Some Kind of Update?

I had micro-body contouring in June, this year. I spent nearly $10,000, which isn’t necessarily information that every person would share with the world, but it’s a big part of the story and probably a big part of what’s wrong with me, now. I thought that if I could have the fat sucked out of my body, I would feel better about myself and I would become more active and thus lose even more weight and finally have the body I’ve been wanting for the past few years. I was right, to an extent. Directly following the surgery, my soreness had me motivated to be more active. I was unaware of the results of the procedure, as yet, but I knew what I was supposed to do to maximize the positive results, and I did everything in my power to do them. Or, so I thought. Now, months later, the swelling is still going down in my lower abdomen. My doctor was more aggressive with my lower abdomen than with my upper abdomen, leaving me with a weird belly pouch that looks even worse than the rounded belly I had beforehand. My before and after pictures are like night and day, but when I looked at them, my eyes didn’t register the differences, at first. It occurs to me more and more, lately, that I don’t know what is and isn’t within my power or control. I don’t know what it takes for me to be giving 100%, or any other percentage. It occurs to me now that I might simply be putting relatively little effort into anything, anymore. It’s hard to exert effort when nothing is interesting, but when I feel well enough to be productive, I find myself completing nothing more than domestic chores. I feel lost, like a piece of me is missing, the way children sometimes go missing. I feel incomplete, like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle with some of the pieces missing; but it’s not together enough to figure out which pieces have disappeared. Other people fill the hole inside of me because I don’t know how to do it myself. More and more, recently, I find that I am incapable of accomplishing anything without some sort of outside influence. I feel stifled, though I’ve never had more room to breathe. I feel trapped, though I’ve never been freer. I feel like I’m losing myself, though the opportunities for self-discovery have never been more abundant. Words are harder and harder for me to come by and I don't know why. It seems that when I sit down to write, I have to wrack my brain for the vocabulary with which to begin putting pen to paper. Not only that, but it seems as though my grammar is getting worse from lack of practice while my art gets worse from having the wrong kind of teacher. Where are my outlets? Where is my creativity? Where is the wonderful skill I once held so proudly, with which I could weave words together so as to create something so beautiful, I could potentially invoke tears?

A Shocking Revelation

                My friend and long-time acquaintance, Alex, was visiting and Randy was napping with Persephone. We were talking about the past, a good 10-13 years ago, reminiscing on some good times, some bad times, and whatever else came to mind. We were on the topic of friends.

                “I only had two friends at Roy. And one of them was a shitty friend and the other one moved to Illinois at the end of sixth grade.”

                “Who was that?”

                “Rose Stramaglia.”

                “I remember her! You know, I was actually just thinking of her the other day.”

                “What? No way! I think about her off and on. We wrote to each other for a while, but then we lost contact. I’ve tried finding her online and everything, to no avail.”

                We went on for a little while, talking about Rose and how I missed her and how he heard her talking to his friend Meechie and that’s when he stopped picking on her like all the other kids did. I was impressed that she’d talked to one of the guys we thought were real assholes; I was also surprised to hear that she’d been a fan of and played Final Fantasy. That brought us to the topic of video games and I mentioned how my aforementioned shitty friend, Kaydee, would make me watch her play video games relentlessly.

                “She was a terrible friend. I’d go over to her house and she would just…”

                “She would just do whatever she wanted?”

                “I mean—yeah, basically—you know, she just did her own thing, regardless of my presence. She would play her video games and wouldn’t let me play or join.”

                “Wow.”

                “Yeah. Like, I’m pretty sure she’s the main reason I never was a big gamer. Because she never let me play. That, and my fucking games would disappear. Like, I had a Sega Genesis once, and my Sonic the Hedgehog and Echo the Dolphin games just up and disappeared… so I gave the console back to my dad.”

                All of a sudden, Alex was looking at me a lot more meaningfully, which is saying something, as he tends to have a very meaningful expression nearly all the time on his face. He looked away and I couldn’t figure out why he looked guilty, until—

                “Yeah, about that…” Deep breath. “I think… I’m pretty sure… I mean, I broke your game.”

                What?! Wait. No. What? How—I don’t even—what? I don’t remember taking my game to school, even. How did he break it? He never visited me; he’d never even met my grandma until just the other day! How the hell did he even get my game, let alone steal it?!

                Complete mystification. Honestly, I was shocked.

                “How—what?”

                “Yeah, I just saw it, like, hanging out of the desk, and I just… I just wanted it, so I took it. I think I wanted it for like, a collection thing, at first… and then I broke it. I don’t even know why I did it, I am so sorry. I felt like shit as soon as I did it, like, I probably just destroyed something that really meant something to someone. I’m sorry.”

                “Wow… I just… Wow. It’s okay…”

                “No, it’s not. I’m sorry. I’m a dick.”

                “Well… yeah. Just. Wow, dude, you were a dick.”

                “Yeah…”

                He looked so guilty, I couldn’t even be mad at him, which caused a great deal of confusion within me. All of a sudden, this great mystery of my life was solved, and the person responsible for me giving up my Sega was sitting right next to me, feeling as guilty as they come and apologizing profusely. Honestly, I couldn’t hold it against him. I couldn’t even say what would ordinarily have been the first thing to come to mind. I couldn’t bring myself to be indignant or angry, so I just said it was okay and he said it wasn’t, then I explained that I appreciate the honesty and it was a long time ago, so I don’t hold a grudge. Still, the revelation had rendered me shocked, to say the least.

                We revisited the topic a few more times. He couldn’t express his regret enough, despite my assurances that all was well—after all, he has a plan in place to make it up to me and it’s more than acceptable. Mostly, I couldn’t believe that he, of all people, was the person responsible for my loss of Sonic the Hedgehog. I never would have suspected him unless someone had been hinting at it. All this time, I’d thought that Kaydee had probably run off with it some time when she visited; it seemed to me as though the game was in my drawer one day and mysteriously gone the next. If someone had told me that a person had broken my game, I would have initially assumed it was my “friend”, and then I would have run down the list of kids who picked on me, from worst to best, until I gave up (because, honestly, I never would have guessed it was Alex).

                Even now, days later, I find myself bemused and mildly stunned to think of it. I hold no grudge, mind you; it was a long time ago and Alex has by and large made amends already. At the time, though, I found myself stunned. I made an attempt to take care of my daughter and it didn’t work; Randy took her back and I simply went outside to smoke because I was overwhelmed with emotion. The feeling that I’m failing as a mother is bad enough by itself; this night, it was amplified by the feeling that my peers, in my childhood, really wanted to ruin my life. I had been awash with a strange kind of joy at the moment of the revelation; the fact that Alex had provided me closure on this video game was a moment of great relief, despite the fact of the matter. It actually took a few minutes for the realization to sink in that I was sitting beside someone I now considered a close friend and he was telling me that he was personally responsible for what may have been a major event in my life that contributed to the reasons why I was never a big gamer like many of the friends I have now always have been. Suddenly, I felt as if my world had been turned upside-down. The world really was out to get me and the proof was in the pudding, as they say. Suddenly, I felt as if losing my Sonic the Hedgehog game for the Sega Genesis was the reason I didn’t play all of the Elder Scrolls games, or why I haven’t finished a video game since beating Portal 2 in tech school because my boyfriend-of-the-time insisted I play the game and I got hooked immediately. Suddenly, it was as if Alex was personally responsible for my never really fitting in to any niche or clique in school.

                I recognized the toxicity of those feelings as well as the irrational thinking behind them. I knew that what I was feeling was inaccurate and unreasonable, not to mention unfair to Alex. It had been a stupid, impulsive action by a preteen boy, for which he felt immediately sorry and has been regretting ever since. Who was I to start pinning all of my childhood woes on him? He wasn’t even a primary tormentor! If anything, he had largely left me alone up to seventh grade, when he would regularly bait me into letting out a completely predictable (because I said literally the same exact thing every time) stream of curse words that was intended to make him leave me alone. Then, after seventh grade, until he suddenly apologized for an array of things in our sophomore year and subsequently afterwards, he left me alone. We became Facebook friends after our making amends in school but still didn’t talk until I returned from the military and sent him a message, one day. I had absolutely nothing to hold against Alex—why the hell would I suddenly grasp on to this one cruel act and hold it over his head as though he deserves all the extra blame and guilt? I smoked a bowl and came back inside, moped around a bit, and finally started to feel better.

                Randy came in and Alex and I told him what we’d been discussing. Alex told Randy he was going to get me the game the next day, to replace the one he’d broken. Randy’s immediate response was to point out that I no longer have a Sega Genesis, followed by an anecdote about the Genesis he found that comes with 12 games, all for like fifty dollars, that Alex could get for me instead, for my birthday. Alex actually agreed—rather eagerly, in fact—even though I still felt as though he’d made amends enough and could make amends more in other ways if he felt the need. But, hey, he’s saving me from having to buy the Genesis myself later on!

In seriousness, though, I admire the honesty of my friend and the courage it took for him to look me in the eye and tell me what he did. Any person who has the moral fiber to do that deserves to be forgiven and to put the past behind them, releasing it and accepting it as a part of their past and nothing more, nothing worse.

Getting My Baby to Sleep

                “Shhh… Shhh… Shhh…” The mantra is a regular, along with Hush Little Baby and the occasional Alouette as I rock my six-month-old daughter in an attempt to make her sleep. Her eyes are heavy; they drift close only to snap back open and stare blearily at me, drifting closed yet again. Watching her fight sleep would be entertaining if it weren’t such a regular habit.

                Just about any parent on the plant knows the struggle, and if they don’t, I want to know their secrets to having babies sleep at regular times that can be scheduled.  My husband and I have been bed-sharing with our daughter since shortly after her birth; she slept better between the two of us and we wanted to be able to sleep, too. Now, she’s six going on seven months old and I am doing my absolute best to get her to sleep in her own bed. We have a pack-n-play set up on my side of the bed and I feel this need to insert myself as her mother, fully and completely, by getting her on a sleeping schedule wherein she sleeps in her own bed and things go well. I’m probably imagining some kind of unreachable utopia of parenthood that never happens, but it’s a damned good fantasy, damn it!

                It’s only been a few days, but here’s the rundown:

                Day after day, night after night, I sit in my recliner and rock with my daughter as I try to get her to fall asleep so I can put her in her bed and get work done. So far, I have only succeeded twice, and her sleep was short-lived. I don’t mind the short life of the nap as much as the times I’ve failed getting her to stay asleep after putting her down in her bed. I set up the old Graco swing my grandparents bought for us from a garage sale and found out Persephone enjoyed it. Shortly thereafter, I discovered that it wanted to launch Persephone at the TV. I still put her in the swing, but I either push her manually or watch her like a hawk while it’s on so that I can turn it off should it get even slightly too fast. We need a newer swing, but what can you do when you’re broke? That’s why I’ve been trying to learn HTML and other computer skills in order to have more success with my blog and, soon, my webcomic. Between trying to get Persephone to sleep and trying to work on my computer skills and making money online, I’ve found myself pushing off the Wii and getting a workout with Just Dance 4.

                This evening, I became so angry that I was shaking. Persephone had woken up both times I’d put her down in her bed; both times, she’d looked around for a minute or two and then started crying. I can’t figure out why she won’t go back to sleep like she’s done twice for me previously. Am I putting her down too quickly? Maybe I should fake putting her down before actually putting her down so that she doesn’t think much of it. Maybe I should also move slower as I go.