Today, I bought a duvet. Partly because it was $40 and I’ve been sleeping with a 50 by 50 inch throw (and I need to cocoon to sleep), and partly because of what is going on around here.
Do you know what the date is? Of course you do. And of course, I don’t expect you to know what the date means to me. So, I’ll map it out for you. Sometime in the next week, if things had worked out differently, I would’ve had a baby. (If you want the nitty gritty details, then go here and here.)
I know okay, I really do, that this is what’s best. That if I had carried a baby to full term everything would be different and I would not be this Zoeyjane and she would not be that Isobel and the baby would be…well, post partum would set in and then it would be that. I know.
I can think of all the things that would be problematic, all of the logic that I used to talk myself out of feeling anything more than anger and blankness and whatever. Literally, I became whatever about it, c’est la vie, shit happens – you get the drift. I didn’t feel. It was just a complication to everyday life.
If things had been different I wouldn’t live how and where I do. Isobel wouldn’t have her own room. Jdawg might still be within our four walls. I would be fat, uncomfortable, dribbling milk everywhere and wondering how I got myself in the mess again.
I wouldn’t have realized, by a fated need to rely on someone else, that it was okay to give Isobel’s care over without explicit instructions. And that I shouldn’t feel guilt for transferring over my burden of being a single mom to their shoulders. Daycare wouldn’t have come so easily to her and I, if not for that sleepover. And daycare is something that means so much to both of us, so that is a blessing.
Money would be scarcer, that is for sure. A new crib would’ve been bought, maternity wear, baby clothes, a carrier, double stroller and a large volume of diapers. Money is just starting to not be a problem lately, so really, the renewed stress of paying bills is unwelcome.
But since I flipped the switch back on, feelings have poured out of a funnel and finally, I might be reaching the bottom of the pool of whatever, you know?
So now I know that if I were to have a baby next week then maybe I would never have let my relationship with JDawg’s mom become as damaged as it is – forced it to become so, really. We could have still been close, her considering me like a daughter, not someone who would use her son’s mistakes and weaknesses as ammo against her. We could have still had our coffee dates and conversations that brought about tears because we shared things that were so deep and ultimately, so intimate. I wouldn’t have coldly told her to not bother being sad and definitely not in my direction, because there’d never been any baby. I also wouldn’t have known and been so hurt by JDawg’s lies about the extent of our relationship – something that became a catalyst for my hatred towards him in the summer.
Maybe I wouldn’t be happy with him back in my bed, but maybe I would have still been able to feel what I felt last month and actually tried. Maybe he still would have fucked up and come home at 3am, ringing the buzzer and falling over drunk, like he did here fourteen days ago. But maybe not. Maybe he would have snapped into family mode and it would have been a saviour for him. Instead of the descent that I see him sinking into, yet again, even though he’s gotten better at hiding it from most people, now. Maybe we never would have gone to court at all, and would’ve realized that damaging ourselves for the benefit of using the other wasn’t worth it. Maybe we could have fought together, not against each other.
Maybe, this time, post partum wouldn’t have set in nearly immediately. I wouldn’t have planned suicides in my head, waited anxiously for my baby to die. I might not have resented any one whom life did come easier for, other moms, dads who were there and happy to be sober, people who work full-time and therefor aren’t surrounded 24 hours a day by a reminder that they are just a mommy. Maybe it all would have come naturally and peacefully this time – a direct contradiction to Isobel’s first nine months, at least.
Maybe I would have had a Hayden, or an actual Isobel. And he or she would not have been a baby with colic, who dropped too much weight, too fast, and was too anxious to eat and put it back on. Maybe those first few days of new motherhood wouldn’t have been laced with feelings of failing immediately, because I couldn’t just get him or her to stop crying long enough to drink the milk he or she was drowning by. Maybe I wouldn’t have been so damaged by labour, I’d have been able to just do everything, right away.
Maybe I wouldn’t be clamouring to hold my friend’s baby whenever I can because it’s the closest that I’m getting to a new one. And I wouldn’t leak sometimes, because her baby brought milk that should have dried up 16 months ago to the surface.
Maybe I wouldn’t smoke so much and drink so much coffee and have these reminders every 23-29 days, more painful and wince-inducing than each last time, that I am not going to be a new mother again, anytime soon.
Maybes, right? They’re harder on the heart than Ises. So, today, I bought a duvet. So I have something warm and cuddly to wrap myself around while I look like this and finally let myself sob while I mourn what will never be.
