transcended.net

Every once in awhile I’ll have a moment where I look around and it feels as though I’ve just woken up from an unnaturally long sleep.  Like I’m Rip van Winkle and I’m not sure where I am or how I got here.

I had one of those moments tonight at our friend’s 40th birthday party.

You see, Paul and I have one set of friends who he met through his old company who are all older.  They’re all married and all have girls between the ages of 4-8.  We are the “young pups” of the group and constantly get the, “This is what your life will be like once you have kids” routine from them, but they’re a great group of people and we always have so much fun hanging out with them despite the age difference.

The restaurant we went to was in the suburbs but would still be considered “fine dining.”  The girls are old enough and well-behaved enough that that isn’t an issue with going to the nicer places.  Everything actually went well, the food was good, conversation was great, plenty of wine for all and the girls were quiet in their seats while we ate and then started building a fort along the backside of the table (so as to be out of the way of the aisles).  I was just sitting there amongst all this chaos of children and being with these people, moms and dads…when suddenly I looked over to a table on the opposite side of the seating area from us.  They looked to be in their late twenties.  Clearly dressed for a night out after dinner.  Clubbing?  Or just a lounge/bar? 

That was one of those wake up moments.  I’m sitting here at the “grown-ups” table (although I kid you not we were seated on the “kids” side of the table along with all five girls), my friends are discussing school supplies and summer camps and Legoland…and I’m just like…huh?  What am I doing here?  And I see that other table and I wonder, wouldn’t I make more sene over there? 

Except, I don’t either.  They were clearly just beginning their night.  Honestly, by the end of dinner I wanted to come home and pass out.  Even going to get frozen yogurt before calling it a night didn’t sound that fun (but it was W’s birthday so I sucked it up and put on my happy face).  But there is no way I could have finished dinner and then headed for a bar or club to drink and stand on my feet, possibly dance and be rubbed up on by strangers.  As appealing as it all sounds, deep down I knew that that’s not where I wanted this night to go either.

It’s just….I don’t know…it’s strange. It feels like I’m caught between two places.  Where I was and where I want to be (but am not). 

Part of me wishes it was just that simple to be that other girl again.  The one that partied all night, did crazy things, did stupid things….but I know I’m not.  Now I’m the person who thinks explaining CDO’s to people is proper dinner conversation and I get tired by 9pm. 

I wish we could just fit in.  Have our adorable little ones, be the young parents, and get on with our lives.  Instead, now, we’re faced with all these constant questions, when are you guys thinking babies?  If only it was that easy…

So we don’t fit into that world.  Maybe we should try the path of youth, drinking, partying, carefree, unobligated life.  Except that sounds….so empty.  It’s not what I want.

Are these really it?  My options?

** Moocow.  The word almost came up this morning like so much vomit after a night of bad choices.  Not sure where it came from, or why, it’s actually something I had completely forgotten about until I caught myself swallowing the suddenly re-emerged reflex to use it in such an easy manner.  Realize this whole little bullet point probably made no sense at all, but to be fair, the whole thing doesn’t make sense to me either.  Why did this word pop into my head today after so long?  Not really sure.

** Tonight I’m tagging along to a client dinner.  Have I mentioned how much of a fan I am NOT of those?  And yes, I do realize that this makes being in sales a tad more challenging than it already is.  I was actually given every opportunity to decline but since it’s probably good for my career or something (bah!) I forced myself into accepting the invite.  My reason for not wanting to go to these things are usually twofold: 1) Client dinners typically mean late nights (and too much booze), which is really no bueno when you have to be in the office by 4:30am.  I am usually okay on the booze part since I am the master of drink-nursing, but the lack of sleep part always, always hurts like a mofo…and 2) Have I ever mentioned how socially awkward I can be?  Particularly around the demographic that our client base tends to fall in (white males in their mid-30’s to 40’s, upper-middle to upper class, mostly married with kids).  I just don’t know what I’m supposed to talk about with them, and as someone who hates silences in conversations?  That’s a problem.  Because I tend to try to fill those silences with incredibly dumb, awkward statements that often have no bearing at all to the conversation at hand.   No matter how often I tell myself to just stay quiet, I can’t seem to help myself.

** I have pretty much been completely failing to exercise, but I’ve been steadily losing weight anyway.  I’m actually at my “goal” weight already, but now that I’m here, I still don’t quite feel like myself yet. Or quite look it, for that matter. So I’m thinking maybe five more?  You know, now that I think about it, since I’m not actively doing anything to lose weight it probably doesn’t even matter what “goals” I set anyway.  What will be, will be.  I do think I look and feel much better though I’m a little worried that I’m going to become malnourished soon.  I try to force myself to at least eat a little something three times a day and get all the different food groups involved, so hopefully that’s enough.  Note to self, start taking a multi-vitamin…

** I don’t know when, but a day is coming (I hope) when I will write a real post.  One with multiple paragraphs that all at least make a pitiful attempt to be connected to one another.

** It’s National Infertility Awareness Week.  This should really be one of those things that deserves more than a bullet point, but since we don’t know if the aforementioned coming day is coming this week….bullet point will have to suffice.  Infertility has always been a weird word for me.  I don’t really know where I fit into it all.  I don’t know if I’m infertile, only that my doctors don’t want me to try.  I don’t know if my body is capable of sustaining itself and a pregnancy at the same time, it may well be, but it also may very well not be.  And would that make me infertile anyway?  Or still just a lupie?  And even if I did fit the definition of infertility, I still don’t really feel like I completely belong to the “infertile” world – at least not as it exists in the blogosphere.  I don’t get their posts about TTC (trying to conceive) or their procedures or drugs (except the ones related to auto-immune issues).  I don’t understand cysts and follicles and retrievals and shots, I read about how they feel about being “benched” for a cycle and realize I’m not in the same world as them.  They are benched for a month or two, longer perhaps for the unlucky ones?  I’m benched indefinitely.  On the upside (?), I read their posts about hope and failure month after month and I don’t get that either.   I really don’t feel much hope about my situation in the short term (i.e. I don’t start to feel hopeful if my period is late) mostly I just feel the failure.  Lots and lots of failure.  But I can see how it would be painful to have your hopes up time and time again only to have them crushed.  I did feel that last summer, my attempt at trying to try to conceive I guess.

** Need to sneak in a quick nap now…

I’ve been keeping myself busy occupied lately.

Actually, even that’s not really true.  I’m not sure what I’ve been doing lately, but it (clearly) hasn’t involved the actual publishing of any of the posts I’ve half-written over the past ten days. 

I feel so scattered.  In so many directions.  And I’m not sure how to translate that into words that can be understood by other people – or even by myself a year from today. 

And I’m avoiding.  I don’t want to think about the Really Important Things so instead I’ve been distracting myself with a couple items of laughably minor true importance, and other items that are actually Pretty Important.  You see, this is why I always like to have a reservoir of Things I Actually Do Need To Do at the ready (not because I’m a horrible procrastinator, not at all…) so that when something even more important comes up, I can reason with myself, “Well, Self, you really do need to get this done too, so is it really so bad if you do this first?”  That was a conversation I had in my mind many, many times during college.  It usually involved a big test and cleaning my room.  Or redesigning this site (which sounds like a curiously good idea right now, no?). 

Sigh.

If only life could be so simple again.  Now I’m worrying about the fact that my fertile years are waning and my kidneys won’t cooperate with me (and actually, am I fertile at all?). 

And, in the Slightly Less Important But Still Pretty Important category, despite working 11 hour days (and lunches are eaten on the desk) and waking up at four in the freaking morning (which yes, still sucks), I’ve recently concluded that I’m going to have to put a LOT more effort into my job.  Like probably more effort than I’ve ever really exerted on anything before in my life. 

Sadly the really laughable things now are those that are unchanged since college.  Eerily unchanged, in fact.

On the adoption front, I have done…nothing.  I googled South+Korean+adoption+agencies and a billion of them (or at least that’s how it seemed) came up and I suddenly I felt crushingly overwhelmed (for the other country there is only one approved agency).  Reality began to sink in as I realized, not only is this not going to be easy, I’m going to have to chase this really, really hard.  Every single step of the way. 

Life isn’t fair.  I know this.  And yet, I can’t help but mentally stomp by feet and pout over the injustice of it all.  I want things to be easy.  I want my path to parenthood to involve nothing more than a bottle of wine and a brazilian wax (*tmi alert* which by the way I decided to test out for the first time during Sp.aWe.eek last week and am decidedly now a fan of) but instead it looks like it’s going to involve research, forms, phone calls, chasing bureaucrats re: paperwork and generally having our lives examined under a microscope by virtual strangers who are evaluating our fitness as parents from a pile of documents and a few brief meetings. 

It feels completely unnatural.  And scary.  And it makes me kind of tired just thinking about it (and then I watch Teen Mom 2 and really want to hang myself).

And that’s all I can manage for right now, so time to bid you a good night…

I’m pretty sure I have some kind of infection on the right side of my face.  My right eye is aching, my gum aches, my cheek hurts and my sinuses aren’t feeling so hot on either side. 

This can’t be good.  But at least it’s Friday so I don’t have to worry about whether or not I’m sick enough to miss work.  Because sadly enough, I do stress myself out over things like that.

Incidentally, it’s actually now early Saturday morning when I’m publishing this (though it was all written yesterday) and I’m feeling much better…

***

As noted, ten years ago yesterday I purchased my first and only piece of the internet.  I’d been blogging in one form or another for about a year and a half before that though and it’s kind of strange to think back and realize how much has happened since then.  And how I’ve been rambling at the internet through it all. 

So oddly enough, there are a handful of strangers out there in cyberspace who, while they don’t really know me, know a whole heckuva lot about my private thoughts and feelings about some of the more “major” events in my life.  More than a lot of people who would consider themselves close to me would know (unless they read this site).  I don’t like to express despair in front of others, I like to do it alone so the only person I have to feel pathetic in front of in the morning is me (and the internet, but luckily I never have to look the internet in the eye the next day).  Outside of a significant other, I don’t like to cry on people’s shoulders.  I’m not comfortable with that type of vulnerability for some reason.

But I do think that’s why this has been a healthy outlet for me and why I continue to do it (even if only sporadically now).  Or maybe it’s terribly unhealthy because it gives me a place to fixate?  I suppose there are two sides to every coin but since this is supposed to be some sort of happy ten year anniversary post, let’s just ignore that possibility for now…

 I can’t deny that this site has literally brought good things into my life.  Incredible friends, people I never, ever would have met and others I probably wouldn’t have reconnected with without this place.  I never would have done the grad program that I did, and wouldn’t have the career I like and the life here in SF (which I love!) that followed.  So, if you think about it, this blog has literally changed the course of my life.

***

I first started putting things on the internet during my senior year of high school, sometime in February 2000.  

I was having a shitty year.  My friends and I were being bullied for reasons I still don’t fully grasp (probably because high school kids are just plain dumb sometimes).  It turned into a whole huge thing that ended up involving parents and the district and in the end no one was really happy and nothing was resolved.  I was screwing up in school and putting my admission into UCLA in jeapordy.  And then I found out my dad was having an affair and wrestled with telling my mom for two days before I finally did. 

It was probably right after that when the internet replaced my trusty paper diary.  It felt kind of good to put it all out there.  I even gave people I knew the link at first.  Even with all my dark and depressed rants up there for all the world to see.  I think it was the first time in my life I’d ever really displayed all the insecurity, fear, pain and self-hatred bubbling just under the surface.  And it connected me with other dark and depressed teens who were filled with insecurity and self-hatred in such an honest way because we were all kind of anonymous at the end of the day. 

Those connections really drove me to continue writing when I left for college, and at some point during my freshman year of college I started using blogger.  Which meant it was suddenly easy to be prolific.  No longer did I need to carefully hand-code each post and upload it, I could just jot down a thought, any thought, and hit publish.  I was giving status updates before FB and Tw.itter even existed…what can I say?  I’m a visionary.  Heh.

During sophomore year, like a lot of college students I started to become a bit more politically aware.  

But unlike most other college students, I became a pretty hardcore conservative Republican.  And as my interest deepened, I think it’s fair to say this pretty much became as much of a “political” blog as a personal one.  Particularly when I was dating the marine, the subjects seemed to converge quite naturally a lot of the time. 

Senior year I started interning (and eventually working full-time) for the lady that fundraised for the RNC and BC2000.  So politics was a pretty prominent part of my life at that point, which you’ll definitely see reflected in the content of my archives from those years.

I think I actually had a bit of success as a political blogger, I certainly had the most readers during that point in this blog’s life, but I don’t know if I could ever really go back to it.  I still follow politics a little bit (although honestly not that much), I’m still pretty passionate about it at times, but I really don’t have the heart to fight over a lot of things either.  It just kind of doesn’t feel like it’s worth it to get worked up, maybe because I’ve become cynical and jaded and really don’t think anything is ever going to change anyway, so why waste the effort?   I haven’t bothered to learn much about a lot of what’s going on these days in the world of politics and am reluctant to opine too much on subjects I feel ignorant about.  I can’t say I’ve always succeeded, but I think I’ve always at least made an honest effort to do the research before forming too strong of an opinion on something.

Anyway, I’d say this site had a pretty strong political slant to it up until a couple years ago.  I’m not entirely sure what happened, though I have a few guesses. 

One, I live in SF and it’s just too hard to have a conservative lean in the city and still care about politics.  I wouldn’t even call myself strongly conservative or Republican anymore, I’m generally that detatched from what’s going on, but it’s REALLY hard to pay attention to politics here in SF because it means you will have to hear about all the moronic Stupid Shit the city government is doing.  In that sense, I didn’t think anything could be worse than LA, but that was before I moved to the city by the bay.  I do love it here though.  So go figure.  I guess I can’t complain right? 

Then there’s the most obvious reason why this blog changed…once again life happened and now that this blog has seen me get married, go to grad school and transition into a career I actually enjoy, I’m too busy worrying about my…immediate…life, if you will.  I work eleven straight hours a day at a job that is mentally exhausting.  And, um, I’m sad a lot because I can’t have a baby and I’m kind of predisposed to being sad anyway, and holy crap am I seriously almost 30?!  So I write about that stuff because it’s what’s on my mind.  Scary, I think I’m actually coming full circle back to my days as a dark and depressed teenager.  Ugh. 

Lately I’ve been wondering, what is this blog becoming?  Is this why I delete unpublished post after unpublished post?  Because I’m unsure of my own voice?  Or because I’m not sure if I’m really okay with the direction this blog (and thus my life) are headed in now? 

And why am I suddenly hearing the Toys’R’Us theme song in my head?

I feel like I’m carrying a dark cloud around me these past few days.

I am anxious.  Anxious to the point of chest pain and dizziness.   I’m so freaking lame.  I know this.

This afternoon, I debated with myself the merits of popping one of the ati.van they gave me at the ER last summer but decided against it.  I figure I do more than enough medicating of all kinds, no need to add something new to the mix. 

Most of this is presently centered around work since that’s the easiest thing to completely flip out over.   Especially when I feel so tired and fogged over.  I feel like I’m not being very good at my job right now and I fucking. hate. that.

But the root of the anxiety?  I blame that on good ol’ Aunt Flo. 

I feel like the opposite of Charlie Sheen….losing!