storage
I think I need new walking shoes? Something to better support these tired bones in my quest for near-daily constitutionals
the impeachment hearings – like, I am very glad they’re happening, but it really feels like an Al Capone/tax evasion situation, you know? Because we know dude has done sooo much worse than try to get a foreign government to get dirt on a political rival, but maybe that’s all we can actually *get* him on? At least for now? I just would really like to see him brought to account for, say, racist housing discrimination, and/or rape, and/or probably a million kinds of financial fraud, and/or literal Soviet puppetry
I have felt very minimal, if any, movement from Baby Nagappala, which isn’t technically concerning at 22.5 weeks with an anterior placenta but sure is annoying when the Facebook due date groups are abuzz with posts and videos of belly kicks and punches and somersaults
the Packers – when they lose it always puts me in a mood.

What I’m looking forward to:

Christmas in Wisconsin, obvs
I’m thinking of booking a maternity photo session if I can find something reasonably priced. It seems worth it to commemorate this time, especially if I can be commemorated looking all glamorous and ethereal. Especially since this could be my only pregnancy – who knows.

I will leave you with some highly relevant pregnancy memes that describe my current life.

Image result for pregnancy memes"

Mandatory side sleeping: the second majorly painful sacrifice expecting moms must make (after avoiding alcohol). (I would kill for a mimosa.) (But I know some FB moms who are planning on chugging a beer right after delivery and it’s like…I think you might have a problem)