Breathing and Shaking

Today I saw Lauren for the second time in just a few days. The first time was almost as hard as I thought it would be, but not quite. The first time was at one of those postal stores, the kind that are positioning themselves to scarf up the task of stamps and packages upon the downfall of the USPS, the kind you didnt quite understand as they started to pop up, “Doesnt the US Postal Service do all this? And for less money, probably, right?”

The men staffing it, I decided that they owned it, and that they were gay. I also decided that they could read me and her. They could read the averted eyes, the shaking hands, the audible breath sounds and know we were married and estranged. At one point, she and I leaned up against a counter waiting for the guy to call the tag and title office because he didnt know what to do with the out of state title. She and I waited there for almost a minute, breathing and shaking next to one another and I began to imagine we were in meditation together. Her breathing was louder than I remember — anxiety disorder, asthma, she’s gained weight, she does that when she is happy – and I thought about how unattractive that kind of breathing is in a stranger, and how one might love it in a love, and wondered if I would love it in her now. I took a deeper breath and waited to hear if she would breathe with me. She said, “I’m going to go sit down,” and took out her phone. The guy got ahold of his friend at the tag and title office who said we didnt need a notary, that we could just come into the office.

When I got into the car, I could feel my insides, the girl ones. I was suddenly aware of my clit and my lips, and everything they lead to. Briefly, I marveled at how attached I must still be to her and or maybe just how attached I am to making a baby. Then I remembered that sometimes men get erections when they are scared, I realized that the fullness and readiness I was feeling was just the byproduct of my heart beating blood into all of my endings, that it wasnt about love or sex or babies. 

Today, at the tag and title office, it was easier and briefer, but still unsuccessful. The loan company shouldve sent the South Carolina title to Raleigh so that Raleigh could send me a North Carolina title, but they didnt. The lady said that she would send it, I would get the right title in a week or two and then we should come back. No breathing, less shaking. Lauren said, resigned, encouraging, “Third time’s the charm.” I didnt look at her or respond to her small talk, but I realized that I couldve, so I will next time.  

 

People-Greedy

A girl people know around here committed suicide recently. My first thought when I saw the news (on Facebook, of course) was, “But she didnt come through the emergency room,” because I do crisis assessments in the emergency room and all suicidal people in this town have to check in with me first, right? Or at least one of my colleagues, right? It was one of those irrational thoughts one thinks in that first moment of disbelief. I was surprised by how childish it was was to think that, in that lovely way that children are childish, so concrete and sincere.

Many months ago, she had sent me a friend request on FB and I didnt accept it. I messaged her about it, telling her why, and she was very gracious. Basically, she and I werent friends and I dont friend nonfriends on FB. (The exceptions being beloved bloggers and estranged biological family.) She wrote back and said this:  ”I use facebook to indulge that curiosity about everyone about whom i develop some positive (and quite subject to revision) intuitive impression who’ll have me, I realize, and of course to keep up with the good friends too, and give away garden produce overstock, in case you’re curious about my people-greedy mindcrush-ing motives.”

Then, one night, a few nights ago, her unaccepted request was there on my screen. In that very moment, it seemed tender and sweet, to accept her request and walk into that room, I think she wouldve welcomed me. But as the days have passed, the decision seems strange and rude. But, when I go to unfriend her, it introduces this whole other level of strange and rude.

Then, for a few nights, I got into the habit of reading her wall before going to bed. It was intensely morose. Her friends and family are so completely grief stricken and sad, so articulate and open and bleeding. This is not the first time I have watched someone’s FB wall turn into a road side memorial, but it’s the first time I have felt such a kinship with the people who are hurting. I dont know anything about how or why or when she did it, but the other night one of her friends posted a picture of sign near where she did it. The spot in the woods that she picked has a ridiculous name. The friend thought that was great and so funny, like the girl made the joke for them, but it made me angry. Suicide is not a fucking joke, you little shit. Do you even know what you’ve done to all of these people? And for such. a. long. fucking. time. 

A week after she killed herself, that director jumped off a bridge and a security guard at modern art museum in DC ”died from a a self inflicted gunshot wound”m that’s what the museum posted on thier FB page. I’ve worked 13 shifts in a row so far this month with 4 more to go. Family legend has it that one of my uncles hanged himself after being turned away from rehab. That’s what I do every day, turn suicidal people away from detox, for one reason or another, essentially making a bet about whether they will actually kill themselves if they dont get in. “Client reports passive, non-concrete suicidal ideation secondary to drug dependence.” There arent enough beds, they dont meet criteria for the bed that is open, they dont have insurance, they do have insurance, they are only suicidal when they are drunk, blah, blah, blah. And then I go back into my little office and talk to my colleagues about how, at the end of the day, everyone has the right to make a decision about whether or not they want to live, that I believe in self-determination even if that determination is suicide.

But this girl has made me mad a little. She was so bright and queer and smart. She seemed full of this amazing potential. Vulnerable and chaotic, but like the kind of precocious late-bloomer who, once they find their niche, become this really  . . . amazing and entirely self-made creature who everyone envies for the freedom with which they express themselves absolutely. People like her dont get a choice about living, their life is a public service. And then I wonder if my speech about how everyone gets to decide is just some thinly-veiled intellectual bullshit to deal with my own helplessnes in the face of my clients’ chronic chaos, the kind that never turns into anything but a mess and more paperwork. And helplessness in the system that doesnt give a fuuuuck.

I wouldve discharged her home with an outpatient safety plan. I wouldve believed entirely in the power of her intellect and her loving friends and family. They wouldve all been there. I wouldve said, “Go home and watch her, start medication.” I wouldve believed in her class background and her creativity, her essential belief in her own worth and ability to make something out of the nothing she felt, or the everything. I wouldve said, “You can do this.” And I wouldve believed it. She wouldve lied to me, I tell myself. She must’ve lied to everyone.  

PS I find most of your listed interests and your perspective fascinating (well, besides having babies) and i wish there were more intersection between what we both spend our time doing/learning about (for me, right now it’s still super all over the place anyway, i’m a little afraid to grow up), but yeah well, ‘s’how it is for now, darnit (which i am saying for my sake, not yours, i am people-greedy as helllll and i’m like “rats i could so learn from this person”). You have the weird work schedule that happens on nights and weekends except for like wednesdays, is that how it goes? Jes’ curious.

Food Funeral

I have a blog project called Food Funeral, where I’m collecting stories about grief and food. The tagline is “Stories About Love, Loss and Stuffing Your Face” because you gotta be pithy about death, right? Tonight, I am really loving the experience. It’s so funny, because it always seems like everything takes so. much. work. And I have these amazing ideas, but because everything always. takes. so. much. work, it’s a drag to pester people into following through, or to be brave enough to bring it up in the first place, or to spend time worrying that I’ll let peoples’ submissions sit too long, or that I’ll drop the project before I get to my goal of 60 stories.

But tonight, 25 people have gone to the blog since I posted a new submission to my Faceboo page 25 minutes ago (as opposed to the daily average of 2), I have my first follower, and another submission that is very close to completion. And the conversations and connections I am making with strangers and friends alike are so satisfying. I love creating this little tribe of people and their stories. I’m doing my idea some justice tonight. Yay, moi.

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I Will Be the First Person I Tell

The ttc lesbian blogging community is amazing. The questions answered, the feelings expressed, the advice given, the congratulations roared, the sympathy meant are worth their weight in gold. The other awesome thing about all the lesbian ladies that write about trying to get pregnant is the sense of organization, with awards given and carnivals organized. A blog carnival is this fascinating creation in which a bunch of bloggers write on a given topic and then link to one another. I’m writing for the Love Makes a Family Blog Carnival and the topic is disappointment.

This time last year, my wife and I had wrapped up our fifth and final cycle of trying to conceive using frozen sperm with an open donor. (I had blogged about the experience anonymously, which is how I learned what I learned about how great alla y’all are.) During our trying to conceive time, I had also had a sonogram, an HSG, and a 21 day progesterone test. After everything was said and done, it appeared that I was in working order, but our sperm was bunk. We intended to start trying again in February of this year with anonymous frozen sperm from another bank, but in January my wife fell in love with another woman and ended our marriage.

I sound like I am telling you how I programmed my VCR, I know. (Do they still even make VCRs?) In fact, I am telling you about how someone I trusted gutted me. Although a certain dryness of expression is best and that last sentence wet with anger felt great, I can find the emotional middle ground and say, for the purposes of this blog carnival, that I am disappointed that I wont get to know my wife as a mother to our baby. Other people have mentioned the new things they learned about their partner when the baby came, the new light in which they saw their old lover, the hidden strengths and unseen vulnerabilities. My wife  loved children very much and she did it unabashedly, especially babies. I was looking forward to the feeling of a full-to-bursting heart while watching her wipe up poop. I loved watching her run her classroom, I loved watching her tease her mom — I just loved watching her. One of her nicknames was QB, short for quarterback. She knew how to run a situation and she always did it with a smile. I knew that she would be a bottomless well of love and affection for our baby, enough to keep us all alive on the days our little family would need her most. I was looking forward to meeting that person. Whenever you marry someone you are marrying everyone they have ever been, everyone they are and everyone they will ever be. There were versions of her unborn to whom I was very, very attached.

That being said, I always thought, as a kid, that I would be a single parent. It wasnt a thought process, actually, so much, as it was just an image, one I never noticed or questioned, but it still sticks with me from my teen years, kind of like a dream does. Very simply, I saw myself with a daughter, traveling. Turns out, I’ve never made it beyond Canada and goodness knows a boy is just as likely as a girl, but it feels good to be on the edge of that image again, looking down at it. Not that being a single parent is somehow a more authentic version of any other version of me that I’ve been, but it feels old, ancient even, and right in some essential way to be on the precipice of living that life.

I say precipice because it’s a lovely, slippery word and because I am going to start trying to get pregnant again next week. It’s been nine months since the marriage ended (appropriately enough). Two months after it happened, a friend offered me free, fresh sperm. What lesbian in her right mind says no to friendly, free, fresh sperm? Not this one, I can tell you that much. So, I’ve decided: My life is a house. My marriage was just one room; it’s been demolished and the attendant dust and debris are everywhere. I can’t afford a hotel, but I’ve hired a contractor. I pay attention when I need to, but mostly I let trusted authorities take care of the mess (time, the universe, my therapist). While they get that figured out, I’m doing my damnedest to live around the renovations. Part of me is uninhabitable, and a fucking mess, but the rest of me’s got to keep on living.

When I was married, I daydreamed about the moment I would get the positive. I wondered if my wife would be in the bathroom with me, or awake in the living room, waiting for me to emerge. Sometimes I hoped that it would be very early in the morning and that she would still be asleep. I knew I wanted a few minutes to myself. It seems that when a wife gets pregnant, no matter her partner’s gender, she leaves for a place her partner can’t come. I wanted a few minutes to be alone with myself in that moment, to feel it, to send myself off.

Now I know I will have all the time I need. I know I will  turn to myself in the mirror and see me. My heart will be racing and my pupils will be huge. I’ll give myself a shit eating grin  and watch as the tears well up in my eyes and spill down onto my cheeks. I’ll put the stick down very calmly and then sit myself somewhere very softly, knowing I made a baby. And I’ll keep knowing, secretly for days and days. Every morning, I’ll wake up and reknow it. I will be the first person I tell and the second and the third and this, my friends, is not a disappointment.

Click the next link in the infinite chain of cotton candy thoughts and funnel cake feelings . . .

The Way Help Breaks My Heart Open

The other day, I was at the park with Cherry, my dog, and the kid I babysit, Buddy. I had to go pick up some poop and one of the women at the dog park offered to tend to Buddy while I scooped. When she held her arms out telling me to put the baby in them, my heart broke a little. Then, today, I was driving with a friend when an important paper flew onto the floor of my car. She picked it up and put it in a safer place. Again, another hairline fracture.

For the first few months of the year, it was all I could do to breathe and drink water. Then, when I started leaving the house, I remember that if I had something to do, I would check to make sure it was the only thing I was doing  that day because ”things to do” were special treats that had to be drawn out over the course of a week like a candy bar hidden in a closet. I wouldnt schedule a hair cut and an oil change on the same day, for example. I had no wife and no friends. I wasnt convinced that eating was worth the trouble. I was a stranger in the middle of a mountain town in the middle of winter. This wasnt an altogether terrible way to live, actually. I got places on time. I was happy when I arrived. I was present while I stayed. I could stay as long as I wanted.

Since July, though, my days have become fuller. For example, I leave the house every day, sometimes more than once. I meet new people every week, sometimes more than one. And I have appointments, sometimes back to back. While I am happy to be living something like a real life again, and to even mean it a little, I’m overwhelmed sometimes. I’m getting re-acquainted with lateness, being unprepared and making mistakes again.

I wonder if I’m still wounded and trying to do too much. Or if I am by nature tender and slow and distractable and shouldnt have more than one thing to do per day regardless of who has or hasnt left me. I wonder if it’s really this hard being single. I wonder if I can really handle the responsibility of living my own life well. I wonder exactly how much stress I am under or how alone I must really feel if such small acts of kindness, such simple gestures, bring me so much relief. Sometimes, I am so touched, I have to hold back tears.

Last night, I had dinner with a new friend from Meeting. We said grace before we ate. She made me lentil soup and offered to be on my birth team. She was as excited and awed and mystified by the idea of me having a baby as I am. She told me a little about what it was like to grow up in Nigeria. She taught me a new word. We talked about marriage and divorce and black people in Asheville. She’s lived in Rockville. Turns out, she went on a blind date with the owner of Tourmobile, a DC tour guide company I have fond memories of working for. Firmly held by the lentils and the presence of a white lady who can talk about blackness without twitching or apologizing, I felt very grateful and didnt even need to cry about it. I’ve decided that this subject, the subject of giving and receiving and needing and wanting help deserves its own tag, what with me thinking about becoming a single mother and all, what with me treating “help” like a four letter word for the past 33 years and all.

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