Two Days Early

Brother and CSIL visited this last weekend.  They only just left yesterday.  And... it was draining.  I was not at my best.  She's really starting to show now, and she's got a lot of rather noticeable symptoms.  So I feel like I can't hide from her pregnancy at all anymore.  Even if we're not talking about it (which is infrequent), it's just so visibly present that I can't think about anything else when she's nearby.

At one point on the trip, CSIL got so nauseated that we had to pull over so she could throw up in a parking lot.  And as I watched her dab at the mess with napkins as the rest of us scrambled to get ginger ale and saltines and hand sanitizer, I actually felt jealous of her.  Jealous.  I wished so fiercely that I were vomiting in a parking lot, too.  And that made me feel pathetic, you guys.  Just absolutely pathetic.

But it still wasn't as awful as the way I felt when I got my period today.  Two days early.  I didn't even get a chance to hope.

And it hurts, you know?  It just hurts.

Because I wasn't even looking for it yet.  AF never comes early.  Only recently has "on time" even been a thing.  It's like I was waiting for Christmas to open my presents and then someone opened them for me two days early and everyone in the world who got me a present decided that cat figurines was the way to go.  I don't like cat figurines.  What would I do with them?  What about me made people look at me and think, "That woman must love her some tiny statues of fluffy things"?  And not only do I not get to wait for Christmas anymore and not only do I get these terrible gifts instead of gifts I want and not only do I have to try and figure out why no one in my life understands me, but now, even though I never wanted them in the first place, I have a whole freaking collection of cat figurines that I have to display in my house.  So people are going to come over and see my collection and think, "Oh, she must like those."  And then they will buy me more.  Cat figurines will be my whole life.  I will be the crazy cat lady even though I am married and have, like, one cat.  Tops.  Meanwhile, I get to watch everyone else get the presents that I actually wanted and talk about how cool they are and how wonderful life is and how special this whole wonderful holiday season has been and I will have to be happy for them.  Or everyone will think I'm horrible.

I'm Basically Schizophrenic

So I was waiting in line at the grocery store.  It came to be my turn.  I smiled at the girl behind the counter and said, "Hey, how are you?"  Because I like to be nice to people in customer service jobs!  They deal with a lot.

And I swear, you guys.  I swear that she answered, "I'm pregnant."

My head snapped up and I was like, "What!?" in what must have been a shocked and startled tone because she gave me a weird look and answered, "I asked how you were?"

Of course she did.  Because that is a normal thing to say.  Why did my mind change her normal thing into a crazy baby thing?  Why does my mind not want to give me a break?

Babies have come up a lot today.  Husband, who rarely dreams, woke up this morning from a dream that I've been pregnant for the last nine months and we just had no idea because I'm not showing at all.  So in the dream we had a son and we named him Collin (for some reason).  When Husband woke up he was mad for a couple minutes that he didn't really get to have a baby.  Which I found very sweet, actually. Because, as I've mentioned before, sometimes I feel like I'm the only one with emotions about all this.  So it's nice to see him get a little mad about not having the son that for a few unconscious minutes he thought he did have.

Aside from that, my Facebook has been blowing up with baby pictures all day because Canada Cousin is still camera-happy with her newborn and Church Friend finally went into labor and Law School Acquaintance's baby just hit seven months and College Friend is pregnant now, too, and Person I Don't Remember Befriending has decided to do a sweater vest fashion show with their baby and basically there are just so many babies.

But I'm doing fine!  Still fine!  Not depressed or freaking out!  Everything is great through sheer force of will.  Because now that I've come out of my hole of depression, I am terrified of getting thrown back in.  I don't like who I am when I'm in there.  At all.  I don't like living that way.  But I know that this process is hard and I know that I'll have more low points in the future and that scares me.  It's like there's a whole other me lurking inside and sometimes she takes possession of my body and just spews venom at everything and cries, like, all the freaking time.  Right now she's in a cage... but I feel her there.  She could come and possess me again whenever she feels like it.  She's just biding her time right now.  Pacing inside of me and waiting for the right moment to snatch my free will and sunny attitude away again.  It's her that whispered in my ear that some random cashier was confessing her pregnancy to me.  And it's her that scoffs in my mind that other people's babies aren't even that cute.  I want her to go away, but she's just there.  All the time.  And I don't know if she'll ever leave.