Entries Tagged 'expansion' ↓

When I signed on (mentally) for Lunanik’s Terrible Tuesday carnival, I figured I’d be glib cuz so much of MiM is about seriousness and defeatism and such. I was even planning to write about how this damn lack of time/exhaustion had led to a four-month lapse in self-love and how I took care of that business yesterday and am still paying for it. Cuz uh yeah, me and pregnancy and orgasms do not go together. Unless the resultant cramps and potential-miscarriage-paranoia counts as going together. Yes, I know, really glib so far, eh?

But then I read Huckdoll’s and Lunanik’s posts and these girlies were hard core brutal on themselves. And I’m all about self-flagellation.

Lust started early for me. By seven, there’d been a few boys wanting to play doctor. Honestly, by nine, a few girls, too. By 10, I was in a bra and getting looks for it – mostly from men in the neighbourhood and ultimately causing my dad to disallow my outside travels alone. By 12, you could say I had a boyfriend. But since he had a girlfriend and I didn’t even let him kiss me, I don’t count that one as such.

By my third interview for a modeling gig, I was being asked to stay after for a more in depth interview with an agent. I spent a lot of the next almost two years high and so there are a remarkable amount of blank spots – who knows what I did with whom and what I was even awake to partake in – but I don’t remember anything actually being done with or to me. At the end of my days with speed balls, my lust for some junk almost brought me into the life of favours for favours, if you catch my drift.

But to be honest, I was 13 and a half when I had my first kiss. I dated that boy for a year, off and on and never did much more than let him get to second base. My next “boyfriend” and I dated for a week and only hugged.

My next boyfriend, the rock star ex, we were making out from the second day. People were yelling at us to get a room and to pull away and go to class. I talked him into having sex with me. He didn’t think he was ready for it and I made it a very logical argument – it was the next step in the relationship after we’d done all this making out, and had some particularly phone-sex laden late nights, and after the two-litres-of-cider-inspired blow job he got. Ironically, that next step logic would lead us to move in together, get engaged and then self-combust. It took a few tries, but then, we were like bunnies and never stopped until he stopped wanting me and we stopped being together almost four years later.

A week after we broke up, almost two months with out sex, I made a new friend at college. She had a friend at school and he was kinda cute and had goals to be in the Olympics for running and he drove an MGB. The stars were aligned for me to throw myself at this guy and from the dimples on his face, I figured some constellations were taking form for him, too. It was unspoken, but he gave me a ride home from school and came inside and had a beer while I took a shower and then things were leading to things.

And then it felt wrong. And I said no. And I ended up on my stomach with my wrists pinned behind my back and some tears that made sitting and walking uncomfortable for the next couple days. He never understood my overwhelming rage at him, figured it was something to do with me not thinking he was a good lay. He was obviously one of the guys who heard no after the clothes came off and thought it was just a tease tactic.

I’ve never admitted it aloud before, but I wasn’t really that upset about being raped. I wasn’t most upset about telling my dad and him asking me what I did to deserve it. Or telling my ex and him asking if I was ok and me saying no and breaking down and him hanging up. Or about how three weeks later I’d learn that I’d been sick and fainting for months cuz I was pregnant and the ex asked who the father was. Nope.

What made me filled with rage was that this guy, Trevor, he took my power on the night. Sex had always been a weapon of a sort for me. I was always in control, gave whatever I wanted to who I wanted, for what I wanted. And he took that. Anyways, moving on.

I think I wasted a whole two weeks before I jumped back on the horse, more powerful than ever. Because now, I wasn’t going to develop attachments, no one was going to take anything from me and I was going to take from them. I would make them feel used and abandoned and unworthy. It was obviously my shining moment.

I spent almost a year sleeping with friends and friends of friends and people from the bar. I didn’t kiss. I didn’t blow. I fucked and that was it. I didn’t give them my number and I didn’t answer their calls when they ultimately tracked me down. And for some reason, it made me this enigma. I was being a player, sure. A slut, even. But god, these people wanted me and I never let them have me again after I was done with them. I felt like a god.

Then I saw JDawg walking across the parking lot of my new job. And he had a white teeshirt on and baggy jeans, a smoke hanging from his mouth, a day’s worth of beard and jaw muscles that kept flexing. And I figured, he would be next. And the manipulation begun.

Wow. I smoked the same brand as him. We liked the same music. We both drank too much. Blah blah. Come out for some beers on Hallowe’en with me and some of my friends, why dontcha?

I didn’t sleep with him for a week. And then, it was on. I was sleeping over more than I was at home, I was walking funnily into work late, in need of a shower after three days of leaving the bedroom only to buy smokes, get food and movies to watch during refractory periods.

I never saw this coming. But I never let go of my control. Maybe in jest, but still, blow jobs were a bargaining tool. The addiction to me willing to try any position, anytime was one he fell for fast. We kept up the pace for five or six months, then relaxed to a more reasonable once every day or two for most of the rest of our three years. Then we broke up.

And we didn’t talk as friends for months. But within six, there we were, drunk in a forest, up against a tree with our pants on the ground. And within seven months we found out that Isobel was on the way. So we got back together.

And the shock/trauma/pain of having a baby and that baby being Isobel and post partum and alcohol and fighting lead to a nearly non-existent sex life. I had no power left, and even if I did, I didn’t want to exercise it. I was just too tired and emotional and ugly feeling. Then we broke up.

And we didn’t talk as friends for a couple months. But then, there we were drunk, with our pants on the floor and our socks still on. And within six months, we found out that baby #2 is on the way. So we’ve gotten back together.

And again, now, I really just don’t feel like having sex.

I think baby #2 has taken my power.

Dear Isobel:

Yup, it happened. Life, baby #2, the flu, eating and sleeping all served to push the date far from my mind and I completely missed your 21st month’s birthday. I haven’t put a little line on the wall to show how much you’ve grown since March, I haven’t weighed you to see why my back aches so much and I haven’t once said happy birthday.

Hopefully the semi-daily cupcakes I’ve been bribing you with will have a cumulative effect, so that you don’t attribute this slip of memory to my not loving you. Cuz that is so far from the truth.

I’ve just been ignoring you, alot.

And that will end soon, I promise. Because pretty soon, I think you’re going to start ignoring me – in a more grandiose spectrum than the one involving not having your diaper changed. I see that you’re nearing the peak of the twos. (Um, a few months to a year early, but when have you ever done anything on time besides be born?) Not getting your way now means you plunk your booty on the floor and protest loudly and confidently.

And I walk away every time, leaving you to your anger so that it doesn’t awaken mine. I even smile a little at your assuredness of your right to the scissors, paints, daddy’s beer, keyboard, my makeup (though I suppose, one of us should be wearing it), my dirty underwear, and more inane things that just do not belong in your clutches.

In the last month, your want to communicate is just staggering. From “I gotta go outside” to “Mommy poops” and “My baby,” it all serves to make me proud since you’re doing what I’ve been asking you to do since you were born – just tell me what you want. Yes, I picked up on what different cries and strains and faces or body language meant, but life would’ve been so much more simple if you’da just said, “Mom, I’ve got some goddamn gas from the three cups of coffee you had today and then piped into me via your humongous boobs” at birth.

Seriously.

And a few of months ago, you could say all of the basic words: snack, juice, nigh night, poop, hug. And then some. So I found it drove me completely up the effing wall when you’d just explode into a pile of toddler screams and snot because there was something going on. But you wouldn’t tell me what. And on those really fun-filled days, it seemed like you were just being a jerk about it.

Like I was supposed to play some guessing game to find out what was wrong, or something. Oh wait, I was. It’s in my job description and the duty will likely last into your adulthood.

This is the point that I kick myself in the shins and think, “and I’m going to do this with a second one, too?”

But then, I think of all of the times I was sitting in a chair beside you, reading while you watched Dora or Blue or Elmo, and you crawled on my lap, took my cheeks in your hands and kissed me. Sometimes, it was even without tongue. And then you laid your head on my shoulder and wrapped your arms around my neck and patted my back, saying, “Otay, mama, Otay.”

And then I realize that I may have forgotten your 21-month birthday, in part cuz of baby #2, but baby #2 will be screwed over cuz you have broken my heart with love and pride so many times, there just might not be anything for her or him to break, themself.

I love you, monkey-princess,

Mama

PS – With all this new language and some lack of proper pronounciation, would you mind tuning down your version of ‘hippo’ when we’re walking around the ‘hood? Cuz I don’t want the neighbours to think I’ve been teaching you to call them homos.