I want to be the hero of my own life

When did I become this angry, bitter, weak, fearful person? What happened to the fighter? Why do I constantly beat the horse of my past victimizations, instead of glorying in my surmounting so much agony? Why am I constantly the victim, and never the survivor?

I have this amazing child, and I spend so much time fearful that my past will damage her. Why is it so hard to see this amazing accomplishment for what it is? I have brought a joyful child into this world with all the intent, capability, and tools at my fingertips to make her life comfortable and challenging and amazing.

My life has been filled with obstacles to conquer and burdens to bear, and although it's been messy, here I am on the other side. I've survived it all. I don't want to tempt fate, but by now, haven't I learned so many lessons to help me with whatever comes next? I made it through this and that and that and that. Surely I can survive the future.

I am 40 years old, and I am so done with my childhood and youth. Yes, I miss firm skin and dancing, but that's about all I miss. The things I enjoyed, I still incorporate into my life. I still play. But I don't want to be wild and crazy and careless any more. I want to be settled. I am settled. But I want to revel in it. I want to revel in my comfy home and my loving family.

What I don't want is to constantly live my life rehashing my past. Let go, let go, let go!

So many people around me are optimistic about life, and I'm just not that person. My life has been dominated by chaos. I was a pessimist before I left grade school. But I think there is something to this notion that you can create the life you want for yourself. I can plan for future endeavors and prepare for possible falling trees. But I don't need to worry about the possibility of getting hit by a bus or Mt. Rainier erupting. Life has taught me to prepare, therapy has taught me not to worry. But how exactly does living in my past help prepare me for the future? How does it help me in the now?

It doesn't. It just drags me down all over again. The memories of past harm do me harm over and over and over again, and that is my fault. The original acts were perpetrated against me. Reliving them is of my own doing.

I want to shake it off, but how do you slough off a part of who you are? This is part of my identity. It's made me who I am today. It's not going to go away, it can't be removed. That's just not possible. But I can say goodbye to it. I can close the door on it.

That sounds so easy, just shoving it all into the closet and shutting the light and locking the door, to turn towards the brilliant sunlight that is the future.

And monkeys might fly out of my butt.

*sigh* Pessimist Mysie is here to stay. I am not sunshine and roses, and I never will be. But I don't need to be thunderstorms and thorns either. I would be perfectly content with a nice refreshing rain and a scattering of wildflowers.

138 days

138 days ago I gave birth to a tiny little baby girl. She has only grown more and more beautiful and vital and engrossing and perfect and time-consuming as the days have flown by.

Did I mention time consuming? I love her to pieces, but I really had no idea just how difficult it was going to be to constantly have another person attached to me. I expected her to sleep more, I expected her to play more, I expected to wear her around the house in a sling, I expected her to enjoy being carried from room to room in a carrier and just be fascinated watching mommy do stuff in front of her instead of with her. I spent months of sleep-deprived nights praying for her to sleep through the night, and now that she does, she makes up for it by not sleeping much during the day and demanding 100% of my attention 100% of the time she is awake.

I am jealous of stories of people going to the movies or trips or just dinner out, and yet I am exhausted after just taking her out for a trip to Babies R Us. Every time I come home from one of these shopping trips, I tell myself I am doing too much, and then the very next day I am either bored to tears or pulling out my hair worrying about the things I should be doing that I can't do because she refuses to let me move more than 2 feet away from her.

I am so busy trying to care for her and myself, yet balance everything else around me, that about the only thing I manage to do regularly is check my email in the morning. I don't blog, I don't Facebook, I don't clean the house, I don't design, I don't read. And yet I read an article about the problems with letting a baby "cry it out" and I'm convinced I am not spending enough time with her.

Lately, I am increasingly sensitive to the mentality that you can do anything, you just have to decide to change your life and *do* it. I am convinced that I need to watch her cues better so I can meet her needs *before* she flips out, but how do I make sure to feed her before she screams for the bottle if I can't even walk away from her long enough to make more milk when she's finally full? I need to eat better to help my overall health and energy levels, not to mention stop the postpartum weight gain, and yet the only food in the house quick enough for me to grab without her wigging out are popsicles and crackers. I need to stop using my laptop in my lap because I am doing serious damage to my back and my wrist in that position, and yet I have no time to clean off any of the spaces where I can use a computer properly.

The only reason our home is not infested with creatures living in our mess and eating our leftovers is because when Eric gets home he spends one hour making sure the important stuff like garbage and dishes and cat litter get taken care of.

I feel like I'm doing everything wrong, giving myself the worst possible care, ignoring the baby too much, and living completely unhealthy and yet… I feel chained to this way of living that is just making everything worse. My wrist is a perfect metaphor for my life right now: I constantly feel like I need 3 hands, I only have 2 hands, but one of them is seriously injured and I keep using it anyway because I have no choice so it doesn't get any better. I can't grow a 3rd hand let alone do enough to fix my injured one, so… how is anything supposed to get better?

No, this is not one of those "life-lesson" blogs where at the end I wrap everything up and say, "but I have a plan so yay!". No, I'm not on the floor bawling my eyes out either. This is just an update on reality, because sometimes this blog needs to be about me and not have any point except allow me to vent.

Sleep deprivation is kicking my ass

Sleep deprivation is bad for marriage. Daily, if not multiple times a day, I find myself wanting to scream at Eric for the smallest things. Luckily, he hasn't been in the room at the time, and I soon get over myself.

Sleep deprivation is bad for baby. I spend most of her awake hours wishing she was asleep. While she does sleep a lot, most of her time is spent eating and/or dealing with eating: spitting up and pooping. So most of my time is spent giving her food, wiping her bum, and looking at her with a worried expression while I watch her little body try to keep her food down. This quickly gets very, very old.

Sleep deprivation is bad for my blog. Not only haven't I been blogging, but I skipped a day's photograph last week. *sigh*

Sleep deprivation is bad for my sleep disorders. I spend as much time as I can off of my feet, which my body takes to mean I'm "relaxing", which means it's time for my RLS to start up. Some days I can't nap or even sit down without having to deal with my legs wanting to constantly kick and squirm. Which makes for a very humorous picture, I'm sure, for anyone watching me holding the baby while she's kicking and squirming too. But the real problem with RLS is the medication I take, and trying to work in the after-midnight feeding while dealing with nausea and extreme sleepiness. We've developed a sleep schedule where I go to bed much earlier than Eric, he stays up late to give her a late-night feeding, which usually means I get a full 5 hours of sleep before I have to get up to feed her around 2am. Usually. This usually means that the nausea/doped-up feeling has passed. Usually. As an extra bonus, earlier this week I got real evidence of something I long suspected: I have REM Sleep Behavior Disorder. So much for the experiment with co-sleeping.

Sleep deprivation is bad for my pain. Spending as much time as possible off of my feet, means a lot of time sitting on my bum, which means my sciatica is kicking my ass more than every. Literally. Between my arthritic knees and my sciatica-pained butt, the only time I'm comfortable is when I'm laying down. Hence the experiment with co-sleeping. Since that's out the window… well, I'm kind of just screwed all over. Extra bonus? I somehow mucked up my right wrist, so moving it in some directions is painful, and moving it in other directions is excruciating. Sleeping, feedings, bottle washing, carrying baby… all are that much more difficult. No one said this was going to be easy, but come on!

Sleep deprivation is bad for my social life. Social life? What's that? Wait, I'm supposed to be able to leave the house? Not when I smell this bad and my eyes are drooping this low. With greasy hair and ripe clothing, I went grocery shopping and ran to the pharmacy yesterday out of sheer desperation. Boy did my ass pay for that.

3 Days to Go: Nursery

Yep, only 3 more (full) days to go until the EDD! Holy cow! Currently waiting for a non-stress test at the Birthing Center, bored out of my mind and they haven't even started. *sigh* Here are some pictures of the nursery for y'all. :)

I had one of those dreams last night

I had one of those dreams last night, the one where you are a terrible mother for neglecting your child. I had my first taste of these back in Junior High when my baby brother was born - I lost him in the supermarket. As an adult, I've had them from time to time about my pets - they usually revolve around suddenly remembering that I've forgotten about the pet for weeks at a time, and it's been locked in a drawer somewhere without food. I'm always relieved at how not-dead my pet is from starvation, and how happy it is to see me instead of angry about the whole neglect issue.

Last night I dreamed I set my baby down on the couch, walked away to do something and was distracted for a time, and when I came back she had slipped off the couch to go hide amongst a floor littered with toys that were bigger than she was. She was quite possibly the smallest newborn to ever crawl and play hide-and-seek, as she was (suspiciously?) the size of a kitten. I found her where she had camouflaged herself in a pile of Legos. She had slipped her head inside this monstrously-sized plastic yellow head of a generic Legoman, making odd noises so I thought she couldn't breathe. I whisked it off of her face and she was just giggling and cooing at me. I picked her up, cupping her in my palms carefully, quietly scolding her and myself for being so silly. Then I started bathing her with a wet washcloth in the fashion displayed in the Newborn Care class we took a few weeks ago. All was forgiven, as she was happy, unharmed, and unstarved.

I am dreading the dream where I discover I left her sleeping in a dresser drawer 10 days ago. I wonder if she will purr and meow in greeting, giggle at how silly I am, or cry because she is so starved.

Note to self: wait to get Legos or Duplos for Kailea until she is too big to slip her head inside of them. Although... that sounds much safer than giving a newborn regular-sized Legos to choke on. Hmm. Maybe the moral of this story is I need to invent giant Legos that babies can safely play hide-and-seek with. Much, much bigger than Duplos even.

Where is the meaning to my life?

I turn 39 this Saturday. Almost 40, pregnant with my first child, and a New Year has begun - I'm feeling introspective.

More and more, I look around me and I am disappointed with my life. Well, disappointed in myself and what little I have created. Where is the meaning to my life? What is the impact of my being here? What have I done that I can be proud of?

For almost as long as I can remember, my goal has been to make a difference with my life. The bigger, the better, sure. But small ways are important to. Most of all, to do something lasting. To do things or even just one thing that makes a real difference in the world, something that goes on and outlives me somehow. Something that continues to make ripples in the world, long after my initial involvement.

I know I have have made a difference in the past. But was it enough? Have I touched enough lives, made enough of a difference? I long ago stopped resting on my laurels, and now only rest on my ass. My life is filled with myself. If the opportunity to make change or help someone presents itself, I usually jump at the chance to at least try. But it's been so long since I've sought out to "be the change in the world you want to see." I don't believe there's some cosmic score card, no great book of deeds at the Pearly Gates. And yet... I feel a gaping hole in the plus column of my life. I am sad that there are so many in the negative column, more than I ever thought to see, but it's the absence of more good that troubles me more.

I believe I am still a good person. It's always been so very important to me to be a good person. So yes, there is dismay when I trip up badly. But it's so much more important to me to create good. To help people, lessen burdens, ease suffering, inspire kindness, share knowledge, open eyes and minds and hearts.

And so right now, my greatest shame is not my past mistakes. It is my failure to act. It is my laziness. My complacency. My ass on the damned couch day after day.

I want it to change. I want to change. Now. Today. Why is it so difficult?

Change really is coming

For a few years now my most important life goal, even more than becoming a mommy, has been Seeking Serenity. Developing a place of "inner peace" amidst the chaos of my crazy. As I seek and learn, the goal gets tweaked, refined, redefined. This year I have focused on becoming a better version of myself, someone who looks more like the person I thought I was going to become when I graduated from high school, someone I liked. I have focused on Wellness, calming my anger and bitterness, curbing my pessimism.

I am now motivated to do more than that. Because I have to become a mommy for real. Which means finally becoming an adult. Becoming responsible. I need to set goals and accomplish them. I need to find energy. I need to prepare for not being the center of my own universe. My entire life needs an overhaul: nutrition, exercise, sleep schedule, emotions, chores, responsibilities, preparations... But at the heart of it all, I'm convinced that what really needs to change is the way that I think.

I need to change the Pessimist into an Optimist.

"Ha!" cries my Inner-Pessimist (IP). She smirks, rolls her eyes, and sits in a back corner to watch the imminent disaster. She attempts not to fidget in anticipation of shouting "I told you so!"

My Inner-Optimist (IO) squeals with glee, begins jumping around, and starts begging to go to Babies R Us. She attempts to abstain from painting the nursery purple and cover it with unicorn stickers.

Physical Me (PM) is tired just from hearing about all this. Her breasts hurt and today is day 2000 of a headache. She would like to know who is behind the conspiracy to get women to believe that pregnancy will cause breast tenderness. "Tenderness?!" she rants. "This is pain mother fuckers!"

IO begins to wonder if IP has been working on her ventriloquism - that last bit sounded just like something she would say...

Mysie just wants all this writing in third person to end so she can quit worrying about pronouns. She suspects her new theme song is Guns and Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle."