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[shameless is the name of the game]
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Follow Me on TwitterA Valediction Forbidding Mourning
As virtuous men pass mildly away, / And whisper to their souls to go, / Whilst some of their sad friends do say, / "Now his breath goes," and some say, "No." / So let us melt, and make no noise, / No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ; / 'Twere profanation of our joys / To tell the laity our love. / Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ; / Men reckon what it did, and meant ; / But trepidation of the spheres, / Mad fucks to be gotten cheap / Dull sublunary lovers' love / —Whose soul is sense—cannot admit / Of absence, 'cause it doth remove / The thing which elemented it. / But we by a love so much refined, / That ourselves know not what it is, / Inter-assurèd of the mind, / Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss. / Our two souls therefore, which are one, / It's mad emo and I'm kinda sad / A breach, but an expansion, / Like gold to aery thinness beat. / If they be two, they are two so / As stiff twin compasses are two ; / Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show / To move, but doth, if th' other do. / And though it in the centre sit, / Yet, when the other far doth roam, / A constant lean and emo sad shit goes, / And grows erect, as that comes home. / Such wilt thou be to me, who must, / Like th' other foot, obliquely run ; / Fuck dude it all sucks and shit whatnot, / And makes me end where I begun.Following
It’s definitely cooler to skip the ten year high school reunion altogether than to show up looking awesome with your hottie husband, right? I mean, the effort to get there negates anything I could hope to gain from showing up and looking great and actually being happy? Right? Also, old!
Well, I won’t be joining the 27 club after all. I’m 28 today and also not famous. JEEZ. At least I have a snazzy new Jays jersey to cry into!!
Ten years ago today my daughter was born. Last weekend, as my little girl and I were looking through our photo album from the labour and delivery, I got stuck on one picture – the same picture that always gets to me. I’m standing behind my daughter’s father, my hands on his shoulders. He’s sitting on a white, plastic lawn chair at our cluttered kitchen table, putting together an Anne Geddes puzzle, which we intended to put up on the wall of my daughter’s nursery. In place of proper curtains there is a gaudy, colourful knitted afghan hanging in the window. On the table sits an empty coffee mug and an ashtray full of cigarette butts. And then there’s me. I am so, so young. I couldn’t always see it, but that face really is one belonging to a teenager. I’m seventeen and nine months pregnant, wearing a strange, fixed smile – some mix of exhaustion and nervousness – and a stained pink nightgown.
I remember the picture being taken. I was not quite in labour, still about twelve hours away. I definitely knew that she was coming very soon. I didn’t know certainly she was a girl, though the ultrasounds suggested she was. I was terrified of having a boy and fully expected to end up with one solely because I wanted a girl so badly. (The degree to which I long for something has historically had a negative correlation to my getting said thing.)
I can explain it no better than to say it was a strange, strange time. When I went to the hospital to pre-register and fill out paperwork, a week or so before I had my daughter, I still hadn’t decided certainly if I would give her up for adoption or keep her. I knew, I suppose, that I wouldn’t give her up. But I hadn’t stated it to anybody officially. Thus, the preparation for labour and even the labour itself was no different than the pregnancy – a categorically joyous event rendered tragic and unspeakable because of my age. It wasn’t something I could openly be excited about, ever, at all. I didn’t show off my growing belly in pictures or giddily ask my mom to feel the baby kick. People cautiously inquired about my health, my comfort…but nobody (outside of my girlfriends in high school) really talked about the baby inside me. It was like being pregnant with something dead or diseased, something everybody was careful not to discuss. There was no celebrating. And how could there be? I was seventeen, in my last year of high school. Only a little over a year earlier I had been hospitalized for a suicide attempt. I was in a bad, bad, no good, terrible, abusive relationship. There was nothing to celebrate.
But the baby was still inside me, no matter how troubling her impending arrival and physical existence was. I was privately excited. Terrified, sure, but excited. I called her Hannah and talked to her daily. I was desperate to see her face. I was dismayed by the size and quantity of the stretch marks on my body. I was astounded by the size of my giant breasts. I was scared, for myself and for my obviously doomed relationship and for my baby. But I was still so incredibly excited.
After she was born, when we were leaving the hospital, I distinctly remember thinking “I can’t believe they’re just going to let us walk out of here with this baby.” Not even nine long months of pregnancy can prepare you for the jarring reality of becoming a parent. Your whole life until that point is one way, and everything after is irrevocably changed. I was still terrified. My situation was still, largely, a crisis. But once she was born I got to celebrate her. My whole world got to celebrate her, finally. The sad, uncomfortable energy of my pregnancy gave way to the immutable joy over my new baby. I would not wish that pregnancy on anybody. The memory of that entire time in my life is marred by the difficult circumstances. But my girl, my girl. I would not change anything about anything, lest it change my life with my girl.
My daughter is ten today. She is bright, and beautiful, and spirited beyond measure. She hasn’t always had it easy. I left behind the dirty apartment, the small town and the troubled relationship before she was even a year old, but that didn’t fix everything. At times I have been so broken, so totally incapable of being a good mom to her. At times I have failed her completely. And that…that stuff, it wears heavily on my heart. Always. But I’ve never stopped celebrating her. And I never will.
and I’m like….yeeeaaaah! And then I’m like….but soooneeeedsleeeeep. Three hours is not enough when you’re old.
