Entries Tagged 'Ask the audience' ↓

You all had a lot to say about my post the other night, wherein I listed reasons why I have thought of cancelling my trip to BlogHer ‘09. Actually, everyone I’ve mentioned it to has had a lot to say on the matter, from the friend who volunteered to watch Isobel for the trip’s duration, to The Ex’s “If you wanna go, you should.”

I’m a practical person, usually. I can weigh the pros against the cons in nearly any situation. 90% of the time, I’ll end up making whatever choice will benefit other parties, first and foremost. Which is likely why this is such a hard choice, whether to scrap the trip or not, because the only person who benefits from it is me.

I’m not very good at being selfish. (Self-absorbed and involved are totally different things.)

But god, how I do wanna go. How much I covet the ability to walk on a plane and get off somewhere else, without an immediately need to survey for a potty, gluten free foods and soy milk. God, how I want the vacation, the friendships sealed with real hugs, and the education that attending would provide.

I want to drink without concern about a child waking up in the night. I want to pack my favouritest clothes, unworried about their stain potential. I want to breathe air in another country, because sometimes, I’m suffocating up here in Vancouver.

So. I made a commitment (to others, yes, but mostly…) to myself that I was going. That I’d step outside of my usual level of comfortable hermit-like behaviour, and really jump into it with both feet. That’s why I proposed a panel, and a Room of Your Own, and am volunteering to live blog, and even submitted some posts for a potential keynote speaker spot.

Since July 18th, 2008, I’ve wanted to go. And just six weeks prior to getting on that plane, I got cold feet. The mommy guilt started setting in – the guilt that’s plagued me since she was born, making showering feel selfish and telling me that her awakening hours were no longer mine at all.

Additionally, reality set in.

So. In a further attempt to convince myself that I shouldn’t go, I started cracking numbers together, to see what sound they made. It wasn’t a good one. Not good at all. Kind of like a high-piched keening, with an undertone of ominous dread, repeating “it’s never going to happen, you’re stuck here, forever.”

Or something like that.

You know I really wanna go now, right? Because it was as if the you can’t do that card got pulled on me, and if there’s ever something I will do, it’s the thing I’m not supposed to be able to. (Want proof? Isobel. Cuz I wasn’t supposed to be able to have kids, at all. Best. Accidental. Medical. Fail. Ever.)

That scary it’s not happening ditty looks something like this assumed (over estimated, for extra heart attack effect) damage:

Basically, it looks like I’m proper fucked, when you consider that I have eight weeks and change to raise those funds, still have money in the bank for rent and food when I get home and I have to make sure we can also eat and such, before the trip. And that doesn’t include any in-Chicago entertainment, gifts, or paying of volunteer babysitters.

If, from this point forward, I only spent money on bills, food, daycare and rent….well, it’s doable, maybe. Sort of. Okay, not really at all. It’d basically mean paying off my credit card, just so that I had enough room on it to live off of it in Chicago. It’d mean coming home to a very tight few weeks, assuming that The Ex doesn’t choose the exact moment of my homecoming to renegotiate our support agreement (which he would be completely entitled to do).

This is going to be a to-the-wire decision. This is going to mean spending all of my money, as soon as I can, on trip stuff, so that it doesn’t get spent on regular everyday money-wasting stuff. This means that, as much as I hate to and as hard as it is for me to accept any help, whatsoever, I’m asking for it.

I’m asking you to donate toward my trip, if you can manage to. Like Lotus, I’ll provide a button on this blog in a prominent location to any one (or entity) that sponsors my BlogHer ‘09 trip. Like I’m sure she, and other sponsored attendees, are, I’ll be grateful and stupid excited. Like an over-zealous little puppy, I will probably jump on you and hump your leg in Chicago, if you sponsor me.

If you’re scrambling for trip funds yourself, please ignore my sob story and continue digging in the couch cushions. I’ll (hopefully) catch you in Chicago.

If you haven’t checked it out yet, you should. This post is a perfect example, and the subject of pontification late this evening.

So, on the table, what the fuck happens if one day, my favourite (and only) daughter reads these words, all fourteen months of them, and swallows hard and then hates me? What if she hates herself? What if she sees something about herself that she never had before, and it’s not good? What if she’s just plain fucking mortified?

What privacy do I owe her – especially given that I’d like to make writing a full-time career, which means that if I face success, this little unmapped bit of blog terrain might one day face microscopes of peers and critics. Including her, her friends, her boyfriends.

Or girlfriends.

I can only hope that her growing up at my side, with my constant honestly and bluntness, my willingness to state the obvious in a usually sarcastic manner, will inure her to be able to read the words I may have written about her first years and embrace them as a part of who I am. I can wish, daily, that with each post I’ve said how I might feel at the moment but that my unwavering devotion to every nuance of her is abundantly clear.

I hope that she knows that I write these words not in spite of her, or to spite her, but because of an overwhelming need to utter the inside thoughts so that I don’t harbour them for any undue amount of time.

Of course, this is the negatives I’m dwelling on – something you may know, I’m wont to do.

Maybe, in spite of all the colourful language and anti-mommyness of this mommyblog, it won’t be the negative she sees. Maybe she’ll read and know that even though I struggled in this role – something that was marketed to me as something that should come naturally and start with a pink line on a piss stick – that I’ve tried and failed and tried again because she was ever so important. That I documented all the failings as a means to let her know how unperfect I am, in a way that has no relationship with whether she may or may not be bought a car on her 16th birthday.

Maybe she’ll be able to see me as the person I truly am, and instead of feeling only as if she’s been stripped naked for the world to laugh about, she’ll love me deeper, knowing I was willing to cast myself out there, first. Knowing that, and knowing the things I chose to be made unimportant because I loved her so, including another human being and an entire lifestyle (or three) could be like proof on paper.

Maybe I’ll just have her hypnotized to never be able to read or acknowledge this blog.

What would you do? Would you race through your archives and remove all misconstruable mentions? Would you turn mommyism into a full-time happy-joy-fun-town? Would you change the entire brand of the blog, to read “is moody” and neglect to mention the child in the first place – and if so, how would that effect them, that you excluded them?

There’s no right answer, I think.

Forgive any mistaken syntax, etc. My Internet’s been shitty this evening, and I’m plunking this out without the benefit of guaranteed service to edit. I mean…not that I ever edit. Everything I write is a gift from god, straight from the fingertips, right?