transcended.net

Still waiting for my boys to return. The little one is sick apparently and wants his mommy.

I am really done with this alone time. I’ve come to realize, I don’t need or prefer it. I am better when I’m a wife and a mother. When I can focus on the people I love, instead of the dark crevices of my subconscious, which I don’t love.

When I am alone for too long, disturbing images creep into my mind. I do things like imagine myself dead in the shower. And the thing is, I’m not suicidal, not at all. My life is a good life, being a wife and a mother give me ample reason to want to see what tomorrow brings. But when I’m alone, my mind just wanders to the idea of being dead. Like what if I could close my eyes and stop existing? Just not be here anymore, and be nothing instead?

I don’t know if that’s normal. Probably not.

It’s just where my mind goes when it has too much space to wander.

One of the things I love about this new work from home regime is I get to see my kiddo in the mornings now. Yesterday as he was getting ready for school he asked me what my favorite memory is of being a child.

Me: I don’t know, I had a pretty good childhood with lots of happy memories. What about you? What’s your favorite memory so far?

T: The day I was old enough to go to school.

Please let this love of school last at least another 14yrs. Now if I could only get him to love violin, my life would be a lot less stressful.

I’m not dead.

I mean, I have a feeling that most of the people who were still reading my few and far between ramblings about life’s goings-ons at the point when my webhost decided it didn’t like something in my code and was going to just error out my site until I fixed it…were all people who had some visibility into my life through other channels and thus knew I was just the mom of a kid who started pre-k and had no time to figure out what was wrong with the damn code.

Feels good to write in run on sentences again – just because I can!

So anyway, no, I didn’t fix the code, I didn’t do anything. I eventually gave up checking my website and just left it for dead while continuing to pay the annual renewal because I was too sentimental to stop. I kept thinking maybe someday I’ll have the energy to do something about this but I never did partially because I was just using my iPad for everything and no longer even had a non-work desktop or laptop that was easily accessible.

Enter….new hobby I picked up last year that has me needing to do a lot more data entry and also left me awash in Microsoft gift cards (long story, maybe I’ll share another day)…so I got myself one of those new fangled half tablet half laptop devices since I’m sort of confused without a touch screen now but I really, really hate life without hotkeys (damn you Apple!).

And after receiving it yesterday, today I was feeling motivated and thought to myself, Self, you should probably at least take a peak at that website and see what you can do about it even if that’s just nuking it and starting over, because hey you have a real Windows device now with an actual keyboard so maybe you will want to bring back the incoherent rambling thing you used to love! So I came here, to this website, expecting it to be dead only to find that lo, indeed it was very much alive and working as though NOTHING HAD EVER BEEN WRONG?

Clearly, the tech support at my webhost was full of the same stuff all over our city streets (shit, it’s shit, and a lot of it) and their whole “your code has death triggers in it” was because they didn’t really know what was wrong at all. And at some point it must have gotten fixed. Now all the “please moderate this spam” emails I started getting in my inbox again makes sense, maybe I can use that to pinpoint the date my website came back to life.

Last Saturday morning, sometime between 7:30am when she called her father and 8am when the police arrived at our building, my neighbor shot herself dead.

We were just waking up in the unit next door and we heard nothing, knew nothing, until we noticed a large contingent of police and firemen gathering in the courtyard outside of our neighbors door.

Our first thought was that it must be the mother. She looks like she’s well into her 80s if not older and her health has steadily declined with each of the seven years we’ve lived next door. We had been preparing ourselves for years that she would likely pass soon.

But no, it was the daughter. She was a lovely women, always something a little sad and lonely about her but I never thought much of it. It was to be expected right? A woman never married in her 50s and the sole caretaker for an elderly and frail mother. Now I look back on all the missed opportunities. Moments that could have been used to create a real friendship were rushed because I was too busy and had things I needed to do or I was just too tired and exhausted to create another connection with somebody.

My heart hurts for her, for the pain she must have been in to do such a thing. The loneliness. I wish I had been more empathetic, understood how lonely she was and reached out. But it’s too late now.

Another reminder to live every day to the fullest. To reach out to people you see in pain. To at least try to help if you can. And to live without regrets.

Everything around here is still stark white (negative). I feel unhappy about this. Go figure.

So three months have passed and I must say, not a whole lot has changed.

Actually that’s not true. A lot of stuff has changed but the baby-limbo continues unabated.

T started his new school at the end of August and adjusted flawlessly. It is more of a “real school” type environment as opposed to the loving daycare-ish environment he has been in for the past three years. I asked him last night if he likes his old teachers better or his new teachers and fully expected him to say his old teachers (because he LOVES them like family) but he actually said he likes his new teachers better. I asked him why and he said because “they teach better.” Looks like I won’t need to sharpen my tiger mom claws, we’ve got a little tiger cub on our hands already.

He also started jiu jitsu, soccer and starts a new art class this week in addition to swimming. So he is a pretty busy kid now but he seems to love it. The one afternoon he had off last week he was like “why don’t I have anything today?” when I picked him up from school and said we were going home.

It’s really starting to hit me now that I have a kid. Not a baby or even a toddler, but an actual full fledged kid. A kid who told me last week as I dropped him off at school that he didn’t need me to walk him in anymore because he’s a big boy. On the one hand – sweet! curbside drop off ftw- but on the other hand – mah bebe 😭. So you know, a lot of emotions.

And then there’s the aforementioned baby limbo. I’m actually technically in the 2ww right now, but I don’t have much hope for this month as I’m already 12dpo and still getting BFNs. I know that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but since I got BFPs starting at 9dpo with T…

It’s just weird. I’m still in this weird place mentally about having another baby. And now that we’ve sort of actually been trying for a few months now part of me is wondering if there’s an issue. This in turns make me wonder if I should get the plumbing checked out just to make sure it’s all even still working. But I’m half afraid that if we do find an issue that I’ll then start to feel pressure to fix it when the truth is we’re not even totally sure we should have number two. Like we’re both competitive people and I’m afraid being told we can’t do something will make us feel like we have to overcome it even if we’re not sure it’s what’s right for our family.

On the other hand maybe finding out we can’t easily get pregnant again would be the closure we need to just let that idea go altogether? Maybe we would feel a sense of relief that the decision was not really one we could make for ourselves anyway?