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My ex is getting married. In January. To a lady he met on match.com.

Normally, had I heard the news that someone else found love and was truly happy*I would have been ecstatic. This time, sitting in a warehouse with my friend Meghan, stretching to try aerial for the first time, I was blown away.

On  the surface I laughed, called him a tool, made a joke about how he would never be happy* and moved into the next stretch.

In my head, my jaw dropped and I reeled.

The problem isn’t so much that he moved on so fast. While that, in itself, is a crushing blow to both my self-esteem and my knowledge of how he will never be happy, knowing who he is better than he thinks I do, the problem instead is the fact that knowing this, knowing he has moved on so completely so quickly, means that what I thought was something huge was  false, was lies, smoke and mirrors, nothing.

January 2009 he told me he still loved me. For the last time. I told him I couldn’t keep being jerked around, and I meant it. Being dumped and getting back together with someone is  only possible for so long. I was tired of being told I was worthless only to have him come back saying that he forgave me for whatever error he felt I had committed. I was tired of being the 4am phone call when his depression surfaced days after he kicked me out of his life again. I was tired of the emotional roller coasters, the friends giving me that pitying look for still trying, the  face that I couldn’t keep food down due to stress, that my job performance was consistently lowering. I was tired.

In January 2011 he will be getting married to a very nice girl he met online. I have absolutely nothing against using dating sites. Two of my absolute favorite couples ever met online and their relationships make me ache with beauty and love. The problem is that he started this profile while we were still sleeping together – broken up but still faking it I guess? – and he told me he started it as a kind of joke.

The speed of turn around makes me feel as though the love he proclaimed, the deep emotions he told me he felt, that I felt, we nothing. Because, as Meghan said to me on a completely  different subject, “if he was in love with me, he wouldn’t be with someone so fast”. Those feelings don’t go away over night. They can’t.

I recently (read: in the last few months) realized that I was emotionally over him. My heart had healed to the point that I was completely and utterly in love with someone else, that all my doubts seemed to have been erased, that my mind could focus on the fact thathe was that and what I had was something different – and something more. I was secure in the  knowledge that what we’d had had been something for us, but what I had now was something better, and worth a lot more.

But now. Now its as if hes telling me it was nothing. Telling me through the mouths of other friends. Telling me the time we spent together was worthless.

There was no mourning period for him.

There was match.com, a new girlfriend literally weeks after he told me he was still in love with me, and a marriage  planned for less than 2 years later.

Putting this into words makes it harder to articulate. I don’t want to make you feel that I hate my life or think what I have now isn’t worth it, or that I miss him. Nothing is farther from fact. Instead, I feel like I’ve wasted time, I’ve wasted energy. I wasted emotion on someone who felt that I wasn’t worth it. I feel that I was lied to and unappreciated.

And I feel so happy that I have moved on. I have a handsome, funny, silly, loving and caring man. I have a man who appreciates every little thing I do. I have friends and a life that I am absolutely happy with. I am content.

I am content.

And the bitch in me? The bitch in me is happy that I know he will
never be happy. That little voice in me knows I’ve won in the end. Not
that I’ve won the relationship, not that I’ve won over him. But that
I’ve won in my ability to move on and be successful and happy in life.

And while sometimes I will worry and fret, sometimes I will feel disheartened because he may have never meant what he said or what he acted, sometimes I will have doubts of not being good enough based on his warped criteria, I will also remember how much I am loved and how much I have bettered myself in the process.

Because I have, and I will continue to do so.

And also, January weddings are lame.

*He will never be truly happy. That’s just not who he is.

Just a few weeks ago, I was in the bathroom in the morning, getting ready for work. I was using a round brush to pull my hair back into a ponytail, my typical hairstyle of choice (though with a new haircut, we hope that will change).  The bottom layer of my hair is shorter than the rest, from a previous haircut, and it’s hard to get into the ponytail. That day I brushed it down and let it be a little messy. I thought about my friend Sarah K.

Sarah wore ponytails a lot. Except her hair was so short that half of it would fall out the bottom, like mine. I’ve always called her my best friend. Looking back I don’t know why. She wasn’t my best friend. She wasn’t even a good friend. I just wanted her to be my best friend. We’d been best friends a long time ago. Grammar school. Middle school. We were inseparable. We had so much fun … they called us Gasoline & Matches, we were always getting into trouble. We loved every minute of it.

We once stopped riding our bikes near the front of my house and started a fist fight with each other to see who would win.

She once ate so many brownies and popcorn that she couldn’t even remember how much she’d eaten. Then she puked it up everywhere.

We used to sit on the sloping roof overhang outside her bedroom window and wait for the cops to see us and call her parents.

Her room was painted blue. Her middle name is Elaine. I always thought she was so cool. She’s great with children. I always thought she’d be great with my children. And the two times she saw them? She was. She was great with them. {oh god I’m going to cry. This is ridiculous}

I loved her very much, but she spent her entire life forgetting about me.

As I stood there in front of the mirror, tears springing suddenly to my eyes, I felt angry. I felt so angry that I had tried for years, reaching out to her, emailing her, calling her, finding her, reminding her that I was here, I wanted to be her friend. Catching one lunch, one dinner, one coffee every 10-12mos. I believed her when she said she wanted to hang out more. She wanted to see me more. She wanted to talk more. Email more. Share more. Be there for me more.I fell for it last year again, after she came home from a trip to Israel. She blogged about it, and I read every entry. {I am so pathetic}

She started blowing me off between Middle School and High School. She stopped being a tomboy and figured out how to be a girl. She hung out with a faster crowd and she did things I wouldn’t do. She would come back to me every so often and ask for my help. Boyfriend trouble, family trouble, job trouble, house trouble. She wanted my help fixing it. I fixed it and she went off, waving goodbye gaily, already forgetting what I’d done for her. Every time.

Senior year, at prom, she was drunk. She found me in the bathroom. She told me I was the best friend she’d ever had. She told me that she never appreciated how I always put her back together. She told me she wished she had spent more time with me, and listened to me when I told her that doing E at 14 was a bad idea. That dating drug dealers was a bad idea. That smoking pot was a bad idea. That coming to the senior prom drunk was a Bad Idea.

I knew she was drunk but I felt vilified. I felt recognized. I felt important.

We graduated and I saw her about once a year. Once each time I was pregnant. Once after Cupcake was born. Once after Geeklet was born, which was the last time I saw her.  I called her and left her a voicemail a few months later. Nothing. A few weeks after that I called and caught her – but she was busy. She said she’d call me in a few days. Nothing. I sent her an email. Nothing.

I sent another email and told her I wouldn’t be calling anymore. That I hoped she was having a good time, but that I couldn’t put any more energy into a relationship she wasn’t willing to put effort into as well. I needed some closure.

She responded and said she couldn’t deal with a “friend break up” right now because her boyfriend had dumped her. She’d call me in a few days.

Say it with me, people! Nothing.

I emailed her again, against the wisdom that is Twitter. I had too much history with her. I needed to get some closure. I told her I wasn’t surprised she hadn’t called – that was exactly why I couldn’t play this pretend friendship game anymore. I wished her happy holidays, a good new year, and signed off. She responded and said she was sorry that I didn’t think she was a good friend, then made a bunch of excuses.

I told her I was sorry too. That was the end. I cried for a long time. I mourned the death of a friendship that wasn’t even a good friendship. I was bitter about how long I’d pursued this friendship to end it like this. I’ve felt angry and bitter many times since then. The moment in the mirror, hair halfway to a ponytail, was just one. It hits me randomly in the car, or at work, and I wonder why she was so dismissive of me. Why I wasn’t important to her when she was so important to me. She was right, it was a friend-break-up.

I’m still sad and angry and bitter about it, but I don’t want to be this way. It’s a waste of energy.  A waste of tears, which are rolling down my face right now to beat the band and I can’t stop them. It’s a waste, such a waste.

Here comes my 2010 resolution: I don’t want to waste time on this, or any other useless, bitter, ridiculous situation this year. I want to try and accept things for what they are and if I don’t like it, I don’t like it. Bitterness won’t help me. I need to pick up and move on and stop being so angry, so bitter, particularly about lost friendships. I’ve gained so many new friends in 2009. Sure, only one lives within driving distance. Most I’ll probably never meet face to face. I’m of the iGeneration, I should thrive on this, these computer-screen/social-media/internet community friendships and I DO. Sometimes it’s not enough for me, but I can’t be angry about it. I can’t be bitter. If I want more friends I need to find a way to go out and get them.

So. 2010. Less bitterness. More friends.

Let’s go.

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* Title inspired by the book I just finished reading, Bitter is the New Black, by Jen Lancaster. It’s a light, funny read that is autobiographical, which makes it even funnier, and I really enjoyed it. Laughed out loud quite a bit, which is relatively unusual for me (I read books and watch movies with hardly any emotion on my face, causing people to think I am a) bored b)angry or c)asleep with my eyes open).  If it were summer I’d say it’s a good beach read, but since it’s winter I’ll say it’s a good read for when you need something relatively mindless and uncomplicated after a very long and complicated day. I have a lot of those, which is why I love Sophie Kinsella so much.

Three times in the past two weeks, I’ve just gone straight to bed as soon as the kids were asleep. Note: that’s unlike me. I like to stay up and do a little something. The problem is that it’s not that I didn’t have anything to do. I have plenty to do, too much to do, and I keep taking on projects.  I am hooking a fucking rug as a Christmas present for chrissakes. WHO THE FUCK HAS TIME FOR THAT?!

Part of it is the holidays. Part of it is just the regular ebb and flow of life.

Regardless, I still need to find balance. I need to stop jerking around to each part of my life, trying desperately to complete a task before I am pulled away again. I should be doing other things than blogging right now but I’m exploding. I need to get some of this out.

I need to breathe. I don’t feel like I have time to breathe. And when I find time, I don’t feel like I have the energy.

How do you do it? How do you balance? What do you have going on in your life? Write me a book in the comments, I don’t care. I want it. I need to know how you’re managing. Or not managing. I don’t want to be alone in this struggle.

There is too much responsibility here, right now.

I think I’ve taken on too much.

I just need a few minutes, a few minutes to myself, to think quietly.

I’m afraid of what I’ll think during those minutes, though. I’m afraid of what decisions might be made.

So I keep busy.

I’ll think about it later, I’ll mull it over tomorrow.

I just need a little more time.

She needs more time.

We need more time.

We need clarity.

We need luck.

We need hope.

We just have to keep on going. If we stop we might fall apart here, and it will be the end of everything we know.

• It took forever to get into the city yesterday for the ultrasound appointment, and then the GYN. When we finally arrived at 2:20 for our 1:30pm appointment at the ultrasound place, we were told that her appointment was actually at 3pm. Which made no sense, because her appointment with the GYN was at 3pm, and the GYN made this ultrasound appointment for us. Whatever. I left like 3 messages with “Jeannie” the receptionist but apparently she’s not fit to do her job because she didn’t bother to call me back and reassure us that we’d still have our appointment.
• The ultrasound was clear!
• Off we went to the GYN, where I waited in the waiting room for over an hour while she was in with the doctor, jumping everytime a nurse or a patient came through the door because I was waiting for her to come out. Luckily I had some awesome tweets and emails coming my way, which made it a lot easier to take. I also read the latest issue of Time cover to cover, which I have never done, so I’m feeling very up to date on current events. I feel smartish. I might subscribe.
• Ok, the subscription was $20 but I did it anyway because I sort of liked feeling smartish. And I’m terrible about watching the news, so this might help me a bit. We’ll see if I cancel.
  
• She finally got out of the appointment, and it turns out they couldn’t get the sample for the biopsy. The doctor stopped because after three numbing shots and Mom taking her pain medication, she was still in agony and she couldn’t “torture” her anymore.  It makes me sick to think of how much that procedure hurts normally, times about a hundred because of the severity of her illness*.
  
• So, we are going back at the end of November. To do it again. I feel horrible, because she has to go through the entire ordeal again, PLUS all the waiting time. The doctor did say that she was fairly confident everything is fine, but that she wanted to be absolutely sure considering my mother’s symptoms.
  
• Next, we go deal with a patch of skin cancer on her leg. Or, what is almost definitely skin cancer, her doctor said.  When it rains it pours, right?

* I won’t name the illness here because I don’t want her to find this blog.  I’m paranoid about it. Very. very. very. paranoid.

All this to wait, wait wait, wait wait wait wait wait…. and then hopefully, we’ll hear “No.It’s not cancerous” Not that it ends there. Then we go see a dermatologist. Because the spot on her leg most likely is cancer.

I know that I’ve posted about my problems with her. We have our troubles. We have our good times too. No matter what she is still my mother. I’m terrified.

Your pain is palpable, and it affects me,
Sometimes I feel like I’ve run out of sympathy,
I want to make it go away,
But comes back day after day.

This poem sucks, but no matter,
You’ll never read it.

I like to think that last bit was poetic,
But honestly? It’s probably pathetic.
My English teacher would be ashamed,
Bad Poetry: One more thing for which I’m blamed.

You’ve said I’m uncaring, callous and selfish,
I’m not sure why you can’t see through my defense(ish).
You analyze every single action,
You don’t see my attempted benefaction.

It matters not how hard I try,
For in the end – I’ll surely cry.
Whether by your own hand,
Or “Nautrally,”
When you’re gone I’ll feel empty.

You seem to think that I don’t care,
But I care too much – none left to spare.

Your every word, wince, tear and scream
Hurt me more than you’ve ever seen.

I love you, not sure how to go on
When it’s clear you think I’m so wrong.

“I’ll never fix you before I die” you say,
That is how you hurt me today.
Tomorrow, it’ll be another phrase,
While I wander, crying, through this maze.

I’m so sorry that you’re hurting, and I’m so sorry that you are so scared. I’m scared too.  I just wish that you didn’t hurt me in your attempts to feel better.

I am afraid of what my children will write about me.

I want to be very, very clear. I love my mother. She is, essentially, a good person. Our relationship is at times many things that I do not like – but I usually know, in my heart, that she loves me. I usually can say, honestly, that she has been a pretty good mother for most of my life.

Our relationship is complicated, sometimes nonexistent. Our bond is tenuous but also somehow strong, because neither of us has yet walked away. It would be so easy to just walk away.  We’ve been told, so many times, by well-meaning friends and co-workers have told us to just hit the road and don’t look back.

I can’t.

Sadly, I have very few memories of my childhood. I am saddened and disturbed by this – and I’ve considered seeing a hypnotherapist in order to try and get some of those memories back.  I know that my childhood was not a bad childhood. It was not too tragic. Yes, my father decided he didn’t want a family, after all, when I was 4. Yes, my mother was and is a single mother. Yes, she was engaged twice after long-term relationships and neither worked out. Those things have affected me, but I don’t feel damaged by them.

Until I turned 17, my mother and I were great friends. Best friends. I told her everything. Around that time in my teen  years, however, I didn’t want to tell my mother everything. At that point, yes, I will admit – I lied to her. I think it’s safe to say that most teens lie to their parents at some point in time.  I tell you this to let you know that I realize I am not completely blameless in our struggling relationship, in this conflict. I realize that I have had a part.

I left home when I was 19 without saying a word. I was fighting for survival, but she fails to recognize this.  I was fighting depression, I felt like an outsider in my own family. I couldn’t say for sure at that time that my family loved me, that they respected me. I felt like a scapegoat. Memory is fickle and wavering – my emotions from the time may cloud the actual events.

I remember that there was financial trouble. I remember overhearing my mother tell my sister that I was just like our Aunt, and that I would leave them and desert them, that I wouldn’t stand by the family. I was so angry that she would say something – our Aunt is a hideous person, a waste of oxygen. To be likened to such a monster… to have my allegiance questioned after I had chosen to commute to college and stay home and try and help my mother, save the money and reduce financial aid needed… it was a slap in the face. It was more than a slap, it was like being pistol-whipped.

I thought that if I was going to be accused – if everyone was going to believe it, anyway – I might as well go. Because no one cared about me. No one in the family loved me. They didn’t, and still don’t, understand me.

I was, and am, very hurt. I know that my actions – leaving without so much as saying goodbye, were not acceptable. I realize that I hurt my family with these actions and I have been apologizing for the last 6 years.

Between the teenage lying, her disapproval of my boyfriends and what she perceived to be my sexual activity (much less than she believed it to be), she now refuses to believe anything I say.  I didn’t help the situation by getting married, secretly and by JP, telling her over a month later when she flat-out asked.  Today, she tells me that if I tell her the sky is blue, she will check – because she’s sure it will be purple.  Yes, I definitely helped create that problem, but I also haven’t lied as much as she believes. She believes that I am constantly deceiving her, that I am constantly going out of my way to make her miserable. She tells me that she believes I stay up at night thinking of ways to make her miserable.

I feel constantly misunderstood, often deliberately.

I have so much hurt harbored deep inside over things she has said… things I can’t imagine every saying to my children. My mother has struggled with severe depression for a long time, I realize that now, as an adult. I think I knew it as a teen but didn’t want to believe that could be the reason for her hurtful comments and actions.  Since I was about 16, I’ve known that my mother will probably die by committing suicide.No need for me to assume – she tells us on a regular basis.  I feel helpless.

When she’s feeling “rational”, it’s simply stated as an inevitable fact.

“Once you are all in college, then I’m done. I’ll get things in order and I’m ending this.”

“Once things are settled financially, it’s over. I can’t do this anymore, but I won’t leave you with piles of debt.”

When she is feeling angry, or hurt, it’s a threat.

“I am going to kill myself, and I hope that you find me. I hope you’re the one to find me, dead in my bed, because it’s your fault.”

“You are killing me, and I hope you can live with that.”

“One day, I’ll be gone and you’ll regret the way you are speaking to me.”

She says more. She is graphic. I can’t bring myself to write it here. It’s locked too deep, if I let it out it might never get back in.

————-

She is a wonderful grandmother to my children. She is amazing, really. They love her, and when she is with them, and I can observe them quietly, I remember why I love her, too. Why I am so completely, 100% tied to this woman.  She plays with them, listens to them, truly bonds with them. She teaches, she soothes, she kisses, she hugs.  I both love and fear this about her. If – when – she’s gone, I know that they will experience a hurt so deep I cannot fix it. They haven’t had 10 years to grieve the slow loss of this woman.

————-

When I was a teenager, she would tell me all the time that “you’ll be pregnant before you turn [insert next birthday here]!” She never believed that I was a virgin until I was 19.   She has told me that I am the worst mother that she knows. She has accused me of child abuse because we forgot to buy milk one night, and were short for Cupcake’s bottle. She tells me that I am permanently and irreversibly damaging my daughters. She tells me I am a cold, hard person. She tells me I have no compassion.  She says I have the mentality of a 12 year old. She says I am a bitch, and that’s why I have no friends. She says I am the biggest disappointment in her life. She says I am at the center of all her problems.  She says I am directly responsible for every problem our family has ever had.  She says I never listen to her. She says I never give her any time.

She tells me that I am smart, and beautiful. She tells me that I am braver than she is. She tells me she is proud of me, of how well I fit into a corporate office, of trying to continue my education. She tells me that she can see I’m doing my best and trying to be a good mother to my children. She tells me to trust my motherly instincts. She tells me that she loves me. She tells me that I help her. She says thank you for listening.

We talk on the phone 5-8 times a day. She hangs up on me roughly 60% of the time.

I don’t lack compassion, I am hiding behind my fortress, trying to stay sane.

It’s a life of contradictions.

————-

She has had a very hard life. Abused physically and emotionally as a child – physically by her boyfriends, her sister, her sister’s boyfriends..emotionally by her parents and everyone else. My father was equal parts wonderful and hideous to her. She has been exploited and damaged by pharmaceutical companies, doctors, hospitals.  She has been exploited by her own body. She has been tricked and coerced into financial instability and near-ruin. She continues to fight, and I cannot imagine the depths of her strength. When it really comes down to it – when I really consider… I can’t say that I would want her to continue living this way. I can’t provide a way out. So who am I to ask her to continue on, for me? How selfish is that?

She feels victimized, and she has been. I can’t see the world through her eyes, for that I’m thankful – I think her life and her current circumstances have colored everything, overlaid every action, look, tone with malice and deceit.  I think she feels attacked. I don’t necessarily blame her. That’s the hardest part.

She has a disability. I leave my children with her every day, and she is disabled. I feel so guilty, and it doesn’t matter that she won’t have it any other way. She makes sure I feel guilty. “I’m watching your children all day, so I can’t leave the house” and because I can’t afford to get her the car she needs or wants to get around with them. We tried. We failed. “I have a massive migraine, but I don’t have a choice. I have to watch your children.” I tell myself she wants validation, needs it. I tell myself she is not trying to hurt me. I pull out of the driveway and I cry, and think about how life would be if one of us died.  DaddyGeek could take the children and go stay with his parents if I were tying our family to her. We could walk away and believe we did everything we could, and try to live our lives and enjoy our family without constant guilt and stress, if she were no longer here to simultaneously push me away and pull me closer.

I called 911 last year because she got off the phone saying she was going to kill herself. She says she also said she was going to watch the baseball game. I didn’t hear it, but it wouldn’t have mattered. She wouldn’t answer the phone. I couldn’t reach my brother and sister. I was heavily pregnant, pacing in my apartment with tears streaming down my face, my heart in my throat. I called 911.

She was angry because the police questioned her. She was angry because she received a ticket in the mail weeks later because her dog is not registered in the town. She says I embarrassed her, I did it to hurt her, I knew she wouldn’t kill herself.

She doesn’t realize that if she calls at night and I miss it, I fret if I can’t or choose not to call her back. What if that was the last time I could have spoken to her? I worry that I will arrive at her home one day to find her in a pool of blood. I worry that I will arrive to find her missing, gone and I don’t know where.

She says that I am always making it about me, but she doesn’t see that nearly every single part of my life is about her in some way.

I worry.

I panic.

I cry.

I hurt.

I want to fix her life. I want to fix her life. I want to fix her life. I want to fix her….

************

Editors notes: I am in counseling on a biweekly basis to deal with many of these issues. I have the support of several wonderful online friends who are experiencing or have experienced similar situations. I have the support of  many, many wonderful friends, some who read this blog and who do not, mostly online but some offline. I have the support of my husband. He is the best thing that has ever happened to me, and my daughters by extension. I am usually OK. I am usually able to handle the stressors in my life with some modicum of grace and dignity. I fell apart earlier this week. I needed to let it out, and through Twitter and the comments on this blog, you have all aided in my healing. Thank you for that. I cannot repay you.

There are a number of reasons that my children stay with my mother while I work, both financial and emotional.  Trust me when I say that we have and will continue to evaluate all options and make decisions in the best interests of our children. They are happy with her right now. If that ever changes, our arrangement will change immediately.

I know why, of course. I’ve been mainly useless all week. I am home alone, which you’d think would be awesome, but has not been awesome, at all. It’s just a lot of bad TV, soreness, guilt and frustration. Add to that an unhealthy paranoia about the sounds and thumps and bumps of an apartment building and bad weather…. well, I’m not exactly a barrel of laughs this week.

My mother has been stressing me out tremendously. My girls are growing up and I’m afraid, deep inside, of losing them, of missing something, of forgetting these days. I want to blog about their lives and so many funny things they do but I stop, because I can’t say it right or it’s not quite long enough, because I am somehow holding on to this idea that my writing has to be better. I shouldn’t care. This is my space and I shouldn’t care.

This post certainly isn’t a winner.

I have so many things on my to-do list that have remained untouched for so long… it seems I will never get to it. When I finally have the time, they’ve sat for so long I am daunted by the task, and I put it off or avoid it entirely. Ugh. A week of no laundry, no dishes, no cleaning… my apartment is a disaster and I hate that. I hate it when it’s completely out of control and I know I’m the one who is going to be cleaning it all, because though my husband is a dear, he can’t clean worth a damn.

Oh, he tries. It’s just a big fail. Sorry honey. I love you. But it’s a fail. (FAIL!) (Ok, that made me smile.)

I’ll leave on the smiling note. Maybe tomorrow I can get my shit together and post about the adorable outfits I got second-hand yesterday, or the awesomeness that is my oldest daughter’s bedroom, finally the bedroom she deserves, thanks to my mother. (See, it’s not all bad with her.)

Thanks for letting me vent, internet.

Thus, I tip my hat to the universe and the blogging gods and whomever else controls such catastrophes, and say – Touche! I obviously should not be rehashing this series of events. Instead, let it suffice that I am home, relatively healthy minus one apparently unnecessary gallbladder, and that I damn thankful that I was able to pee twice today without someone measuring my urine ouput (In case you were wondering, I pee an average of 6-7 ounces per trip to the bathroom when I am drinking water throughout the day (and also receiving IV fluids). ).

(Yes, I know that period looks awkward sandiwiched between the parenthesis. That’s why double parentheticals aren’t grammatically correct.)

Let me, instead, tell you a little bit about some of the emotions and events of today. We will imagine that you are me, yes? Yes. You will.

First of all, being an adult and being in the hospital sucks. I mean seriously S.U.C.K.S. There is no other way to explain it. You feel alone. You want your mommy. You want your teddy. You want the nurses to stay and talk to you because jeez, the TV doesn’t even have a guide to flip through, you have to channel surf retro-style. In an effort to avoid these feelings of loneliness and depression, you will sleep more. They’ll tell you it’s the drug and that you’re sick and that you just had surgery but really it’s escapism.

This is actually a smart course of action and if you can spend your entire stay sleeping, I would strongly suggest it. I say this because when you are not sleeping, you may or may not call your husband and mother incessantly, annoying them. Also, if you are a mother, you may feel as though you are being crushed under the weight of the guilt you feel, having gotten sick and now sitting on your arse doing nothing at all except healing, which is ridiculous, you should be able to multitask that shit because your kids? They need you. Obviously. (Even though they are doing fine and hardly miss you.)

Once you’re done being crushed by guilt over being sick, you can wrestle with the almost as daunting guilt over being sort of glad that you are alone at the hospital, knowing that you are almost enjoying this, because damnit you can blog and watch TV and snack and Twitter and the only people who bother you are nurses offering you happy juice. Two words for you – AWE SOME.

Sometime in the afternoon, if you are me, you will also deal with the crushing guilt over knowing that your husband’s long-planned trip to Florida for a few days with his guy buddy and godfather to your most recent daughter J, will be cancelled. J will still need to go and get things out of storage, but DaddyGeek won’t be able to, because you can’t be left alone with the kids so soon, and there’s only so much your family can pitch in to help – they have jobs and committments, too. (Which, for the record, they would drop in a heartbeat if absolutely necessary, but the two of you decide together that it is not in fact necessary).

Then you are released, and you try to hide your shame over the fact that the eighteen year old hottie who is wheeling you down to the valet parking just graduated from HIGH SCHOOL, has freaking awesome hair and a gorgeous face and you checked her out and DaddyGeek didn’t (he was getting the car) (oops).

Also, eighteen-year-old-hottie has better hair than you right now, and you feel shame that you washed your hair yesterday with combination “Hair, Body and Perineal Shampoo”. Yeah, that’s right. Delicious, eh?

Finally, though, you will arrive home. J arrives shortly after while DaddyGeek goes to get the kids. DaddyGeek hasn’t broken the news to J yet. When that DOES start to happen, J gets an attitude. Shit. DaddyGeek is likely to cave under this pressure from his friend of 20 years, and you know it. You tell DaddyGeek and J to go get some dinner and work it out (read: DaddyGeek, go tell J somewhere else, I don’t want this awkward attitude BS in my home right now, I just had effing surgery.) You believe DaddyGeek understands you. Besides, you already decided on a course of action this morning, so it’s all good. J will get over it – life happens.

You are on the phone with your mother when DaddyGeek beeps in — on her line. You already know what’s coming. You advice your mother not to give in to DaddyGeek’s requests, and get off the phone. DaddyGeek calls shortly after. DaddyGeek wants to know why your mother is being so difficult.  You explain to DaddyGeek that you told her to -because there was already an agreement.

One of the larger fights of your marraige ensues, over the phone at first, while you hold the baby you aren’t supposed to be picking up and feed her a bottle you weren’t supposed to make while awkwardly clutching her to your sore stomach.

When DaddyGeek gets home, J peels off in anger (unacceptable, we live in a family community of apartments and not only would we be possibly partly liable for any damage/injury/death that ensued as a result, damage/injury/death are also completely uncalled for. So is childish screeching of tires.) and DaddyGeek comes in. He knows he is in trouble.

More of one of the largest fights of your marraige continues, as quietly as possible, in front of the children.

There is crying.

Finally, DaddyGeek understands where you are coming from. (You are angry, by the way, that DG went behind your back and talked to your mother about a plan, also that he reneged on your original plan, also that you were not consulted and isn’t this a goddamn partnership?!?!? and also that a little pressure from J made him change his mind, and ultimately that he attempted to choose J over you and your recovery and your family. Attempted, because like any good wife/mother/partner, I steered him not-so-gently in the right direction. Perhaps with my fist and a bucketful of well-placed guilt.)

Once DG is facing solidly in the right direction and has fully understood the potential and actual consequences of his actions, apologies are made and we kiss smile at each other and make up go about the business of bedtime preparation.

Now it is bedtime. You are sore because you spent the afternoon and evening at home doing all the things you were NOT supposed to do post-op, and you are writing a quick, brutally honest, unedited blog post before going to bed. Well, you might watch The Closer before going to bed. But that’s neither here nor there.

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Also, you really missed your kids. A lot. And you have no idea how you are going to survive BlogHer.