Hello, old friends. I just got the following e-mail from my mother. Hold my hand, now, and read it with me:

Julie,

Why don't you let me keep the baby for a year! I have thought about this and it is something that I would really love to do. I would certainly give the love that I don't think would be possible anywhere else. Daddy is fine with this. Think about it.

{Edited to clarify: She means while I'm at work, in lieu of a trustworthy and emotionally stable daytime caregiver.} Ain't no way in hell I'm getting out of this one unscathed. My husband had this to say: "Wow. That email has borderline written all over it. You need to print it out, pick up the page with some tongs, and mail it to the American Psychiatric Association." He even provided a link. Heh.

We all know this is an impossibility. I don't trust my mother, as much as I love her despite myself, and would be hesitant to leave a potted plant in her care for an extended period of time. It's the actual SAYING of the NO that scares me. Shakes me to the core. She still has a lot of power, you see, and I'm nothing but a weak-kneed preggo with an overabundance of emotions and a dearth of self-assurance.

So I come here to say ACK!!!! And that I miss you. And that I've been reading BtVS fic the past couple of days, and it's reigniting some of the old spark.

Love with abandon. It’s my favorite phrase. I think it’s my favorite phrase because I’m not exactly capable of doing it. I want to love with abandon, and, more than that, I want to be loved with abandon. It’s what I’ve always wanted and what I can’t wrap my mind around. People who do it, flagrantly, stun me, spin me around and off my axis and leave me feeling less than. Why can’t I do it? Because I’m afraid. I have to hold on to a little bit of the fear that keeps me grounded, guarded, stuck. Without that fear I might just forget who I am and how deeply I can hurt.

I am slipping a little. Back into old patterns, old ways of thinking that have never done me any favors. I stopped seeing my interim therapist. Nothing against her; she was perfectly nice and perfectly capable and all that stuff. I just found myself unable (not unwilling, I think) to be open with her. I found myself glossing. I do it with StT too but I trust her to know when I’m doing it. Unfair, I realize.

I’m holding a lot of stuff in these days, and that usually doesn’t end well for me. I’m clinging to my mom again, and that doesn’t, either. I’m afraid this baby isn’t ok and I don’t get to know for sure for at least another ten days. I can’t relax until I see or hear a heartbeat. I’m eating too much to make up for all the empty slots: alcohol, cigarettes, Ambien and Xanax and everything else I can’t do anymore. It’s infinitely easier when you’re doing it FOR someone and I do feel better physically (breathing is easier, certainly) ... Still, there are days when I’d like a glass of wine, an after-dinner cigarette, a little help sleeping or calming down. Those cravings have me edgy. (And we all know how easygoing and placid I usually am,  wink nudge.)

Mostly I just want to talk to somebody before this stuff gets too built up inside me. Before I forget how to be honest, which happened last time. Mostly mostly, I want StT to come back and ease my fear that she’s just a figment of my imagination.

The big fear with the first one is that you’ll fail. Fail at all of it: diaper changing, feeding, holding, consoling, being a mother. And you do, in a way. Diapers don’t stay clean. There is spit-up and there are days when the baby wants to eat more than the books say he should. Your muscles ache from stiff posture and frozen arms because if you move he’ll wake up. Sometimes you just can’t make him stop crying. And you can always name five or six women who seem to have it all together while you come apart.

It’s not failure but it’s not perfection and you think anything less is unacceptable. That’s how it is the first time.

By the second, and this is my sincerest hope because, well? By the second, you’ve unburdened yourself of a lot of that bullshit. Perfection is a myth you gave up that time you found your one-year-old toddling around the kitchen in the middle of the night sucking on a stick of butter after having broken the third refrigerator lock in a row. Or when he fell off the shopping cart you shouldn’t have let him hitch a ride on and you ran over him with it. Or when he repeated a word you didn’t know he heard you say. The myth of perfection goes the way of snuggly baby fantasies and memories of childbirth. By the second, you have reality firmly in hand.

I’m looking forward to growing this baby. I’m looking forward to feeling him/her move, to watching my belly swell, to the times when people rush to give up a seat or hold a door, and when old ladies in the grocery store stop me to offer unsolicited advice.

I’m also looking forward to holding him (stiff posture and frozen arms). To watching Mini’s face when he meets his sibling for the first time. To realizing for a second time—and much sooner than I realized the first—that perfection is unattainable, nonexistent, and, frankly, kind of boring. That the good stuff is in the missteps. That when he shakes an entire container of baby powder all over his room and his person because I forgot to close it after the last diaper change, all I need is a vacuum and a camera.

I’ve been Mommy for a while now, and I’ve screwed up a lot. Still, I have a pretty fantastic kid despite (or because of?) those mistakes.

I simply won't acknowledge that I kind of want to vomit right now. That'll make it go away, right? Besides, even if it were nausea (which it is NOT), it would be nausea with a CAUSE. Purposeful puke. Sanctioned sickness. Righteous regurgitation. Blessed barf.

Sorry.

Thanks to all of you for your kind words and congratulations. I guess the official rule book would advise me to wait a while before sharing but I couldn't. And I'm glad I didn't.

Honestly, now that the reality has set in I'm pretty freakin' excited. Not that I wasn't happy about the news, but it's just ... actually swallowing it whole, like an ice cube that you try to crack with your back teeth but then you lose your mind for a second and breathe in and suck it down your throat, like that ... swallowing it whole can be tough. A wise woman told me that the best thing I can do right now is to be short-sighted, and I think she's right as usual (shh, don't tell her I said that). One day at a time. Right now I'm good with the "I'm pregnant" and working on the "Holy shit, are you kidding me I have to wait till November 16 for a doctor's appointment???" And in the meantime life goes on pretty much like always. Like always with no cigarettes and no alcohol and no sleepy-time medication. Like always with claws.

I listened to Once More, With Feeling on my way to work this morning. It is impossible not to sing along. I sang the whole way here. Loudly. Off-key, but that's ok because Lord knows some of them were (I'm lookin' at YOU, Xander and Willow).

Those songs are special.

............ I'm going to have a baby!!!!!!!!............

Mini #2 is currently settling into his/her new digs, where he/she will remain until roundabout June 21.

Mommy is excitedconfoundedhopefulgobsmacked. It's still surreal.

They call it devaluation/idealization, and it’s a hallmark of my “condition.” Did you know that I had the best job in the world before December? That I was happy, settled, comfortable, and fulfilled? That getting up was easy, knowing, as I did, that I was heading off to this piece of corporate utopia where I was paid competitively and always appreciated and never taken advantage of?

Yeah, I didn’t know that either. Accuracy flees in the face of idealization.

StT, she never let me down.

I don’t know how to get out of the cycle or if I’m supposed to be trying. The thing about idealization, at least the way I’m using it, is that it makes you feel like shit. Because the things I’m misremembering are no more. I don’t have that job. Hell, no one has that job. The company itself no longer exists as I knew (and yes, sometimes loved) it. StT is not around to cancel an appointment or otherwise piss me off, and so she continues to exist in this manufactured bubble of perfection and nostalgia and if only. It’s October. January is eons away.

But enough about that. I shake it off just as quickly as I wrap it around me like a Snuggie. Sometimes.

I’m tired. Not feeling well, physically, or terribly stable, emotionally. I feel old, suddenly, like 31 stole over me while I was sleeping (and not dreaming of all these falsely perfectified wonders of the past, oh no) and I woke up to find gray hairs sneaking into the brown and little lines that shouldn’t be on my puffy face.

The job … sucks. It sucks and sucks and sucks some more, and I feel guilty for even thinking that, as I know of two people off the top of my head who would be more than happy to take it. “I’d work with monkeys at this point,” one of them told me yesterday. “The phrase ‘over it’ doesn’t even apply to me anymore.” So where do I get off complaining about this cycle of tedium and boredom and boring tedium? My brain is atrophying, so what? People here don’t like me (I come off as a total bitch, and I know that and I can’t make myself care enough to fix it), and the ones who did I’ve shut out because it takes too much energy to interact. Sometimes I don’t speak from the time I leave the house until the time I pick up Mini from school.

Mini, ohhh. He’s a teenager in the making, at 4. No kidding, there are slamming doors and blaring music and tiresome sullenness. And, if I’m being honest, there are enough kisses and snuggles and silly jokes and flower weeds stuck into bottled water vases to put the other stuff to shame. That child … He just blows me away.

Hubby and I are better. So. Much. Better. I don’t know when it happened, or how, and I don’t really care because why would I? What matters is that we’re talking again, touching spontaneously, laughing at each other’s quirks and at the little blows life keeps delivering.

So I’m ok. I’m walking the line, and I’m holding (somewhat, and mostly) steady. And when I’m not, I’m wallowing in the sparkly perfection of the past.

The receptionist at my eye doctor was wearing a button that said "Ask me about my lashes," and I found it more amusing than it probably was. I kept thinking of people I know and the buttons they could wear, and that is an entertaining way to spend the wait while your eyes dilate. Or maybe it's just me. Ask me about my odd sense of humor.

I don’t think I ever learned how to assess my feelings. Part of the problem is that my feelings rule me. They are, nine times out of ten, magnified to shocking disproportion, and by the time I realize that I’ve already acted on them in a usually pretty self-destructive way. Categorizing them is also difficult. I’m trying to figure out what’s up in my head these days. Am I feeling sad or am I becoming depressed? Am I reading too much into the sadness because in my past it’s tended to devolve into depression and I assume that’s the inevitable destination? It’s not in my nature to bottle things up, which can be good and bad. Good, in that I rarely have an actual explosion encompassing everything that’s been festering; bad, because it means I bitch and moan nearly all the gosh-darn time so that nothing gets a chance to fester (or, indeed, to gel into something reasonable).

I’m in a cycle just now, predictable but still unsettling. My feelings are all over the map, and the idealization/devaluation concept is reaching heretofore unseen levels of wow. I find myself wanting to undo any ground I’ve gained, I find myself taking steps to actively unachieve ... And then I snap out of it and find my center (more often than not berating myself for losing it in the first place). It’s getting harder to find my center. The person charged with pointing me toward it—or, sometimes, shoving me back in place—is "temporarily unavailable to" me.

Holy hell how I miss her.

But on my good days, I know that I have people to turn to, and to lean on when it’s too much. K, who gets it, S, who tries to. And me, who knows the truth.

I was told to report that I did not die of fright. I'm still reeling from the relief that comes after a loooooong period of dread.

I see Interim today at 10. Will post later on the off-chance that I survive.

My old friend Anxiety has reared her ugly head again. I have an appointment with Interim on Wednesday and honestly think I'd rather drive rusty tacks under my fingernails. I don't know why I agreed to do this. It's certainly not because StT said I'm not ready to not have weekly therapy. It's not because K echoed the sentiment on more than one occasion. It's not that I think it's going to be effective or productive or that it's going to dull the ache she left behind. So what's stopping me from picking up the phone right now and letting myself off the hook?

Mini is pseudo-sick. His school called us to pick him up on Thursday. Hubby did, and I stayed home with him Friday, and hubby's home again today. Mini seems to feel ok for the most part. It hasn't slowed him down at all, but he's very congested and has a nasty-sounding cough and lots and lots of, well, yucky stuff. I'm hoping he'll be able to get back to school tomorrow. We're running out of sick days.

I don't have a good feeling about this week. I know, I know, it's what you make it, but ... I don't know. I'm just not feeling terribly stable, emotion-wise. I'm trying to distract myself, but the things I want, the things I feel like I need, are not attainable at the moment and sometimes I experience an overwhelming burst of terror about that. And lately I've been needing something that my mom can't give, seeking it from her and being disappointed when I get the same old stuff. I know better, of course. You can't squeeze blood from a turnip or comfort from my mother. But knowing that hasn't stopped me from trying and trying and trying.

I miss my StT. I'm not doing so well without her. I can't picture her face anymore, and am borderifically certain that she's forgotten my name.

... and that's all I'm gonna say about it.

The woman whose voice pierces my sanity just came in, so the iPod came out. She’s perfectly nice, but for whatever reason hearing her—aww’ing and squealing and chirping—sends my blood pressure through the roof. There’s not enough iPod in the world.

Let’s see ... Last night I managed to screw up a remedial culinary effort: sloppy joes. It’s akin to burning water, messing up something that is so essentially just a mess. I mean, it’s in the name. Sloppy. I slopped, I stirred, I added and added and added ingredients and at some point I passed the place where freehand cooking turns into disaster and there’s no coming back from that. Hubby claimed a stomachache and had a salad. Mini ate some but was more interested in his croutons, and blowing bubbles in his milk. I ate it on principle and let’s just say that I regretted having principles.

I’ve decided that we need a vacation. We’ve never had a vacation, the three of us, and I’ve finally gotten some regular freelance that is significantly helping the expendable cash flow (which was previously nonexistent). We’re going to the beach. We’re going to relax, laugh, eat ice cream and fried shrimp. We’re going to enjoy each other’s company. This is the plan.

There are five (count ‘em!) newly pregnant people at my office. Maybe I should start drinking the water. Or not ... You know, I’m easily swayed.

Yikes, it’s been a while. Maybe it’s a good thing? My day-to-day life is pretty unnoteworthy, and if I don’t have grievances to air or stories of catastrophe and armageddon to share I kind of just go with it. I think of so many of you on such a regular basis. spikesgurl, louise39, rainkatt, kcarolj65, devilpiglet ... Just to name a few. So my posting in LJ-land has become spotty but my heart’s still floating around here. And Lord knows I’ll always be back.

Friday I got the call I’ve been dreading. StT has had to go on early maternity leave. I wasn’t ready. I wouldn’t have been ready had she gestated that baby for another nine months. I had a panic attack on the phone with the poor girl who called to break the news and schedule my appointment with the person charged with keeping my head on straight in StT’s absence. I didn’t let it show. It was an Oscar-worthy performance, the way I calmly requested directions to Interim’s office while spiraling into an abyss of whooshing and echoing and holy-crap-I’m-gonna-faint. I didn’t. I hung up, I stared at my computer screen for a while, I realized my eyes were dripping freely and involuntarily, I called it a day and went home and self-soothed. And now maybe it’ll be ok.

Last week I had a horrible encounter with our new receptionist. It went something like this:

Receptionist: You look so cute!

Me, obliviously pouring coffee and pleased with the unexpected compliment: Thanks!

Receptionist: Are you with child?

Me, wondering who the hell talks like that: Um, no.

Receptionist: You’re kidding!

Me: No. Really not.

Receptionist: Shut up!

Me, wondering if I’d get fired for pouring hot coffee on Receptionist: Heh.

The door of the break room slammed, seemingly of its own accord. Turns out we had an audience, and Mom-type Co-worker thought it best to trap me inside with Receptionist in the hopes that she would “get the hint.”

So this, on top of the DMV picture I just had taken that provided photographic evidence of my multiple chins AND my recent eye-opening (eye-popping) experience on the scale at the gynecologist’s office, has brought me to the conclusion that I need to get a handle on my ... Handles. I haven’t really started yet. I had a roast beef to make last night. And what’s roast without cornbread and black-eyed peas and, um, Pepperoni Pizza–flavored Combos? (Seriously.)

My appointment with Interim, who also happens to be StT’s BFF, is next week. I’m spectacularly ambivalent about it. (I just found the sticky note I was writing on mid-panic last week. There is an unmistakable tear stain blurring the appointment time. I also wrote the word “shit.”)

Anxiety. It kicks my ass sometimes, all free-floating and unshakable. Do I know the origins of this particular bout? Meh, maybe. Yeah, I think I do. And just because I don’t want to deal with it doesn’t make it any less there. That’s just my old friend denial. I’m told it’s not a very good friend, or a very loyal one. It’ll wait till the moment I’m at my most vulnerable to turn on me with teeth.

Once upon a time I lived with the delusion that I could make things different just by pretending they were. Truthfully, I still struggle with this on a daily basis. My first real lesson in the fallaciousness of that was a brutal one. The panic upon realizing I couldn’t change it no matter how much I wanted to—and ohmyGOD how I wanted to. Sitting with the knowledge that the only thing I could do was face it, that devastating reality, minute after minute and day after day and wait for the passage of time to dull the edges of the horror. That’s what it was, really—horror. I would say it decimated me, but, turns out I’m still standing. I mostly don’t believe that little victory is mine to claim, anyway. I’m still standing despite me, not because of me.

(Except there was that one thing I did right.)

Am I getting better? Have I just aimed my pathologies toward a different target? I’m trying to see things for what they are, but it’s hard after a lifetime of pretending. But still there are things I know and am not desperately trying to unknow: My mom’s very sick, my dad’s maybe equally so in polar opposite ways—together they’re the perfect storm. My sister was abused as a child, and is unreachable as an adult. I give my marriage short shrift. I so often feel inadequate as a mom, and yet I want another baby because I want another baby. My therapist is leaving for three months—and it doesn’t feel like “no big deal.”

So, see, I can think about these things, bounce ‘em around in my brain, not spend my nights obsessing on ways to make them untrue. That’s gotta mean something. She still thinks I live in denial, but I don’t tell her everything. I know two things: I’m not doing as well as I could be, but I’m doing better than I was.

I’ve decided to be proactive in a couple of different ways. I’m taking control of my life. Sorta. Kinda. I went for a walk last night. “Walk” sounds so innocuous. That’s perhaps true when one is not walking with a crazy fitness buff, or when one is not walking at a pace I heretofore would have classified as a jog, or when one is not walking up and down a series of Everest-esque hills with a 120-pound golden retriever in tow. (He was with us till the first hill, scampering right along, but after that I pretty much had to drag him. So much for my plan to use his bulk to help hoist me up the mountains.) The night before this brutal exercise I did half an hour on the stationary bike (I almost just typed “sedentary,” heh). I know, it’s not much. But starting slow is better than not starting, right? And crazy fitness buff has offered to sell me her pretty, pretty, lightly used bicycle for a very handsome discount. I think I might be more of a rider than a walker. We shall see.

I’m reading Stephen King’s Lisey’s Story with reservations aplenty. The man has failed to impress me in a long time, possibly since before the accident, and while that makes me sound self-important, maybe, I do have a boatload of love and horror and tears and late hours invested in his body of work. In my lunchtime jaunt to the library yesterday I also picked up a self-help book called I Thought We’d Never Speak Again for reasons that aren’t clear to me but which made hubby snicker.

Sometimes I wonder if I’ve painted a fair picture of my mother. It stabs me in the gut, sometimes, thinking that I haven’t. Not so much that it matters what other people think of her, but that I might be doing it all wrong, hurting her unnecessarily and undeservedly in my extraordinarily timid and inconsistent reaches for boundaries. It’s been a point of contention in therapy, my nagging questions: Is this the only way? What if I’m ok with the way things are? Sometimes I am, sometimes I AM. Why does that mean I’m a failure? I don’t think I have a clear understanding of what enmeshment is. Or of why it’s such a bad thing. Mostly I wonder if I’m going along because, like always, I don’t really know what I think, and my feelings, pesky, changeable things that they are, shed no light on the reality of the situation. Doesn’t there come a point when you have to decide for yourself what is going to work for you? I love my mama. I’m learning to say no. I’m determined to stop letting her approval matter.

Can’t that be enough?

Can I share a bit of ridiculousness?

My therapist is going on maternity leave starting October 1, and the thought of that makes me cry. Not makes me want to cry or makes me almost cry—it makes me sputter and blubber and mewl like the overgrown child that part of me so essentially is. All that with a healthy dollop of panic. So I’m not thinking about it yet. There is time to process, time to prepare, time to convince myself that she will be back and that even if for some reason she (gasp) doesn’t come back, I will be ok. Even though I found out yesterday that some of my triggers are nothing more than words and phrases like “try your wings” and “graduate” and “while I’m gone” and “temporary separation.”

Don’t tell me. I know it’s weird.

My mom is giving me the cold shoulder because when we went to visit my husband’s family in Texas, I called her on Sunday night instead of Friday night as she’d requested. That crime, after falling to my knees begging them to provide transportation to and from the airport. She amused me by saying that since I’d waited so long to call, she’d had to go ahead and make plans for Monday; therefore she really wasn’t sure who was going to pick us up ... Thinly veiled threat left hanging in the air. We haven’t talked since. She sent my dad to pick us up, but I kind of wish she’d stranded us so that I would feel more justified in being angry about her being angry. There are taxis.

This week is getting me down, a little. I’ve had some good times, but overall I’m overtired, stressed, anxious, and discomfited. Unsettled. It’s probably the mom stuff, and StT thought so, too, but I’m supposed to keep reminding myself that this awful feeling, this stomach-squeezing-foot-shaking-jumping-at-shadows tension with tendrils of guilt and shame and very watery resolve? That feeling means I’m doing something right.

Hoo boy. I don't post here enough anymore. We're about to leave for Houston to visit the in-laws. As always it hits me in the panicky spot even though the logical side of my brain (which does exist, turns out) tells me it will be fine. It's just a little bit haunted, there. And I feel a little bit left of center, not quite as firmly in the driver's seat BUT. I will be ok.

I miss LJ. Since catching up is probably out of the question, I will at least start keeping my own pace again.

I'm in a good mood this morning, which goes against the unspoken rule of Mondays. I had a good weekend, and I'm probably still floating on it. My husband has suddenly and unexpectedly become very demonstrative ... there are hugs for no reason, and kisses, and cuddling. And plans for Mini #2.

I've restarted Veronica Mars with K. We both had a visceral reaction to the first few notes of the theme song. I forgot how damn good that show is.

My dad got a cake for Father's Day, and hubby got a picture frame hand-painted by Mini, plus a laminated footprint with a sappy sweet poem about how little boys want to be like their daddies.

I'm posting two excerpts from K's blog, which is amazing in itself but which hit me straight in the heart with these two in particular.

Of fathers and sisters:

http://onthewoodside.blogspot.com/2009/06/my-guy.html

http://onthewoodside.blogspot.com/2009/06/my-girl.html

Have a great week!

I keep meaning to update, but nothing keeps happening. I kind of like it that way. Also, it scares the hell out of me. Part of me thrives on chaos, and without it, I'm left waiting for it with an odd mix of emotion that is more anticipation than dread. There's a lot to be said for the comforts of familiarity.

My mother? She still crazy.

My husband? He still mostly doesn't listen.

My Mini? He still shines. (He turned 4 on Sunday.)

Me? I'm still adjusting to the pace of peace.

What a year it's been. I mark it from last summer, and look back on it with awe.

Love to all my friends.

Summer of ‘69, Sweet Home Alabama, You Don’t Have to Call me Darlin’
-College, Post-Freshman Year From Hell. It’s all impromptu parties, lazy days, late nights, freedom. Game days, the smell of grilled whatever and the sound of “Roll Tide”s randomly stabbing the air. Platonic boy(stop) friends. I’m nursing a raging X-Files obsession. I am alive and young, healing and hopeful. (Is this retroactive idealization in action? Maybe.)

It’s Your Love (Tim McGraw and Faith Hill)
-Holy crap, I’m married. We’re crazy-young but in love. Hand-holding still, and busily planning. We’re in an apartment but hoping to be able to afford a house in the not-too-distant future. A house and a golden retriever. He’s sweet, so sweet and so funny, and we have all these silly inside jokes that will last way longer than we could have known, some of which will take on a certain gravitas in the future. He hates his job and I like mine okay. It’s peaceful, uncomplicated. I make coffee at night sometimes, and we drink it out on the balcony and talk about everything. Sometimes we wake up at the same time in the middle of the night and talk some more. There is so much to talk about. I become obsessed with Dawson’s Creek about five years too late, and discover the wonders of Internet friendship. Life is good. I wish we’d planned less, and spent more time enjoying what we had. It’s never been quite like that since.

100 Years (and pretty much everything by Five for Fighting)
-We have our house now, we have not one but two golden retrievers, and I’m pregnant so we’re trying to move. I have cookie-cutter dreams, panic running under them like a current. We take long drives at night for no reason; it’s just something we do. No destination. Just driving, listening to music, looking at beautiful houses on a street that will forever be out of our price range. We don’t talk much about the baby, not as much as one might expect, considering it’s all I think about, ever, ever. I’m feeling distant from my friends, drifting out of my spot in the single-file line we’ve maintained since childhood. I want someone to talk to but I’m afraid to air my fears to him because I sense his fear, and I don’t think our fears would play well together. I cling to my mother. She lets me. The baby is born into an endless loop of Five for Fighting’s album “The Battle for Everything,” and that’s just what it feels like. I am crushingly afraid, and wholly (it seems) alone. I am a mother?

Once More, with Feeling (Buffy, the Vampire Slayer musical)
-I’m dancing with my newborn in the living room of a house that I will never learn to abide, singing along to “Walk Through the Fire” because he likes the movement and the singing and it’s my own personal escape. Win-win. I have trouble in the anxious hours, but come noon, I’m going to be okay for a couple. It’s been a while since I came apart in the middle of the juice aisle at the grocery store, and I think I would heal faster if I thought I could. If I thought there was a problem other than a self-imposed one. If I thought I could tell someone just how lost I am. I cry maybe more than the little one does, and the dogs seem nervous about my tears as well as his existence and presence in our once-quiet home. But from noon to 2, every day, I go to Sunnydale. I like it there.

For Blue Skies (Strays Don’t Sleep)
-I’ve discovered Veronica Mars, thanks to one of my dearest fandom friends, and things are getting back into something of a rhythm. There is a burgeoning friendship that’s a real friendship, and it terrifies and exhilarates me because I don’t think I’ve ever had one before. The sun rises and sets on my little boy. I’ve found my way to the other side of the depression, and I’m okay. I’m okay. I won’t ever be the easygoing, laid-back, bright, sparkly, sunny mother I used to think I had to be, but I hold my own. He smiles and I melt. My husband is a great daddy, and watching him with the baby makes me remember why I love him. I can do this. I’m desperately yearning for a Logan/Veronica pairing. I create fans from co-workers who I’m beginning to really actually like, a couple of years after the fact.

Breathe Me (Sia), All I Want is Everything (Over the Rhine), Stand in the Rain (Superchick), Drift (Matthew Ryan)
-Things are unraveling. I’m destroying the things that matter and I don’t know how to stop. It’s a costly, desperate, crushing confusion. For a while, I’m just. utterly. empty.

Run (Snow Patrol)
-Unemployment doesn’t agree with me. As bad as it was, there at the end, I am spinning from the shock of the loss. For a while we were bonded, the throwaways of the 2008 corporate “restructuring,” and that was helpful but it’s fading now as we each have to make our own way. There’s a hole in me that I don’t know how to fill, and I’m trying to fill it with all the wrong things. I cry a lot. I see my therapist a lot. I lean heavily on her and pray that she’ll withstand my weight. I don’t think I can take another loss just now. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. And dear God, the missing. This is my anthem of unemployment.

***

...And now? Now I don’t know. Now I listen to whatever’s on the radio, for the most part. More often than not the theme from The Wonder Pets or The Backyardigans is looping in my brain until I want to scream. But it’s funny, isn’t it, how music stitches itself into the fabric of your life? Becomes more than what it is, or what it was intended to be. Becomes a part of you, etched right there in your memories. For right now I’m kind of glad I don’t have a stage-of-life song. I have a feeling that one will emerge, years from now, and I’ll think of this as a time of second chances, of wishes granted, of comfort and love and general wellbeing.

It’ll rock.

The Heart of It

Sometimes he wonders if she wants him to be more like Duncan, or like her father—steady and supportive, and boring as hell more often than not—and he wonders whether he should try. She’s softer than Lilly was, underneath her armor, and sometimes he forgets that because she puts on such a good show. She bites back, and when provoked her acid tongue puts his to shame, and it’s that edge that makes him want her more, and love her more, and fear her just a little.

Their fights are spectacular. He’s intoxicated by her wrath, although he tries not to analyze that too deeply because it seems uncomfortably like an Aaron thing, to be aroused by such hostility. Once he’d acted on the impulse to kiss her during a particularly charged encounter and she’d slapped him. He’d pasted on a convincing smirk as he pressed his fingers to the side of his mouth to check for blood, more for her benefit than anything, because he sensed the evaporation of her anger and wanted to get in one last stab.

“Geez, Veronica,” he’d said, wiping nonexistent blood with the back of his hand. “You should have told me you liked it rough.”

If Keith hadn’t come home at that moment things might have taken an interesting turn. As it was, Logan had walked out under the heavy stare of his girlfriend’s father and the burning, challenging, enticing one of the girl herself.

She’d shown up at his door two hours later, wearing pajamas and standing on tiptoes for a long, hungry kiss that sent all the blood in his body south. Neither of them said a word, and Logan kicked the door shut as they began tearing frantically at the clothing between them. Apologies and acceptance traveled back and forth against a backdrop of shuddering gasps and flesh, hard and soft, and in the rocking rhythm of their bodies.

The memory of that night still makes him hot.

She never says she loves him. He says it, not often because that’s not their way, but sometimes, when she looks at him just right or touches his hand or does something so essentially Veronica that he can’t help himself. “I love you,” he says, often with a smile, often as a prelude to something less vulnerable, because that’s something life won’t let him be. Not anymore. So he’ll say “I love you,” and smile, and follow it up with “Let’s make out,” or something similarly lame because that statement, alone, no matter how much he means it, is too naked, and too unforgivable.

The fights are taking over these days, and the sweetness of the between times is overshadowed. She’s worried about him and getting fed up with the feeling, and he knows it and feels her slipping away. Part of him hates her for it. Where does she get off breaking his heart? He could blame her, as he did once, for all that is wrong with his life, for all that is wrong with him. He could hide behind sharp words and sarcasm and just let her go—since in the end he’ll have no choice.

But he doesn’t. Instead, he shoves hateful insecurity under newly polished bravado, and waits for her to give up on him.

***

On closer examination, there's more to it than I originally thought. Huh.