Wedded Bliss

This has been a post that's been perculating for a while. I've sat and written things. Saved it, left it alone. Come back to it. Written some more. This is my way of doing a bit of sandbagging about the following words.

One of the reasons a post about marriage has taken me a long time to get around to (and hours of thought) is that my opinions about marriage are formed from personal experience and my societal view of things. Meaning, marriages I watched growing up as well as my over-arching views on relationships and society. It's very difficult for me to tease the two apart. Maybe it's foolish to try.

When I say "I don't want to get married", the majority of the people I meet immediately jump to the "personal experience" conclusion. That the marriages that formed my childhood must have poisoned my mind against marriage-on-the-whole, and if I would just get over myself and take a step back my eyes would be suddenly opened to the joy and wonder that is matrimony. So I will be honest with you, dear reader. That is in part true. The poisoned part, not the eye opening part. But I still believe that my over-arching opinions about the institution of marriage as a whole are equally as true and important, regardless or seperate from personal experience.

I may be wrong.

Here's the thing: I love my partner. I have absolutely no qualms against promising him that I'm not planning on going anywhere. Fear of commitment is not an issue here - although it's the most common criticism I hear when people ask "When's the wedding?" and I answer "Never."  But I'm also a realist and a pragmatist. I love him now, and I would rather work through any problems than bail and run. But I cannot possibly say that I will love him 20 years from now.

My big picture view of marriage is that it was used as a business transaction. For me, it will always have these Christian overtones that echo dowries, and land transactions, and father-giving-the-bride-away outdated modes. I realize (and the argument has been made towards me multiple times) that marriage is not this anymore. That in our wonderful modern society, it can be what you make it, and does not require a priest or a church or even a white gown. So by that same token, why is it required at all? Under the law, I'm considered common-law. My spouse is covered under my insurance. We're each others emergency contacts. Most of the time I call him hubby and he calls me wife. So why can't that be enough?

But here's the rub, dear reader: I did get married. Quite recently. I started writing this post (and editing and tweaking and deleting) months before marriage came seriously onto the table, and since then I've signed the dreaded marriage document that has somehow earned me the right to be called Mrs. I came back to this post fully expecting to re-read it and decide to scrap the whole fucking lot and start fresh, but honestly my opinion hasn't changed much. I still think marriage is this murky quagmire that fails to separate church and state (hello same-sex marriage debate) and carries icky patriarchal connotations and societal pressures and feminine ideals and yadda yadda yadda. I still would have been content to remain in sinful co-habitation for the next twenty years.

So why did I get married?

It was my price of admission.

Having not grown up in a Catholic household, nor seen many surviving marriages, my view of the whole thing was pragmatic and fairly pessimistic. However my partner had a much different upbringing, and although he shares my pragmatism, for him it became a thorn in his side that we were going to have a child out of wedlock. People take a fairly solid opinion on matters that don't impact them - until they do impact them, and suddenly all bets are off and previously held opinions go flying out the window. My over-arching opinion on marriage hasn't changed, but my stoic refusal to participate? Well, stoic refusals don't give great snuggles, or cook you dinner, or make you laugh. We had an unconventional marriage, done the way we wanted, how we wanted, and we had a fun time with it. It cost us almost nothing. We used the excuse to get all pretty. I sported a 5 and a half month pregger belly. It didn't rain. High five.

I'd read and been told by friends that many relationships underwent dramatic changes post-wedded-bliss. Some took nosedives out of the sky, some found it rekindled previously lacking passion. Honestly, for us, nothing changed. Which made me ecstatically happy. I didn't want anything to change. Why get married, it might mess up with great thing we have going on! It's not broken, don't fuck with it! So far, everything feels exactly as it did before hand, except having to explain that I am not Mrs.Partner, but still Mrs.Me (you think after all this ranting about marriage, I'd change my name? Puh-leaze).

So what's the point of this blog post? I'm not entirely sure. Originally, to explain my refusal to marry - which seems a bit hypocritical now, so scratch that. To rant against the institution of marriage? Well, it's not for me, but neither is skydiving. Doesn't mean you shouldn't be allowed to jump out of a plane if you so choose to. To say that after marrying I had a complete about-face and have since come to embrace the entire bundle as a beautiful celebration of love and commitment? The celebrating part was fun in it's own way, and it's hard to be sad at a wedding so seeing all our nearest and dearest grinning from ear to ear is always a worthwhile experience, but honestly? I still think it's unrealistic to hold people to a lifelong commitment they can't possibly predict they'll be able to keep. And then stigmatize them when it "fails" (explain to me how forming a lasting relationship for two decades and then parting ways constitutes a failure? Sounds like a lot of hard work that deserves credit and recognition).

Hopefully, it's an unrealistic commitment we'll be able to keep, and grow with, and improve as time goes on. I think entering it with eyes wide open to it's realities puts us ahead of the game and gives us a better chance. And should it crumble 20 years down the road? Well, I wouldn't regret a thing, nor call it a failure, nor feel like being divorced made me less adequate of love - I would have, after all, just had 20 years of it. Which is pretty damn good, I think.

They Never Tell You

Things I've learned about pregnancy so far:

• It sucks.
  If you're one of those people who sail through as the embodiment of mother nature, I'm incredibly thankful for you, and incredibly resentful. 

• They weren't kidding when they said your ankles would get puffy. And your feet. And hands. And face. And unmentionables. 

• Morning Sickness (misnomer) cures are varied, individual, and down right odd.
  Apple juice worked for me.

• You will bend over and get stuck.
  First time this happened, my hips and lower back hurt too much to leverage myself back up, and I swore so loudly Hubby came running. Then he laughed. 

• You begin watching other people's waistlines with a paranoid eye.

• Your hair changes. Mine is now dry as a desert and there's nothing I can do about it.

• Your nose is stuffy. All the time.

• Bathroom trips become metronomic in their regularity (every hour, on the hour).

• Stories about babies will make you cry. There is no escaping this. It's like tourettes of the eyeballs.

• There is no such thing as too much water. So. Dehydrated.

• Maternity pants are the most comfortable things you will ever wear.

• Underwear becomes problematic.
  Not only will you not fit yours anymore, but you will have difficulty finding any that either a) doesn't press directly onto your already abused bladder or b) fits over the growing hump.

• Pregnancy is the greatest excuse known to mankind.
  Don't wanna cook dinner? Tired, pregnant. Want to get out of an awkward conversation? Excuse me, vomit. It's a superpower.

• You will do stupid things. Pregnancy brain is real.
  I keep getting into the passenger side of the car. When I'm alone. And obviously the one who's driving.

• You will never feel so vulnerable, and inadequate, and guilty, and terrified. 

• You will never feel so alive.

Playing in Dirt

I have more than a few thoughts bouncing around my noggin.

Ignoring the ever-present therapy/anxiety issues, my mind is currently boggled that everyone around me isn't freaking out with anxiety and spending a fortune on therapy.

I've been watching quite a few Ted Talks videos (which I'm slowly getting hubby hooked on, huzzah!), and jealously consuming these 20 minute windows into other professions and careers and ideas. These people seem to impassioned by what they're speaking on. Coupled with my current professor buzzing in my ear about finding a passion and sticking to it (to the seeming exclusion of all other considerations... we've had some disagreements on that front)... suffice it to say, my head is full of thoughts, bouncing around.

So this weekend, my friend showed me Mike Rowe doing a Ted video. I love Dirty Jobs, and I think he's always a pleasure to listen to, but I adored his video so much I forced hubby to watch it as well. His arguments for the "working class" are so solidly based in his own experiences, and arguments that I think should be made at this time in this place. But I was intrigued by his dismissal of "passion".

The pig farmer in Las Vegas didn't follow his passion and go into pig farming, he "watched where everyone else was going, and then went the other way". Found a niche need, and filled it, regardless of the dirt involved. And this got me thinking. We equate passion with happiness. Do we therefore give passion too much value over need?

We're raised, told we can be whatever we want to be. Reach for the stars. Find something you love and do it. We glorify the idea of the starving artist, and when reality meets expectation, and inevitably falls short, we're left feeling... anxious. Unfulfilled. Incomplete. Cheated. My father worked with his hands. I grew up watching people who created and fixed and thrived by physically touching the things they were doing. It wasn't their passion, on the upside it might be something they enjoy and take pleasure in, but the level of contentment was much higher than anything I've seen bouncing from office to office. Having finally landed in government (the ultimate office, like some sort of Machiavellian prison) I feel like I've finally found the epitome of disillusionment.

No one here is in physical contact with what they do. Nothing is produced. Nothing is created. Nothing is valued. No one is helped.

What an empty way to live. To fail to live.

Makes me desperately want to go and play in some dirt.

Fake It Till You Make It

There are often times when I am truly thankful that my anxiety is not worse.

It's very easy to get caught up in ones own head, but I function. I get up, I work, I pay bills, I leave the house (sometimes I don't have the house, but you do what you can). Some of my nearest and dearest have anxiety that strikes far worse than I, that is well and truly debilitating, and I'm thankful that my darkest days are few and far between.

I'm also angry (see: previous post, re: preggers rage).

I know that at my worst I am useless. At my worst, I will not leave the house, I will not get dressed, I will shut off the phone and yell at the animals for no good reason and cry all day. I will hyperventilate, and throw up, and fall apart. And unless I become so terribly, terribly self destructive that I become a danger to myself or other, and willingly commit myself to the ER, no one will do anything for me. The system - the health care system, the mental health system, the government system - will not recognize how debilitating it is unless I motivate myself to make calls, seek professionals, get diagnosed, get notes and forms and medication and support networks.

The ironic (sad?) thing is, none of that is even remotely possible when you're sitting on the couch in two day old clothes, surrounded by klenex and dirty dishes, covered in your own tears and snot and sometimes vomit. The last thing you are going to do is make the dozens of phone calls necessary to get help. Because in that moment help doesn't matter and you don't deserve it.

Now, I am thankful that this is an experience I do not have often. Thank god for therapy. But that doesn't mean my anxiety is cured, or ever will be. Currently, I'm no longer on my meds, and full of crazy pregnancy hormones, so the anxiety has been rearing it's ugly head and trying to take over. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't feel anxious, or down-right panic stricken.

Imagine walking around, feeling like the worst thing you could imagine is going to happen to you today, at some point, any moment, all the time. It makes doing simple things, like mailing a letter or going to the bank, feel like insurmountable tasks that very well may bring about the end of the world. Heaven forbid something outside of your normal routine were to happen. The universe would implode.

I'm lucky. I'm pregnant. Which means I get a free pass on almost everything. I've managed to side step meetings and avoid confrontations by the simple expedient of faking a sudden attack of nausea. Usually, it doesn't take much to fake it, since the anxiety makes me feel sick anyway. Sometimes the fake dashes to the washroom turn into real ones. But there's a very good reason why I abuse the crap out of my pregnancy symptoms.

If I say that I am unable to do something due to my anxiety, I am immediately thought less of and dismissed as making it up. Now that's absurd. My fake pregnancy symptoms are taken as par for the course, but my real anxiety symptoms are discarded as cop-outs. I've tried to adopt a mental attitude of being truthful about mental distress. It's my sincere belief that mental illness is the last bastion of stigmatization (as is often said within the industry). I truly believe that I am not the only one on my floor who suffers from some form of mental distress, and if we were more willing to be honest and talk about it, perhaps we could being about some education and understanding so these mental foibles are not dismissed and are taken as seriously as they are experienced.

However, it feels like I'm just insisting loudly that the sky is blue, while everyone around me laughs and says that it's green. There comes a time when a sense of self preservation kicks in, and you begin to wonder just how crazy they think you are when you try and explain, "Sorry, the chemicals in my brain don't process data like yours do, so the fact that you're asking me to go to a meeting I've never gone to and do something I've never done before is actually making my hyperventilate... No I'm not faking it just to get out of going... Yes I actually want to go, but no I physically can't."

After a while, you just start saying to yourself, "Fake it till you make it." And hope you don't die in the meantime. The problem with this mantra is it destroys a little piece of your soul everytime you use it. I shouldn't have to fake it. I shouldn't have to abuse my pregnancy to legitimize my experiences. I shouldn't be here. But I am.

So I'll just keep faking it till I make it. One step at a time.

Angry Hormones

I haven't written much because I'm experience a bloggers crisis.

There is a lot that I want to talk about. My class is making me feel re-energized about psychology and decisions and environmentalism. I have a lot of strong words to use regarding this idea that it's alright to force women to undergo medically unnecessisary ultrasounds in order to get an abortion. I'm back in therapy, as I've mentioned, so I have a lot of thoughts on family and anxiety and confrontation and relationships.

But I also have this fetus.

I promised myself that I wouldn't become one of those women who became 100% babycentric. And I don't think I am, or will be. Mum was looking through a book the other day and coo'd at a (admitedly adorable) baby picture. "I'm just not gushy over babies," I remarked. To which she responded, "Oh thank god, neither am I. It just feels like the thing you're expected to do, though."

So it's not so much that I'm oozing baby all over the place, and am avoiding blogging about it in order to not induce mass vomitting. It's that I am oozing pregnancy.

I have big things to say about mandatory ultrasounds, but then I get sidetracked bitching about how they make you fill your bladder up in order to get one and how do they expect you to hold that much pee when you have a grapefruit sitting on your already unreliable bladder?!

My psychology class is enlightening and I think I'm really clicking with my professor. But I had to miss a bunch of the lecture to dash outside and dry heave for 15 minutes. And then I sat through the midterm with a headcold-from-hell because my immune system is lowered so my body doesn't reject the parasite growing within.

And the rage. Oh baby, the rage.

I had this mental image of overly hormonal pregnant women bursting into tears at the sight of a puppy, or picking inane arguments with their partners because they forgot to buy milk and obviously that means the love in their relationship is dead. I'm not prone generally to bursting into tears or picking inane fights, but I was braced for it. I carry klenex in my pockets. I was ready. What I did not expect was that my particular brand of pregnancy hormones would manifest itself into sudden, violent spurts of rage, emerging from a baseline level of crankiness.

A cashier messed up my change this morning after buying a tea, and I lived a mental scene in which their head fit beautifully into the cash register. It was brief, and sanity restored itself before I could act, but it was there. It was real. My patience is at an all time low, and my desire to pick a fight is at an all time high.

I imagine hormones as fat little devils floating around my blood stream, randomly attaching themselves onto situations to incite violence and mayhem.

There's a part of me that appreciates this as a good thing. Anger is always easier to deal with then squishy emotional subjects, like trauma and feelings. I appreciate anger and the comforting barrier is provides. There are things that frustrate me, but rarely to the point of actual anger. I let things slide a lot. Like my Dad. And from watching that particular parental role model, I understand the benefits and detriments of being someone who "lets things slide".

These days, my fuse is so close to the fire that if I let anything slide, it would tumble straight into a powder keg of pregnant woman rage.

Oh, that makes me smile.

On Hope and Learning

I'm taking an incredibly interesting social psychology class. It's not so much the subject matter as the professor.

He's one of those rare profs that are truly passionate about their subject. They have this love and breadth of knowledge that they are dying to pass on, and it shines through into their style of teaching and discourse. It's a beautiful and refreshing change after umpteenth years of jaded, boring, dry profs.

I went to his office to ask him something and there was another student waiting to speak with him. We got to talking, and I spent half an hour with this bright eyed 20 year old. At first I was excited that this professor, whose passion I was desperately hoping wasn't wasted on the glass eyed masses in class, had inspired someone. This boy talked about how our prof had really made him examine himself and question what he wanted to do with his life. At 20, I think that's an incredibly healthy thing to do, and told him so.

He told me about his parents, about the pressure they're putting on him. About his childhood, about school and how he felt. About the paths that led him here, to this moment, outside the professor's office, talking to a stranger. It was apparent that these were Big Issues, this was a pivotal moment of grand importance where you see your life stretched out behind you, and you stare into the abyss going forward and wonder: What the hell am I doing?

I listened to him. I asked questions. I told him my honest opinion, that as much as he may feel under a landslide of pressure, it was never too late (as I stood there at 27 having only recently returned to school to start a whole new career). That his parents undoubtedly loved him, but his life was his own and they would love him even if he disappointed them. That he shouldn't disappoint himself.

We never exchanged names. He poured his heart and soul out, to a complete stranger, for half an hour. It was such a small slice of time, but when we parted ways I felt that something important had happened. That this professor had irrevocably touched another human being, had challenged him to challenge himself. That this boy had felt the need to divulge his soul to a stranger, to say thing he admitted he could not say to his own parents. That fate or timing or coincidence had brought me to that place at that time to listen and help and listen some more to another soul in pain.

It left me feeling oddly calm and content. It left me feeling hopeful. As much as I grieved with him for the pain of his immediate choices, that he was willing to look them head on and make them was inspiring.

I hope I helped.

Delayed Answers

Other people's pregnancies couldn't possibly be like this. 

I recognize the irrational nature of that thought. I know it's almost definately not true, and that I'm the zillionth woman to create life. That statistically speaking at least some other pregnancies are like mine, are like me at this moment in time.

However that refrain will not leave my head.

I began having serious abdominal pain a week ago. It took me 5 days to finally break down and seek help, at which point the forceful advice given by the nurse on the other end of a phone line was: "Go to the ER. Now. Get someone else to drive you."

The reason it took me almost a week to seek help is that my brain lies to me. Living with anxiety is like having to constantly be the referee to your own psyche. How much panic is too much? Is this actually a problem or am I blowing it out of porportion? If I swing to the far cautious side of panic, will the ER docs roll their eyes and laugh at me for wasting their time? If I don't act cautious and give in to my panic, will I die from some undiagnosed internal bleeding?

These are all actual thoughts that went through my head. On constant loop. It's incredibly difficult to balance reality and perception, to gauge how much of what I'm feeling at any given time is legitimate or crazy. The most pessimistically implausible scenarios not only seems completely plausible to me, they feel probable. There may only be a 1% chance that the stabbing pain in my head is a tumour, but for an instant my mind fully accepts the probability that it's a tumour which will kill me. All it takes is that instant, and the idea is planted. Rooting it out takes a large shovel, an incredible amount of effort, and maybe some weed-eater.

If someone doesn't pick up their phone, it's completely plausible that they've been in a car accident and are surrounded by paramedics trying to push their organs back in, unaware of their name or medical history because their wallet was burned up in the fire from the car crash. No one will be able to identify them, and they'll be in the morgue labled as "John Doe".

Rationally I know this is improbable. But my brain doesn't, so it takes constant policing to bring my mind back in line with reality.

So when the medical system sluggishly leaves me in limbo for days on end, with no explanation other than "Here's a list of 4 possibilities. One will kill your body, one will kill your soul. Fingers crossed it's not those two!". And then send you home to wait and wait and wait... My brain wins and the implausible scenarios become probable.

Grief interrupted. Arrested development. Incredibly painful.

Fat and Sassy

I'm a wee bit body conscious.

I don't think this is a shocking thing to say, since I'm fairly certain most people - most women - are more than a little conscious of their body and body image. It's nigh impossible not to be in this crazy world of fashion obsession... diet and health obsession... model and super model and superstar obsession. And let's be honest, it doesn't matter what we look like, there's always something we don't like about ourselves. For me, that's always been my weight.

I was a fat baby, who turned into a fat little girl, who turned into a fat crazy woman. That's not derogatory, that's fact. I've got big ol' thighs, and big ol' birthing hips and I will never, ever fit into a size 10. It would be unhealthy for me to even try. I come from a long line of women who struggle with their weight, and not to put all the blame on genetics, but there are some body types that simply will never be on the "skinny" side of the clothing store.

I'm okay with all of this. Not jumping for joy, but pleasantly resigned. So long as I'm healthy, my body will be what it will be. And what it will be is large. In the past decade, the smallest I have been is a size 12 (sometimes 14, depending on brand of jeans). I was in a horrifically unhealthy relationship, a sporadic insomniac, drinking way too much, stoned most days, and eating garbage - if at all. My size 12 was so unhealthy, my body was destroying itself from the inside out. It was one of the few times in my life I had people regularly tell me how good I was looking. They didn't pay attention to my horrible habits, they didn't see the pallid skin or the bruised bags under my eyes. They saw the weight. I'm a million times healthier now and also a million times heavier. But I'd take my health over my size 12 body any day.


Everytime I go shopping for clothes (which isn't that often, due to frustration) I can't help but notice that most stores cap out at size 14 or 16. Normal stores cap out dangerously close to my unhealthiest skinniest. I'm resigned to plus sized shopping, but adamant that I will not spend the rest of my life in a moo-moo. The designers of plus sized clothing (on the whole, not all of them) are idiots who have no idea how to dress a large body. Taking something that looks good on a size 2 and adding more fabric does not work. Marilyn Monroe was a size 12. Plus sized models today are a size 14. Plus size stores start at size 16.


Are we seeing the problem here?


If all the images we, as large healthy women, see are not only of a skinny ideal we do not fit, but of a plus sized ideal we do not fit, how can we ever get to a place where we can feel good about ourselves and our bodies?


This body is not perfect. It's flawed and it's a pain to clothe and I'm often not very happy with it. But it's mine. People pay for bodies like this one*. We should feel proud of our lumpy, un-symmetrical, never-the-ideal-but-fine-the-way-it-is selves.


So when will our culture catch up with our reality?

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* Just so you know, that link is safe-ish. It won't bring you to a porn site, but to an article which I loved and you should go read!