maladjusted

i hate the holiday season.

i can't tell if my overwhelming emotions are coming from christmas pasts, or from the reality of my life right now, or from a little of both.

my mother just moved back into town which surely has churned up a lot of emotional distress for myself. she's the same as she always has been, and that's exactly what my problem is with her. self obsessed, stubborn, and unable to make positive choices in her life. but maybe her lack of positive choices is beneficial to her so she can always stay in the position of martyr.

matthew left me months ago. he left me heart broken. he left me with an apartment and bills i can't afford to pay, and he took jude from me. this was in july. now it is december. it's snowing outside and my gas is about to get cut off.

i don't get to see jude, except for two days a week, only at my grandmother's house. he doesn't get to come here, to the apartment i have been starving myself to hang onto so he can have safe place to stay when he is with me but matthew doesn't even let him stay with me.

and now i am using time i should be using to enjoy the season looking up laws online because i can't take anymore, and i miss my son, and i have to take the person i love more than anything to court for christmas.

and i don't even know if i will see jude on christmas because apparently matthew being with his mother is more important than jude being with his, and like i said before, christmas sucks.

i locked my keys inside my car which wouldn't be a big deal but matthew's car broke down this weekend, and today is his mom's birthday. i just lost it. it's amazing how something so simple can destroy me sometimes.

jude is almost one. ever since i met matthew, things have been a whirlwind.

it's raining today. streams of water find their way to the gutters, just like they always have. i think of olympia, the exciting weird mess olympia was. the overflow of emotions i experienced there, and i think about the complacency of my life now, and how much happier i am in the routine.

i scrambled so long, admist the meaningless of my life. now at nightime, after jude's bottle, and a beer, i cuddle into matthew's arms and fall into the normalcy of my new life, washed with the feeling of knowing everything will be okay, and that every night i find myself in the same arms, and every morning i awake to the same smiling face of my son, and the routine i follow, the normalcy of my life is beautiful, and so much more exciting than anything exciting ever was before.

i used to have a book entitled grover's bad, awful day and it always comes to mind on days like this.

matthew had to take jude to his mother's house today because i felt so bad. i basically had a mental breakdown of sorts after talking to my doctor today on the telephone. my test results came back already, and he basically told me he thinks his original assumption of fibromyalgia is correct, and to "take some tylenol". i think i am going to change doctor's, especially when the FDA has approved two non-narcotic drugs for the treatment of fibromyalgia pain, one of them being an anti depressant, which i need to take anyway, and another which was originally used for nerve pain in patients with diabetes. both of which my insurance will cover.

the thing is, if tylenol worked for the pain i am in, or any over the counter medication worked for the pain i am in, then why would i be going to the doctor? so basically i have just been laying in the bed crying all day.

this entry is pretty gross.

my doctor gave me naproxen to take. last night i woke up with horrible chest pains, and today when i went to the bathroom, there was blood, so there goes the naproxen idea. thankfully tomorrow is monday, and tuesday my test results come back. my doctor should know where to go from there.

otherwise, i feel like i have gotten beaten up, feel like i just got finished dancing to pulp's common people at a dance night, and feel like i've been on a six mile jog. mix in the flu, and food poisoning symptoms, and that is about where i am at right now.

Man, today I had to go to the doctor because I have been experiencing pain and severe discomfort along with a lot of other strange complaints, like change in vision. The doctor thinks it could be three different things, which all are pretty horrible for a twenty four year old girl. The first one is Fibromyalgia (which he is leaning towards), Rheumatoid Arthritis, or Lupus.

I don't have any beef with what this doctor based on his credentials. He is an internist that specializes in rheumatoid arthritis, so he is a good person for me to be seeing right now, but he just bothers the fuck out of me for some reason. Here I am, in severe pain, and he asks me if I "shoot up drugs?" Now, I don't know if that is a blanket question, and of course my answer was "no" but don't you think if you are going to ask someone if they are an intravenous drug user it would be because you are about to prescribe them a painkiller and want to make sure they are not a junkie, BUT NO, he gave me a prescription for fucking Aleve, which I already have been taking, to no avail.

And it could just be a question he asks everyone, but my boyfriend, who has blatantly visible tattoos of dead women on him from horror films goes into the same doctor's office for strep throat and is given a prescription for vicodin with no weird questions asked.

I know I have a lot of tattoos but they are of cupcakes and crap. I am a mommy, not a suspicious creep. I don't know. It just irked me.

There must be a medical condition for mothers who have had extremely sick children while they were still small infants. Jude was in the pediatric ICU for over a week right after he was born for something as simple as an urinary tract infection. But because he was so small, he turned septic. It was the scariest thing that has ever happened to me. I thought he was going to die at first, because they had no idea what was wrong with him, and his temperature kept rising and rising. They gave him a spinal tap. He was so dehydrated they had to take blood out of veins in his head. He had so many things hooked up to him, and because of his IV they had his arm taped to a board. He was covered in so many cords that I couldn’t even hold him in my arms. At first the nurses had to feed him and change his diapers. The hospital made my precious baby into something very scary and as horrible as this is going to sound to people who haven’t been in this situation, you detach from it. I think him being sick made my postpartum depression worse, even after he got better, because I was struggling to bond with a baby I felt inside that I was going to lose.

And now Jude is sick. He has an extremely high fever and diarrhea and I am going crazy. We took him to the doctor yesterday who because his only symptoms were fever at the time, couldn’t give us an answer to what was going on. Every time he gets remotely sick I become so fretful over him, so scared.

fuck single life.

i really hate the whole entire bachelorette/bachelor glamorization in our society. you guys can keep the awkwardness all for yourself.

because what i find really refreshing in my life is having a bad day and coming home to my significant other, to find him waiting for me on the sofa, to talk to me about what happened and them give me bushels of snuggles. that is truly awesome.

jude is such a little monster sometimes. it was exciting when he learned what no means, but now when we say no he just laughs at us and keeps on doing what ever bad thing he was doing in the first place. he has eight million toys that blink and play music, but what does he want to play with? my coffee cup, my laptop cord, the radiator, a bowl of cat food...and to people who buy their babies eight million toys, seriously all your kid needs is a wooden spoon, pots and pans, and some tupperware containers to play with.

and i think about all those people who say "when i was a kid all i had to play with was a stick." and all i think now is "well, you probably had more fun with that stick than with any toys your parents could of bought you."

If sending your ex boyfriend who you know dislikes you immensely a gift is bat shit crazy, than I am bat shit crazy, but we all knew that. But sometimes it’s pleasant to do unexpected things for people who you didn’t treat so nicely in the first place. Unfortunately I find myself focusing in on another friendship lost with someone I’d really like to be friends with actually, because they actually are a very awesome, interesting person, who on the downside, has their run in with me while my life and myself were both still very fucked up to put it lightly. So maybe some mending can be done, but if not, it doesn’t really matter, because all the nostalgia I once contained within myself after what I call my new life, is now just a flicker and a blur. And it doesn’t really matter because sometimes you fuck up and lose friends, and it’s deserved.

Other than that nothing much exciting has been happening. Just received Sailor Moon box set volume one, Angel Guts box set, Watcher In The Attic, and Jack The Ripper: Assault! in the mail which is a very odd combination. For Christmas I received Behind the Pink Curtain, which is a very large, compelling book about the history of Japanese sex cinema, which isn’t exactly what I am into since I mainly like girl gang films from the 70’s, but some of it is interesting so I have been researching and shopping lately with Matthew and I’s tax return.

Jude is fantastic. He has little teeth to bite me with now.

ah, jude is asleep in his crib!

this doesn't sound like a big ordeal, but when your sorry ass has been wrangled into co sleeping with a colicky baby early on in his life, and have stuck with it for eight months, getting a baby to sleep alone in it's crib is a very big deal.

and all i can think of is two things, how it's my fault he doesn't sleep in his crib, and then of our hippie neighbors across the way who have an 8 year old daughter who still sleeps in the bed with them. no wonder she's the only child!

and how desperately i don't want jude to end up that way.

life has been good lately. i got a diamond ring for christmas. that was a big shock. i thought that would never come to pass. i didn't really care either way, but come on, deep down inside, i really wanted it to. so, yippie!

jude is now seven months old! he loves carrots, and applesauce, and is smiling and playing all the time. he can get up on all fours and rock around, and it's so funny how boring this must sound to everyone, but when you have a baby the smallest things seem like the biggest accomplishments.

matthew and i have been doing fantastic. i can not remember the last time we got into a fight. i respect him so much seeing how well he handles jude and how hands on he is as a father. it's amazing.

and well, i am becoming a total mom. my life revolves around being a mommy and i think i am doing a pretty good job at mothering. jude scoots himself over to me, and i can tell how much he loves me by the cute little way he smiles at me and it is the best thing in the entire world. i can be in the worst mood, and he will look at me with his tiny grin and fix everything in a heartbeat. he is the sweetest angel. he holds my hand while he is napping, and puts his arms around my neck and gives me baby hugs when he is awake. it is fucking amazing, so fucking amazing.

i wouldn't want my life to be any other way.

Let me tell you. Post partum depression is not a joke. Truthfully if anyone wanted to know why I haven’t updated this in awhile, I can’t say it’s due to my lack of internet access. Who doesn’t have free wi-fi somewhere near their house anymore? There is even free wi-fi at the Denny’s in Chester, Virginia. I have no excuse, other than the most gripping depression and general weirdness I have ever experienced in my entire life. Don’t be surprised after having a baby finding yourself in a position having little understanding of who you are, and wondering exactly why you have a baby in the first place, then feeling horribly guilty about questioning your role in life, only without having the cognitive ability to rationalize any of your feelings. And it wasn’t just me feeling like that, but I wouldn’t of known it at the time, that hundreds upon hundreds of women with brand new babies were feeling the same thing.
The worst part was my inability to ask for help. I felt guilty that I wasn’t automatically a super mom, feeding the baby while shopping at Target, doing baby and me yoga classes, strolling Jude in the park every evening, instead being the mother waiting for daddy at the door, ready to hand him off immediately for a much needed nap, still in my pajamas from the night before. I’m sure I was a funny sight to see, my expensive camisoles covered in formula with four day unbrushed hair and a stroke face. I didn’t ask for help a lot of the time when I needed it, falling victim to the entire if I act okay, I’ll start feeling okay.
I read about post partum depression, a lot. It wasn’t that I wasn’t aware of getting the baby blues after giving birth to Jude, because I had actually expected it. But as a life long survivor of crippling depression I thought I would go back to normal, back to the way I was before I got pregnant, complete with the weeping spells and 360 degree pre-period personality change. And that literature that says you may experience the baby blues needs to change it’s wording to, “Imagine you are in a black bottomless pit with no way of escape.”
And we live in a society that pressures mothers into doing it all by themselves, when we should live in a society with insurance companies that pay for post partum doulas and in home check ups. I needed that. Every new mother needs that. I think about people like my sister who raised two babies all by herself and I want to cry, especially considering I didn’t hold single mothers with the utmost respect before, and now I feel like my sister is more amazing than Benjamin Franklin. Single mothers need parades.
Although one, two periods come, and you start to feel better, and then you are back to the way you felt before and you get off the hormonal roller coaster, and if you are like me, you get onto the old one you rode before. And then you have this beautiful, most amazing little person to hold in your arms, who was created out of love, waiting for you, and it’s the most precious and important thing in your life that you would never change, even if it meant you had to walk around with hot coals in your vagina.
My depression got so scary that I don’t think I’ll be able to have another child, and that’s a horrible feeling because honestly, if I handled the depression part better, I would love to have eighty million babies. I am actually pretty baby crazy now, which makes having a ten year IUD (which is a whole topic I need to write about. IUD’s are fucking amazing.) a pretty awesome thing.
Labor wasn’t as bad as I thought. It was actually a really important bonding process with Matthew. I had made the decision to not let anyone see me in labor but Matthew, and my family gave me a pretty rough time about it, but afterwards I knew I made the right decision. If I ever wonder Matthew’s role in my life, I can think back to him wiping my face with a wet washcloth as I am writhing in pain in a bathtub, or holding one of my legs for me, with my midwife holding the other, helping me through every push, every contraction, every moment of doubt that I couldn’t do it. And I can think about our shared tears as Jude laid on my chest, looking straight at Matthew with this intense wonder.
And the only person who may be as amazing as a cooing, smiling Jude is Matthew. I couldn’t do half of the things I am doing right now without his love and support. He is my best friend, my lover, and my son’s father, and OH MY FUCKING GOD, is amazing, and somehow together we have managed to come together and create a family together, and as sappy and silly as it sounds, because it would of sounded sappy to younger, party hungry Malorie, is the coolest thing I have ever done in my entire life. Three years ago, over a gin & tonic in a hipster dive bar, I would of laughed in even the face of god if he had told me I would consider my role in life as a mother.
There is an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm that reminds me of Matthew where Larry David meets Mel Brooks lesbian secretary, and tells her that he wishes he had a partner instead of a wife, because he feels like Cheryl his wife is his foe and foil instead of a partner. I feel that way about some of my past boyfriends, one in particular.
Sometimes I call Matthew my partner, because he is my partner. Technically as we are unmarried, we are boyfriend and girlfriend, but boyfriend seems so displaced and unimportant, and does not in any way encompass how I feel about him but partner does.
Needless to say with everything that has happened in my fucked up life, I am finally content and happy, and it’s fantastic. I have never felt this way before.

I can not begin to explain how pregnancy has mellowed me out and removed a lot of my past neurotic, high strung, ridiculous behavior. I'm sure the weekly counseling I have been attending since I found out I was pregnant has been also been helping a bit, but for once I feel like I am finally in a place where I am content with my life, and the situations I find myself in for the most part do not completely overwhelm me and kick me on my ass.

I went through a lot of yucky stuff in the past few years, even for awhile after Matthew and I got together, and his support has been fantastic. He was able to see who I really was underneath a lot of the issues I was having, and see those issues for what they were/are sometimes still, a product of my bipolar/depression/anxiety situation and not a reflection of my core personality. With that understanding and support, I really have been able to take the reigns when it comes to a lot of problems I have and figure out a way to work through them, which since I have been pregnant and unable to take any medication, has been therapy and intense yoga, which let me tell you is great for a pregnant lady. Women look at me in amazement when I drop something in the grocery store and lean over at almost 9 months pregnant to retrieve it without even having to bend my knees.

Things were really difficult for awhile and I had very little support from my family, which mainly consists of my mother, who manages to make most of my problems worse. I had always had depression as a child and through my teen years, but BAM! I hit 19, and I was just on an emotional roller coaster, which progressively got worse. I had no idea what was going on. Sometimes I would fine, and then other times at the drop of a hat, I would just lay in the bed and cry uncontrollably. I didn't really figure it out until around three years ago, and then you have to deal with medications and doctors and that alone is a very stressful roller coaster sort of process. With me and this is true for a lot of bipolar people, it took me about ten different medications before finding one that worked.

But I really feel that without Matthew and now the baby, that I would never of been able to wrangle up the amount of motivation it's taken to make my life something I am comfortable with and proud of and to find the personal strength to be proud of myself, which I never have been before.

It's strange, I suppose.

Matthew and I found an apartment. At first when we pulled up to the building, we were totally like, "Ugh, a boring block apartment building" but when we went inside, we liked it. It's not the most amazing thing I have ever seen in my life, and I don't know what I was expecting for us to find. Maybe a stately Victorian row house split in half, and we might of been able to find that with our eight fifty a month budget, actually, but probably not within the two weeks we have until our lease ends here. And when the price of the rent there was dropped down on us as 650 a month for a two bedroom, I was like, ok. This is 1,000% doable even if it is a completely homogenized type of apartment building constructed during the sixties.

It's weird compromise to make. Our apartment now has huge ceilings and solid wood french doors, and a fireplace with a mantel in every room. Our radiators have never been painted, so they are this really attractive unusual bronze color, and every door is surrounding by elaborate molding. It is 795 a month. Our new place is well, this bland sort of boxy apartment. But our new place is safe, which our apartment now is not at all. Actually, I am pretty sure it would be considered condemnable if someone came to inspect it. Every time I go to the bathroom I can feel the floor buckle beneath me and am afraid I will fall through into the basement and there are hot spots like that in our bedroom where the floor is obviously weak, but we've just put furniture on top of them. Huge strips of paint are peeling in almost every room, that when ripped off expose the original walls, which is pretty sketchy when you live in a definitely lead paint based house because it was constructed in 1910.

It's a bittersweet situation.

But I am just excited to be settling in someplace with Matthew that is our own. We are starting a family, and that makes me so terribly happy.

I swear the number one thing I think about while being pregnant at this point is slipping into a pair of black skinny leg jeans, and for god sakes, a soft cottony t shirt in the future. You would think I would miss my cute babydoll dresses, and that really sweet pair of black patent leather mary jane wedges which are my favorite shoes, but NO! I really just want to be able to fit my feet inside a pair of chuck taylors, or fuck, boots and wear some jeans that don't have a foot of elastic material over my stomach. You know, the feeling of wearing something really comfortable, and effortless that makes you look and feel good at the same time, instead of being eight months pregnant, and terribly uncomfortable in anything you wear, no matter what it is.

I'm not trying to downplay what an awesome experience being pregnant is because it has some of the most joyous moments you will ever have contained in it, but being pregnant for the most part sucks, and I hate the strangers I meet while shopping who like to tell me that being pregnant was the greatest part of their life and how much they love it. Did their life before contain a daily routine of being sliced with razors?

I'm just so big now that it is bordering on depressing. Before it was cute, and now it is just gratuitous seeing as I am a big, sweaty mess these days.

I think I should make my next objective in life be to kill Glenn Beck.

Today he was talking about how he hates how they give people food stamps over a debit card system instead of using actual paper food stamps because it no longer makes poor people feel shame, and in his opinion makes people comfortable with being poor.

Being poor is not comfortable, and hey, guess what? Getting a plastic card to purchase your food does make using food stamps slightly less embarrassing but in no way makes being poor comfortable.

I am pregnant and make around 900 dollars a month and am not eligible for food stamps, or WIC, or anything, and the fact that anyone thinks 100 dollars a month for food makes poor people comfortable with the fact they can not afford anything makes me so fucking angry.

Matthew and I went and looked at the apartment last night. It is adorable! The area is so nice.

We both liked it a lot, and have the forms to fill out the dreaded credit application. Matthew has no credit, and I have bad credit, but we are crossing our fingers that Matthew's strong rental references and the fact that we have a co signer available will be enough to let us sneak through. I am trying to remain optimistic about the entire situation.

There is an apartment that I just called about, and I really hope Matthew and I get to go look at it, because even though it is a bit on the small side, it is adorable, and perfect for what we need. Plus, it is a two bedroom with a dining room, that is only 750 a month, and in the near west end off of Malvern which means we live in a quiet area near everything we love in the city, but have a backyard, and will not have neighbors that spend most of their waking hours screaming, "WHOOO!"

I can barely believe how expensive things are becoming in the Fan. It used to be that I never paid over 250 dollars in rent if I had roommates, and now the thought of that seems so distant and unbelievable. All the things I like about Richmond were here when it was cheap still, like numerous inexpensive ethnic dining opportunities and every once in awhile I would see a cool show, go to a dance night (which would be fun, even if all they played was shitty 90's brit pop) but now everything is so goddamn expensive, and there are never any bands I like playing, never any good dance nights, and never anything fun going on. Most everyone is still so wrapped up in getting drunk instead of doing positive things to change the community for the better, and I am generally pretty bored and jaded when it comes to things in Richmond, that paying 1,000+ dollars a month for a two bedroom to live in a cool area of town doesn't even seem worth it anymore especially when most of my life consists of staying at home listening to records and fine tuning my embroidery skills.

And there is this weird part of me that is excited about the baby just because I will finally have something positive and rewarding to take up my time, instead of just being bored constantly because of the lack of things to do that I find stimulating. I feel kind of guilty about that.

But I mean, come on Richmond, it's not like I haven't spent eighty million hours of my life already sitting in a booth at a bar. Isn't it time people want to do something else?

And this boredom has prompted Matthew to push me into taking college classes a couple days a week after we get settled in with the baby, which even furthers my reasons for loving Matthew, that he will change his work schedule and watch the baby so I can do something that will make me happy, and my favorite part of this entire thing is that he loves the idea because it means he can spend alone time bonding with the baby. How amazing is that? Especially coming from a guy who looks tough as shit and has oodles of horrifyingly terrifying horror film tattoos. I like the idea of him going grocery shopping alone with the baby around a bunch of southern grandmothers.

Also, a lot of the rent prices here are high because of refurbishing. I don't need a kitchen with granite counter tops, a stainless steel refrigerator, and some crazy built in microwave. Sure, dishwashers are cool, but when it boils down to it, I live in the fucking city. I live in the city because I don't want the inside of my apartment to look like my aunt's 5 bedroom freshly built house in the middle of suburbia. And, I grew up with regular counter tops, linoleum floors, and a microwave that sat on the counter, right beside our toaster oven and coffee pot. I know friend's whose parents still have mustard yellow fridges in their childhood houses. Who cares? Do I really want to pay out of my ass to have a fridge that makes crushed ice when I live in an area where getting mugged is likely?

So Matthew and I are getting a really nice black crib from Overstock.com that converts later on into a full size sleigh bed. Our child better be thankful. I slept on a twin until I was 18 and moved in with my first live in boyfriend, and then went back to sleeping in a twin after I moved back home.

I was amazed at how cheap and nice a lot of the furniture they sell there is. Plus, the shipping, no matter what the size is only three dollars. It's intense.

Although, after searching through the site a little bit I came across the fact that they sell a shit ton of discount price vibrators, which I am totally cool with, but at the same time feel a little odd ordering my crib from a place that sells SmartBalls.