We leave for a month in Europe – all over northern Europe – in a little over a week. Torsten will get to see Opa and Oma again (and boy, do I think he will enjoy them now, since he’s big and full of energy and likes to move – not to mention social and curious, just like he’s been from early on), and to meet more family in Sweden and Germany. Mama will get a week alone to see things and do novel research. Papa will get to attend a conference and give some talks and see his family and his hometown. So there’s lots to look forward to (ok, I realize here that it looks like Christian will be doing a lot of work, but he always is…), and a crapload to do to get ready.

In addition to putting holds on mail and the milk delivery and blah blah blah, I must, in the next week, even with a baby, somehow complete the following:

• Finish Torsten’s christening gown. A master seamstress I am not, but I am determined to finish this. We’re having him baptized in the little town Christian’s aunt (Torsten’s soon-to-be godmother) and grandmother live in so that his family can participate (this is the only reason we’re not doing it at our church here – I admit I’m a little sad at this, since my friends at church have been so supportive since from the pregnancy onward and they are all so amazingly fond of Torsten), so he needs something to wear other than an Elmo T-shirt More on this later if I don’t completely foul it up.
• Do hordes of laundry. No, really. It’s amazing how much laundry accumulates when all you want to do is stare at a blank wall for an hour or two at the end of the day because you are just sapped. (Note to various deities in control of the weather, especially the one my son takes after: this freaking heat is not helping. A good week of thunderstorms (not interfering with our flight) would be appreciated.) I can’t seem to keep up.
• Clean up the house. This is an ongoing battle anyway, but really, who wants to come home to complete chaos? (My study excluded – I’ve almost given up on that, which is annoying, because I like my study)
• Finish typing up our itinerary. Now, before you think I’m so anal-retentive and organized (hahahahaha! anyone who knows me in real life has just laughed so hard at that idea that I promise you that there is currently mass pants-changing going on worldwide) that I schedule every second of my vacations/travel, understand that our trip is insanely scheduled and was cobbled together manually. I haven’t used a travel agent since the mid-90′s, and with the advent of the Internet, it’s quite possible to spend hours and hours figuring out exactly what you want and getting it if one site or the other isn’t giving you what you want. So in avoiding centralized sites (e.g. getting train tickets directly from Deutsche Bahn or some other national rail service when Rail Europe isn’t giving you any options or isn’t giving you a good price, going directly to hostel websites when the HI site doesn’t do family rooms or isn’t giving you information or whatever, comparing ferry services from Finland to Sweden and manually telling the U.S. travel agents that exclusively sell their tickets in the U.S. to bite you for taking a week-and-a-half to respond to a faxed request, etc.), basically, I have to take all of these arrangements and put them together into some portable and comprehensible form so that we know where the Hell we are/are going/are fleeing/etc… I’ve been working on this for days in my off-time, which is pretty scary. Then again, I’m on the move basically for the whole trip. I’ve never taken so many trains so far in such a short period of time as I will this trip. Should be interesting.
• Getting Torsten’s stuff prepared for the trip. This falls into a whole separate category from packing, because seriously… 14 hours on planes with an 8-month-old? You’d better have your shit in order.
• Packing. We’re going to try to go with one suitcase, because we really don’t want to be dragging two suitcases along with a baby, various carryons, a stroller, a diaper bag, etc, over land from Finland to Germany while switching trains, entering and exiting youth hostels, getting on ships, etc. We’ll see how that works.
• Getting Torsten video onto DVD and getting pictures onto DVD/prints made for the less technical relatives. I’ve been meaning to do this for months, and I just never get time.
• More various administrative crap for the trip that I’m sure I’ve forgotten.
• Start my new drinking habit immediately

I know there’s got to be more – I can feel it in my bones – but that’s quite enough, I think, to drive me nuts.

And now I have wasted an entire naptime whinging about what I need to get done. Go me!

I am the awesomest procrastinatrix evar.

(“Knowledge” picture from Scott Meyer’s Basic Instructions comic strip)

So the mind-blowing month of CELTA is officially over, and it was totally worth it. It was stressful and intense, and I learned so much I think my head may yet come apart at the seams, but it was awesome. Sometime after we get back from Europe this summer, I’ll start looking for part-time work around here so that I can put it into practice, but in the meantime, it’s just going to sit in there and stew, and that’s quite alright.

Meanwhile, I’d just like to congratulate everyone in my CELTA class (CELT-ites?) for surviving!

(Click to enlarge)

To Aram, Jon, Jedidiah, Joe, Nick and Richard: it was a pleasure working with you all, and I fully intend to be extremely jealous as you traipse off to the far-flung corners of the world! Thanks for being so collegial and for making the course a great deal of fun.

To our wonderful trainers, Giles and Betty: thanks so much for your candor and sense of humor, and most of all for sharing your expertise with us. It was well worth the pain!

And to anyone who’s thinking of doing the CELTA here in Denver, I highly recommend it. It’s a lot of work and not for the faint-of-heart, but as far as professional development goes, it’s a great experience.

I feel like I’m learning so much about teaching in such a short time. It’s going to be a while before I can integrate all of this crap into my own brain and teaching, but I’m having a blast. Of course, the other folks in the course are a riot and great to work with, so it helps, but I feel like I’ll really be in a good place for teaching when I decide to go back to work.

Of course, being home with Torsten and Christian this weekend (well, only today really – I was in Colorado Springs this Saturday at the State Democratic Convention which completely sucked for various reasons I’ll disclose in June, after my course is done and I have some time to really write) made me realize that I’m totally not ready to be back at work yet – having the opportunity to enjoy my son’s early months with my husband is so wonderful that I can’t wait for June to come and to be at home with him again, even if I go stir crazy from time to time.

Anyhow, five minutes of non-course writing is all I can allow myself – if I do anymore, my paper and lesson plans will never get done, and that is, quite frankly, not an option!

It’s my first Mother’s Day as a mama, and what am I doing?

Yup, writing lesson plans in a café, several blocks away from my baby.

We don’t celebrate many holidays/occasions as a family, but I have to admit, I was hoping to celebrate this one.

Oh well, there’s always next year, and given that I had a near-complete meltdown this morning over the fact that I couldn’t find my keys, of all things (and haven’t seen them for several days), I’m not feeling like supermommy anyway. Even if I’m usually a much better mama than that.

Still, I think I’ll try to get home sooner than intended, if for no other reason than to snuggle my little pumpkin. I miss him. One more indicator that I am not quite ready to go back to work, I guess

*stress stress stress*

And since then, well, let’s just say I haven’t done a whole lot of blogging, and when I have, it’s either rants about politics (which no one wants to read), or my monthly letter to the baby, and there’s not much in-between! And so, to mitigate the lameness of my mommy non-blogging of late, I decided I’d post a little update on how my induction into mommyhood is going, and what’s up with Torsten and the German Family Grothoff (which would not be dumb enough to get shipwrecked), since even though Mr. T’s 4-month anniversary is coming up soon (hrm… is it still called an anniversary when it’s a monthly thing? anniversary comes from annus, meaning year, so that’s lame…), who knows when I’ll get that written?

So…

The in-laws are here and have been for the past three weeks. Yes, yes, I know many of you predict the End Times when hearing the mention of in-laws and multiple weeks occurs (and indeed, I would have at one point too), but it’s actually been a very pleasant visit. Torsten loves his grandparents, and they’ve been having a fantastic time. Also, his grandparents have been so kind as to take the little guy for hours at a time so that Mama and Papa can sleep/leave the house/actually shower, so it’s been good to have them here. This house is a little small to have so many people comfortably on top of each other (and I am notoriously grumpy about invasions of my space), but they’re staying in a hotel, and are very happy to spend time with their grandson, so it’s all good.

Well, except that they have the plague. Or something equally yucky. Torsten’s Opa got it first, and kept his distance from the little guy. It seemed like no one else was going to get ill, but now Oma is apparently so ill she can barely make it to the bathroom, and even Papa is starting to feel unwell. This is, as they say, not good. Even though Papa is going to start sleeping in the living room until he gets better, my suspicion is that it’s only a matter of time until the little guy and I come down with it, and given that Papa has a very full week next week, I predict that I will not only be sick, but I’ll be running the show with a sick baby at home as well, which will suck.

Of course, I might be wrong. I really, really, really, really hope I will be. If you have any personal deities you might consider asking to intercede for the little guy and me, I’ll dedicate some stale Peeps in your honor.

Oh, and Happy Easter.

Mommyhood is actually being pretty good to me. With Torsten approaching four months, I’ve been able to return outside and see the day star shining, often with the little boy in tow in the stroller or Baby Björn, and sometimes even by myself. I’m a little depressed about how hard it is to lose weight right now (I’m only nursing part-time because, well, I don’t produce much, but unfortunately, I’m still as hungry as a regular nursing Mom) and how pregnant I still look, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s not bothering me much yet.

But the first three months, for me, were sort of like living in a cave. I didn’t get out much, and was too tired to do anything except care for the baby anyway. I always had messy hair, often didn’t get dressed during the day (just didn’t have time), and was walking around in a sleep-impaired daze. Christian was still doing almost all of the housework, and I was just trying to get through the day after not sleeping much at night, since I’m the one with the breasts. It was pretty rough, really. Plus the weather sucked, so going outside with the baby wasn’t much of an option, especially since we’re carless.

But now, now Torsten wakes twice a night (three times if we’re unlucky), so there’s at least the option of a lot more sleep (I can’t bring myself to fall asleep with him at 7:30, but I know I should…), and he’s much more portable. Also, I’m much less afraid that something I’ll do will break him, which makes things easier. He seems to like getting out of the house with me, and is napping more often during the day. I seem to be able to find time to actually put pants on, have a cup of coffee, and even pick up around the house or toss laundry in, often with Torsten playing next to me in his high chair and us having a little conversation, or with him strapped onto my front observing and directing (during housework – obviously not with the coffee or the near-daily ritual donning of the pants). So things are looking up.

And I love being Torsten’s Mama. Torsten himself is just a bundle of smiley cuddliness, and he changes so much from day to day that it’s hard to keep up. He’s been losing his hair, but already it’s growing back. He gets longer and longer each day, and Christian and I both noticed one day that his hands had gotten bigger overnight. His big blue eyes are simply gorgeous, and if you follow them, you can tell how engaged he is with the world. He “talks” to us all the time, and squeals excitedly, and smiles smiles smiles. He’s intensely curious about people and the world – I took him to the cathedral the other day and he loved looking at the stained glass and the shapes of the arches – and he’s a great deal of fun to play little games with. He’s controlling his head and limbs a lot more, and grabs toys on purpose to chew on. He’s also figured out how to do some things with intent rather than by accident, and he’s just generally a beautiful, joyful child. I feel incredibly lucky to be his.

I’d feel luckier with more sleep, mind you, but eh… it’ll do.

People aren’t kidding when they say becoming a parent changes everything, or that you’ll love your child more than you ever knew you could love anything. Those things sounds obvious and a little trite, but the reality is about as mind-blowing as things get. And when people tell you you’ll be exhausted and stressed, you’ll think later that they were understating things, but that’s only because there’s no way to express the depth of those things either in a way that communicates the reality of the situation. And one thing no one ever said to me, anyway, is that it takes a little while to settle into the person you become when you become Mommy or Daddy, and that stranger still, you’re both the person you were before and someone you completely weren’t. I just now feel like I’m starting to settle into that person and a little less like a person lost in the chaos of joy and exhaustion and worry and surprise our now-pretty-big little bundle brought with him into the world.

I have my better days and my worse ones, like everyone else. On the days I feel like an incompetent parent, it’s pretty hard. Even being a realist, it’s hard not to want to always know how to do the right thing for your child. And God forbid someone start talking about developmental milestones, because you’ll start panicking that the baby isn’t doing something a month before they’re supposed to be able to (or, as happened to me, a been-there-done-that friend made an off-hand remark about development and I took it to mean that she thought Torsten was somehow behind – she didn’t, of course). On the days things are all going well, it’s hard to imagine that there was ever a time when I wasn’t this child’s parent. It is the best, most gratifying thing I’ve ever experienced, especially when I see his joy at discovering something or just his happiness to see Papa or Mama in the morning. He’s four months old, and he’s the most amazing person I’ve ever met.

On all of those days, bad or good (even the most desperate ones), there’s not a moment I wish we hadn’t had him. I can’t imagine life without him (though I can imagine life with a few extra hours of sleep ).

Anyway, it’s late and I’m starting to blather, so I’ll shut up now, but things are still rolling along here in Mommyland. Mama herself needs to get some sleep, since we’re taking Torsten to get some pictures taken tomorrow morning and she still has to do some laundry and stuff, hopefully before Torsten wakes for his first night feeding…

That’s all for now. Hope everyone is well, and I hope to be back with more soon…

Yayyyyyyyy!

But I am woefully behind on writing and blog-reading. Oh soooooooooooooo woefully behind. Part of this is busyness, part of this is being tired and in some pain, and part of it was, frankly, some annoyance that the perpetrators of the FFD™ (something that I am finally starting to get past through sheer force of will) are getting rather persistent about trying to read my blog in order to find out what’s going on with me. The key word here is trying, but eventually they will succeed because I simply don’t have the obsession, energy or time to think so much about them that I remain ever-vigilant about them reading a public blog, and as long as I don’t know about it and they don’t bother me, I don’t really care. But for the moment, I do find it rather creepy and annoying that people who I’ve said quite clearly that I’m done with and who have in turn told me never to contact them again (um… why would I want to????) can’t stop trying to get the details of my life anyway. It’s like, move on, people. Make your decisions, accept the consequences, and move on. I’m not taking my blog down (or moderating my comments very much) for their sake, but geez… it’s uncomfortably like being stalked.

Anyhow, I didn’t intend to go off on that, but it certainly does get my creep on.

And now, to the shout-out portion of our program:

NaNoWriMo-sters!!!!: This weekend (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) is big-assed NaNo catchup weekend (presuming Small Monster doesn’t decide to enter the world). To my NaNo peeps who’ve been keeping up, I challenge you to write the number of additional words I have to make up before Sunday at midnight between now and the end of the weekend – 14884! (I’m evil, aren’t I?) And for those who are behind, let us all join in solidarity and get caught up, even if we have to add clowns in buttless leather chaps to our stories to get things moving (“Hmmm… how do I integrate that into a historical romance?”).

Hot Blogging Chicks!: To my favorite bloganistas, I will get caught up eventually in reading your fine writing, although if you can convincingly integrate clowns in buttless leather chaps to your ongoing narrative, I will be much more likely to catch up quickly, probably spewing tea onto my monitors. I will also give you extra points, although if one of my monitors shorts out as a result of the tea, I will have to take those points back

God I need sleep. I’m so going to regret posting that last bit later, aren’t I?

ETA: Ok, so there is a German final, but, eh, I can do that at home and make my husband deliver it anyhow once I’m done with it

No, the title does not refer to my behind, which, as always, is enormous. E-nor-mous. As Bridget Jones would put it, it is a bottom the size of Brazil (but, I should add, not as festive).

But I am not here to discuss my nethermost quarters.

No, no, it’s that I am behind – behind in comment responses, behind in e-mails, behind in organizing the house, behind in laundry, behind in reading news and blogs… behind behind behind.

With laundry I’m close to caught up after washing a buttload of baby clothes to put away. Laundry here at Haus Grothoff takes longer than it does for most of you, mostly because we do not, by design, have a dryer. This is not because we’re in abject poverty, but rather because we live in Denver, where especially in winter, your clothes dry in hours if left on the line/rack, so why spend the money for the dryer and energy and help ruin the environment in the process? Also, it’s free humidification of the house, which is lovely. But this also means that given that we only have so much rack/line space, I can only do a load or two in a day, so getting behind can be a bad thing.

Outside of the laundry, I’m starting to get a bunch of stuff put away and get the house under control, but there’s still so much to do.

This becomes harder and harder as Small Monster gets bigger – he’s apparently holding raves in my belly early in the mornings, and in the mid-afternoons, and just before bed, and if I eat vegetable pot pies, and if there’s music on TV or my computer, and when I stroke my belly and sing, and and… I’ve been looking for the flyers advertising these raves around campus, but no such luck:

In Utero Productions Presents:

HiccupFest 2007, Featuring DJ Small Monster!
Location: Mama Monster’s Belly!
One (cramped) room of Techno Action with special appearance by The Cheat!
Friday, October 19th: $10 before the 4 am bathroom break, $15 after.

Clearly Small Monster already has a handle on his mama (as if the cute ultrasound pic hadn’t made that clear already *gush gush gush*). And he’s growing lots, so his mama is tired. Add to that the FFD™ (the new way I’ll refer to the Frickin’ Family Drama™ from here on out, although it should be noted that I use a different word than “Frickin”, thankyouverymuch) and my week of painful intestinal chaos which caused me to get a little behind in my coursework (caught up now!) and a little behind in being a normal human being, and you have a very frazzled and worn-out Soon-to-be-Mama Monster.

I suppose I should get used to it – all of the mamas I know have let me know this frazzled worn-out behind on everything state is par for the mama course, and I suppose it’s probably a bit like grad school: you walk in knowing you’re already behind the first day. But I’d still like to get some things in order here, because God knows I won’t have time in a few weeks. Oh, and did I mention that I’m only 4 ½ weeks from full term??? Now, given my luck, he’ll go to his latest possible birth date – 9 ½ weeks from now (no, Mickey Rourke is not involved) – but still… we could have a Small Monster here in one short month. I so need to finish those curtains for our room, or the kid will never sleep (stoopid bright Colorado sun… ).

Oh, yeah, and then there’s NaNoWriMo in November… which is my current excuse for trying to hustle and get things done before November 1^st. The real reason, of course, is that I’m getting too big to do most of this stuff (although amazingly, I can still run across the street and have the energy to yell at the evil woman in the SUV who almost backed over me in the crosswalk…) and I really want some time to rest up before the little one comes. (Plus, my sister-in-law is coming out for Christmas, and the last thing I want to be doing is trying to clean house with a newborn!!!)

So anyhow, I’m behind. I probably owe half the people reading this some sort of correspondence, so I’m sorry – I’m trying to get to it!

It was one Hell of a weekend.

Christian and I rented a car for a full 3-day weekend (usually we only rent one for a day) to get last minute baby and winter preparations done around the house, and it was busy busy busy.

Friday was a security conference and then my baby shower, which was much fun (and may have involved accidentally directing some guests to a halfway house instead of the party, which is always a fun part of any baby-related event) and a lovely way to see friends before the big arrival. Thanks to Susan, Steve, Lynett, Chris and Kyra for a great time and a lot of useful baby swag and advice! It was awesome

Then Saturday was childbirth class (which I have to admit is useful, although I’m still wondering if I’m going to get to apply any of it or if they’re just going to cut me open like a watermelon…), after which I shopped for most of the baby stuff we need but don’t yet have (and remember, I hate shopping!). I still feel vaguely guilty buying baby stuff because it seems like tempting fate, but seriously, I don’t think I’d feel very good about the kid having to be naked all winter, so shop I did. We also had a nice little dinner at an Asian fusion place near campus with one of Christian’s graduate students, at which I learned that “bistro” probably comes from a Russian word (which we got through French) meaning “quick”, which the place was, in fact, not But hey, you learn something new every day…

But wait, there’s more! And it involves shopping! (Boo…)

Sunday I drove Christian and one of his grad students to Boulder for a programming languages conference. After dropping them off, what do you think I did, hmm? I got to shop more at Babies “R” Us (ugh – fortunately, I got in just after they opened, but enough after they opened that all of the sales associates had latched onto other unsuspecting expecting couples so that I could get what I needed and get out), which is between Boulder and Denver (and quite a drive from both home and Boulder, to be honest). But that wasn’t enough shopping fun, so I then went to a baby resale shop in Boulder (where they resell baby clothes, not babies, c’mon…), which was full of clothes that actually cost more than I’ve paid full price for anything Small Monster has now – so that was a waste of time. And finally, I got to hit Target again to get whatever I couldn’t find elsewhere. Because, you know, I hadn’t had quite enough shopping for one weekend. At least I got a lovely dinner with my evil husband at The Boulder Teahouse before we headed home, though. (Food and atmosphere were great, and there was this cute German sitting across the table from me. How awesome is that?)

But for the record, that is way, way more shopping than I can normally put up with.

As if that weren’t enough, I got to drive to an OB appointment this morning (note: Small Monster’s doing fine), and then hit Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club (two places I generally don’t like to shop) to get the last of the last of the last of the things we needed, although none of these were for the baby (some rugs for our living room hardwood floors, some toiletries, etc).

I am done shopping.

Done, I tell you.

So that’s one part of what made the weekend so chaotic, and given how much I hate shopping (and driving, for the record), that was really enough for me.

Unfortunately, on top of all of this mayhem, just before the baby shower, I got a handwritten (and sincere, if misguided) letter from a family member that just kept The Drama ™ going and going, and this letter, over the course of the weekend, ended up precipitating the final blow in the estrangement from the family I grew up in – this all started with the announcement of my pregnancy in April and has been rearing its head every few weeks since then, making being pregnant and joyful really hard, and causing no end of visits to my counselor to try to figure out how best to handle things. I had hoped to be able to keep contact with at least one of them once I had decided I had had enough, but the events following the receipt of this letter made it quite clear that this is utterly impossible.

Sometimes in life you have to make decisions that are personally unpleasant but are the best ones you can make for you and your family, and that’s what I’ve done – we have a child coming into the world, and it is our job to look after his best interests. If those interests collide with what is comfortable and desirable for some other people, it is unfortunate, but that cannot be helped. After putting up with attempts to draw me back into to the drama again and again over the course of the last 7 months, even after having made it repeatedly crystal clear that I had no interest in participating, I have to admit that it’s a great, if complicated, relief to be able to finish my pregnancy and start on our journey as parents without the baggage of those who feel the right to constantly violate one’s boundaries, even if the way everything has happened is really very painful. I’ve mentioned this drama obliquely several times over the course of my pregnancy here, and I never really spelled any of it out – some details don’t belong on the Internet – but for those who’ve wondered at my occasional mentions of it (comments about drama and pseudonymous comment posting, among other things), that’s been what’s been going on for the past several months. I kept completely mum about it after some point because I did not want to engage those who were making my life so difficult, but since I really no longer have anything more to lose by being open about it, my level of self-censorship has gone down by several degrees.

So it was a very busy weekend, and perhaps not the most pleasant one because I’ve had to come to terms with some things I really didn’t want to accept about someone I love; on the other hand, I don’t have to tiptoe around anymore, waiting for the next e-mail or letter or phone call or blog comment intended to stir my life up again at a time when we have quite enough stirring up going on! The drama has made it really hard to focus on the fact that I have an incredibly loving husband, unbelievably supportive and fantastic friends (near and far), and a snuggly little Small Monster on the way – all of whom bring untold amounts of love and joy into my life, and all of whom deserve a partner/friend/parent who is present and engaged rather than constantly distracted by this unnecessary anxiety. I sort of feel like (once I get over the sting of this weekend’s events) I’ll be able to give that soon for the first time in a long time.

Anyway, that was a lot more personal than I usually like to get publicly, but it sort of felt good to be open about it.

The weekend is over, and the sun is shining outside. I think I’ll make myself some tea and go enjoy some fresh air.

(Note to readers who are almost definitely not you: Negative or abusive comments will be moderated and/or deleted and will be treated as harassment if appropriate. If you don’t like the rules in my sandbox, go play in your own…)

(Ed. note: 11/17/2007 – This is a backdated post. It will never appear on my front page, nor do I need it to. It has been sitting in my drafts folder for a long time because while this has been a significant part of my life’s experience for the last several months (decades, actually, though the part about it involving a baby is new), at the time I wrote this, I was being very careful to keep the stupid drama going on in my real life as quiet as possible. I was sincerely hoping that the participants would settle down and get on with their lives and leave us alone. When they didn’t, and when I continued to have such nightmares and it became clear that those relationships were well and truly over, I decided that I was really OK with posting it. It’s nothing but the truth, and it’s important to no one but me, but I find that the more open I am about all of this, the more power I have to change it. I am willing to live with the consequences of my actions here. Caveat lector.)

I’ve had a pleasant few weeks of sleep, to the best of my recollection (needing to roll over again and again onto the other side because one side is sore from Small Monster’s home’s weight aside, of course), but it seems that the crappy nightmares are still there. I don’t remember most of my dreams of late because I’m sleeping so well, but occasionally I’ll have such a deep, believable nightmare that I’ll wake myself up screaming from it (this morning I was crying and screaming and moaning, and because I’m sleeping in the living room due to belly hugeness issues, unfortunately there was no Christian to cuddle and soothe me back to sleep). It’s pretty horrible.

I find that these nightmares usually ruin my morning – really ruin it, because they’re so real they might as well have happened, and it’s very hard to shake off something traumatic right after it’s “happened”. I’ll be honest here – though these particular nightmares started with my pregnancy, since some rather significant trauma also happened at the same time we announced the pregnancy, there’s really no way to tell what combination of factors actually is causing these things. I can only say that even though these nightmares really require no interpretation – they’re variations on a theme from a part of my life where I was absolutely powerless to escape someone else’s uncontrolled rage and behavior, and the one person who could have helped did not – I would give just about anything (my firstborn and husband excepted) to make them go away. I have a very good therapist, so it’s not as if I have no one to talk to about them, but I am a little tired of waking up feeling absolutely sick to my stomach because something I worked very hard to get away from – and have finally succeeded – still continues to torment me in my sleep.

It is, perhaps, because for the first time in my life, after some time in therapy and a whole lot of talking to deal with recent drama, there is a name for all of these things that happened. That may not sound like a big deal, but when a situation you simply can’t make sense of has been hurting for years, finding out that there is indeed a name for it and that its definition fits so eerily well that you really cannot deny that this must be what it is, there is a sense of tumultuous freedom associated with that. It hurts, but there is a release of sorts. That there are well-defined symptoms and behaviors to describe what went on at the time is an oddly wonderful thing, though it’s been a period of (often painful) reflection and attempts to understand why what happened happened. Instead of rationalizing things, instead of sitting back and saying “yes, it was horrible, but he/she only did it because that person had a difficult childhood/never had good role models/whatever” (and thus downplaying the fact that while all of these things are true, it neither excuses them nor diminishes the fact that they were painful, emotional violations of trust), I am finally able to sit down for the first time in my adult life and say “that was – and is – bloody awful, and I have the right to do what I need to do to stop it from continuing”. It’s not a matter of blaming the person with the symptoms and behaviors, although he/she is certainly the only one who could do anything about it – it’s just been a matter of being able to sit back and say, “no, this did happen, and to try to pretend that this doesn’t impact who I am and how I’ve learned to deal with other people and situations to avoid being told that I ‘have a chip on my shoulder’ is downright ridiculous and ignorant.”

And so all of a sudden I’m remembering a whole lot of things I’d put away in boxes under lock and key, and it all appears in my nightmares. I must tell you that if the person (actually, let’s be fair here – people) involved in the situation were to read this, I’d be told that it wasn’t so bad, that I’m remembering it wrong, that I’m so melodramatic, that I am, as ever, the person to blame… and the person/people involved might well read this. The last time one of them read something in my blog that bothered him/her, that person actually created an entire pseudonymous persona (right down to having had a fictitious child with genetic difficulties that died! I shit you not…) to try to “send a message” – God knows what that message was actually supposed to be, because the only message I got from that was “that is some kind of fucked up”, but in any event, that’s the kind of thing I can expect if I ever talk about these things, and so for so much of my life I have not. And because I do not, they rear their ugly heads while I sleep, and I am trying very very hard to just deal with them finally.

I’m still trying to find a balance between what I can say publicly about this and what I can’t – there is a big difference between describing events and how they impact you and maliciously trying to air dirty laundry, and while I’d never intentionally do the latter, I know that whatever I say will be perceived that way by these people, and figuring out how to deal with that without engaging them is pretty damned messy. On the one hand, the kinds of things other people in the same situation have said to me about their experiences has been incredibly, incredibly liberating – I finally feel like I’m not alone in my own head over what happened, and that I’m not smoking crack when I’m able to say to myself that what I remember really did happen, and that I don’t have to accept a rewritten version of history – or, more importantly, the present – just to not rock the boat, because my boat got rocked all over the damned place when I was keeping my mouth shut and letting people reshape reality for me to keep the peace, and the only person who can stop allowing that is me. I have had to, in the past several months since my pregnancy started, end some relationships and, as a result, severely restrict others that are very, very important to me. It has been a bloody painful time all by itself, and to be honest, I was really worried in the first three months that I might miscarry because of it; thankfully, Small Monster seems determined to be born, and to be honest, it’s mostly for him that I’m doing all of this internal housekeeping so that I can be a good, present parent. Now that the main shock and pain of it all is past, I’m left with these nightmares, mostly about being forced back into that situation and not being able to assert myself enough to get out of it.

The nightmares, at least, vanish sometime the next day, and I do wake up in a house where I am absolutely loved in spite of and for all of my faults; I have made a much better life for myself, and I am not feeling guilty about that any longer. It’s just that first thing in the morning, pulling myself back to this reality is a little tough, and the tendency to have “bad pregnancy dreams” fueling the nightmares on is making this tougher than it needs to be.