eye heart internet

1.) I could make this two posts.

Or I could take an astoundingly long interview, and sadistically turn it into an even longer post by telling you what’s been going on the past couple of weeks while we’ve been fighting with the mafia   our internet provider.

Hmm, sadistic? I’ll take you up on the second option. IN LIST FORM for added curtness.

The goods :

Remember the turkey’s armpit and our former crack habit? Well, it’s slowly but surely transforming into a deliciously marketable quaint village house, with stone walls to boot. Pics to come, dearies.

2. We are moving as soon as we get this puppy (the house, not the dog) on the market and sold. To the states. Likely Las Vegas. Long story.

3. I can’t wait. My heart is beating so fast.

4. Therapy with the fraggle lady is the best ever. Everyone should have a therapist who looks like a muppet. It’s the tops.

5. Found : FOUR tiny two week old kittens abandoned last Monday by the lake. Hate people who do such a thing.  Yuki has since become a mother. Manboy and I are oohed and awed by his tiny kitten butt-licking maternal instincts. I never knew he had it in him.

6. We’ve now decided that next to the kittens Yuki looks like a giant. At five pounds, he must be at least thirty times their size. Still fits into a purse, but hello, BIG FREAK OUT when we see him next to one of those little babies.

7. The kittens, who we are bottle-feeding special kitten formula are the subject of various ‘I need a home’ announcements around the neighborhood. To my bitter discontent, they now each have a name and a story behind the name. Sushi;, La Rouquine, Ray Charles and Boris have taken over the house, and our lives, with their tiny needful cuteness. I’m struggling to keep my cold cold heart as prickly as possible, so that we won’t cave in and become the neighborhoon ‘Cat People. Manboy, on hte other hand, is campaigning to keep them. ALL FOUR.

8. Can you imagine us moving to Vegas with a dog and, duh, FOUR CATS? Say, Hello, can my ZOO and I come and crash at YOUR PLACE until we find an apartment to rent?

 2.) and Remember this guy’s idea? Well we got lucky and our interviewee, Kristy from She Just Walks Around With It, gave us a really personal-fun-writery-deepish sort of novel answer to our prying-tell-us-everything questions- graciously humouring us whilst we did nothing but overstep our bounds. And we love her for it. We’re actually pondering instauring a ‘free kitten with interview’ policy, shipping and handling included. Hey Kristy, want a kitten? Interview anyone? Anyone?

I’m going to get on with in, seeing as I’m having my ankle-bones nursed at the moment and it is quite painful. Here goes…

ZEE INTERVIEW :

You talk a bit on your blog about your Imaginary Internet Friends (IIF). How do you feel that they are actually that different from your Real Life Friends (RLF)? What do you feel when an IIF crosses over into being a RLF? Have you ever regretted ‘taking the leap’ from IIF to RLF?

This is really hard to gauge. Probably if you are a “regular” reader here, we could totally be friends in real life.

That said, I should point out that I don’t think I’ve ever made a “real life” (flesh and blood) friend from my blog. I don’t know why that is. Lack of interest? Or maybe I’m just way less interesting in person. Or smelly.

Can you tell us how you make those cute little pencil drawings with text boxes that we find peppered all around She Walks?
Yes!

I use Word.

Seriously. I use the drawing tools in MS Word. I have no Photoshopping skills to speak of, and have kind of given up on ever getting them. Whereas I have spent more days and hours formatting Word docs than any human ever should.

I use the free-form drawing tools in Word, then I just do screen-grabs of the images. That’s it!

Why did you get into internet dating? What did it bring you?
I went on my first internet date back in freshman year of college. (That would be the fall of 1993 for those of you keeping score.)

When I got to college, I discovered the internet, and email, and IM and chat rooms. I was thrilled and thought it was the coolest thing in the known universe. Immediately I started using it to meet boys.

The reason I liked using the internet to meet guys in 1993 is the same reason I like it now (hold on, let me use italics, I’m about to get all wise): in real life, you meet someone’s exterior first; online, you meet the interior.

Not only is the latter more important in forming real connections with people, the online medium makes it SO much more efficient to weed out those who aren’t worth your time.

When I’m in good physical shape, meeting guys isn’t that hard. Meeting guys who are smart, interesting, well read, and who have something to talk about? That’shard. The internet provides all kinds of pre-screening.

But let me be honest. When I’m chubby, meeting guys offline is hard if not damn near impossible. Being over 30 and chubby makes it even worse. In singles scenes, I come across as desperate simply for existing.

Online, it’s totally different. The guys see my personality first. They don’t see my dress size, they see my mad written medium skills, yo.

And so while real-life chemistry matters a lot, and while some guys will simply never date an overweight woman, I have found that men are more willing to consider my whole package when they meet me online.

What did it bring me, you ask? Confidence that I’ve got a damn sexy “interior,” regardless of my exterior (which is far more subjectively considered “damn sexy” by those with excellent taste).

It also brought me El_Gallo. And, if a little indirectly, The Boy/T.

And Ish.

What is the craziest internet date you ever had?
Oh my good lord.

Given that I’ve been doing it off and on for 15 years, I’ve had some doozies.

Sometimes they’ve been good crazy, like when the chemistry is right and the sex is unexpected and hot.

Sometimes they’ve been bad crazy, like when the chemistry isn’t right but I think maybe that will change and it doesn’t and there’s a lot of resultant forehead slapping and “let us not speak of this ever.” [See bad kissing story, except like, worse by a million.]

And then there are just the bad dates. There was the one where we had so little chemistry that I think we were both repulsed and then I blogged about it and then he READ the blog. And the one where the guy told me — to my face that — WOW, he didn’t expect me to be THAT overweight. There was the guy who decided to wait until we were in something of a compromising position to tell me, by the way, that his roommate was his mother. There was the guy who lied about being married. The guy who humiliated and insulted me in a public online forum the morning after our date. The guy with food OCD. The guy who showed up in sweatpants to take me to dinner. The guy who started off okay and then became crazy allergic to my cats, after which point we got into a contentious storytelling game of one-upmanship that left us both bitter.

And of course, the guy who liked to try to convince people that he is from the future.

But the happy-best-crazy internet date award would have to go to the one I went on with Ish. Because it started August 6, 2005, and hasn’t ended yet.

Please share what it is about knitting that draws you.
I hardly ever knit anymore because I have learned (the hard way) that on any given day, I can only balance my job and one creative outlet. I can’t seem to keep up with blogging and knitting and singing and comedy and one-off personal projects. Especially because I want to write a book and have started about five of them but haven’t made any headway. So any time I knit, I feel guilty that I’m not doing something else more career-related or bloggy or both.

I am still infinitely glad that I learned how to knit at all. I love having it as a skill, like knowing how to drive a stick-shift. (Because you never know when an emergency may happen where you’ll have to drive standard. Or, um, knit a scarf.)

So it’s fun, and creative, and in the end you get the satisfaction of having made something. I love all of that.

Do you ever knit while drinking? If so, what was the result?
Ha! Yes. And the result is that counting — which is hard enough when sober — is even harder with wine.

Lemme find it in the archives…

Here’s a post that includes me being all James Bond like with the knitting and the wine.

And here’s its result:

You’re so candid over the internet! (Ex. posting tooshie pics…) Did that ever come back to haunt you in real life?
The naked butt picture has not come back to haunt me as yet, no. Still, there have been times when this blog has made me blush for one reason or another.

On a serious note, when Ish and I first started dating and he was separated-but-not-divorced, his relationship with his family was strained. To be respectful of his privacy, I basically didn’t post about him or us. The one time I put up a relationship-y post about us, we’d been dating for four months. His family found the post and everything kind of blew up. It was an awful mess.

The most embarrassing moment ever, though, was when I mentioned my blog during a job interview. Because I am an idiot.

After reading your divorce story, you seem to have come a long way from the girl at the top of the stairs drowning in her grief. How has the She Walks contributed to that?
Wow, in so many ways.

I joke that blogging is like therapy, but it’s absolutely true. It helps me get my thoughts out, and challenges me to do so in an organized way. This really helps put things (whereby I mean “my life”) into perspective.

More importantly, the feedback is/has been life-altering. It’s life-affirming to hear “I felt that way, too!” I honestly had no idea I would be “relatable.” But it’s also nice to be kept in check. (Even when they’re trollish, I think the negative comments help keep things real in a “get over yourself” kind of way.)

Lastly, I have dreamed of being an author for pretty much my whole life. To blog, and to have an audience, is incredibly inspiring. It helps me believe that I could really be a “writer” someday (and that in some ways, I already am).

If you could take revenge on your Ex in some way, without him knowing who did it, would you? What would you do, if so?
Absolutely not.

Well, let me rephrase.

He has to live with what he did, just as I have to live with what I did. We were both at fault, he was simply more of a jackass. The only thing I want from him — or did, anyway — is for him to feel remorse. If he doesn’t, or never did, he’s then bound to repeat his mistakes. To which I say, “Eh, he’s someone else’s problem now.”

Besides, I really have moved on. Blogging the experience was unexpectedly cathartic. And if living well is the best revenge, then Dave? If you’re reading this? Neener, neener.

How did you meet Ish?
I met Ish when he replied to a Craigslist ad of mine. On paper (erm, or email, you know) he seemed great, and I was convinced we’d hit it off even if the chemistry wasn’t there. Like, even if we didn’t have a romantic spark, I thought we could find a way to be friends.

He wrote me at about 4 p.m. on a Friday, and we met at 8:30 p.m. the next night. Just like that.

Funny enough, our first date didn’t start out very well at all. The first date story is here.

Can you describe to us the precise nature of your relationship with him?
Oh, sure. How much time do you have left?

echo, echo

This question deserves its own entry and I’ve been thinking about it for a long time now. The problem is (and has always been): what do you write about your relationship when your partner reads your blog?

But here we are. It’s been over two-and-a-half years now and our relationship is awesome. We’re serious about each other. We’ve moved in together. We discuss the possibilities of a future together. But there’s no timetable and no exact commitment.

He’s not ready. And I? If I say I don’t think I’m ready, either, I am lying. And if I say I think I am, then I am the girl that no one wants to be. You know, the one whose options are to “wait” or “leave.”

So yeah. More on this later.

You write that you started the blog as somewhat of a weight loss diary. What do you see the main purpose of it as today?
I started this blog as a weight-loss diary when I thought that blogs had to have a theme. And while I’ve learned that “themed” blogs are easier to find, tag, index, and reference, I still don’t wanna. Because I am a “life” blogger, and want to write about my life as it’s happening. I don’t want to lose readers or credibility because I only write about weight-loss once in a blue moon.

Maybe we can start a theme for those of us who are life bloggers, whose category would be None Of The Above.

Oh me? I’m a NOTA blogger.

How do you deal with the fact that some three years later the issue of losing weight hasn’t been resolved?
I guess I feel the same way about the fact that it’s actually been like, ten years (give or take several years in my adolescence and teen years) and my weight loss hasn’t been resolved: crappy.

I am constantly failing at my attempts, and constantly trying to figure out why. I do believe it’s a matter of motivation — I’m pretty good at doing things I want to do. Except I can’t figure out how to make it matter enough, realistically.

It’s a bit over-simplistic, but to find the right motivation kind of requires un-learning a lifetime of beliefs. I honestly thought that I would achieve less, was in fact worthless, if I was overweight. And, when I was pushed far enough down this road and hit rock bottom, I was able — finally — to lose weight. Fear of never being successful, of never being with an attractive man, of never being treated like a respect-worthy citizen by “society” eventually spooked me. My switch was flipped on, and I went from being fitness-averse to being obsessed about weightloss.

In case you missed it the first time around, I chronicled (rather succinctly, I should add) my fat-thin-fat-present escapades here:

Escape From Stepford: A Weighty History (part 1 of 3)
Escape From Stepford: A Weighty History (part 2 of 3)
Escape From Stepford: A Weighty History (part 3 of 3)

I’m in a funny place now, though. I don’t feel like my life has been hindered by not being thin. Somewhere along the way — perhaps because of my ex-husband, perhaps because of my moving to San Francisco, perhaps because I’ve simply grown up — my sense of self-worth has stopped equating to my body size.

Which is a wonderful thing, right?

Yes and no.

Yes, because la la la rainbows and unicorns and hurrah for loving ourselves and just walking around with it.

No, because I do not like being this weight, I don’t want to stay this weight, and man — being “spooked” is SUCH a good motivator. I just can’t seem to grab that one thing, to tap into that one motivational kicker that will jump-start me and keep me on track.

But I think I will yet.

Do you feel that the blog has changed the course of your real life? If so, how?
Sure, in lots of ways.

Feeling like I really could be a writer, for one.

Validation that I’m funny is also really important.

But probably the biggest impact my blog has had on my day-to-day life is in my career.

I attended BlogHer ‘06 with Whinger and (indirectly) Jenny, just because we all had blogs and were like, I guess we should go to this thing, huh?I had NO idea before I attended how big blogging was, how many women were doing it, or that there were any “rockstars” other than Dooce. I had never heard the term “mommyblogger.” My head practically exploded.

While I was there, I was also overcome with the desire to be a part of it. Not just the blogosphere, but of BlogHer. It was clear that they were on to something potentially huge, yes, but also my event planner beacon was screeching at me: HELP THEM! DO SOMETHING! GET IN THERE!

I contacted Elisa after the event, basically saying I want to be part of you! If you’re looking to hire someone with my background, pick me! We met for lunch a few weeks later, and a few weeks after that, I joined the organization.

If you could spend one day with your mother today, how would you spend it?
I could get super verbose here, but I won’t.

I would not want a single day with her. The very notion makes me feel like I’ve been punched in the gut, and just typing this requires me to hold back tears.

I miss her every day. I have regrets — things I said to her, things I didn’t say to her, things we should have done, things we didn’t do — that run so deep I am not sure I will ever outlive them. I carry around grief the way anyone who has experienced this kind of loss does. It never goes away, it just comes and goes, like an unpredictable emotional tide.

But I have learned to live with it. I have healed, somewhat. I have gotten used to the fact that this is my reality (as much as I can).

I could not bear to have the wound re-opened. To have her here and then gone again, to start the grieving process all over again…? No, it would simply be too painful.

What would you say to her?
Well, and this is the other problem. I would probably spend the whole time apologizing. For not being a better daughter or person, for not understanding more, for not being more patient with her, for ever being angry with her — for still being angry with her — for not listening more, for not asking more questions, for not giving her the benefit of the doubt all the time, for not helping her, for growing up, for going away.

I would like her to know that I get it now. And I am sorry.

What do you miss most about her?
The first answer that comes to mind is, not surprisingly, her laugh. She was funny and she had a smile that’d knock your socks off. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a picture of her where she’s smiling the way she did in “real life.”

Her smile was an experience.

But if I’m going to be raw, the answer is having a mommy.

I miss having her around to be my mom, for all the reasons that are unique to any mother-daughter.

I have so many wonderful maternal influences (I even call Hakuna “M2″ for “Mom 2″ or “Second Mom”), and I am lucky for them. It’s not something I really talk about, but I relish getting to spend the night in homes where there’s a mom who’s about my mom’s age, like when visiting Hakuna or Jane. I love visiting Ish’s parents’ house. I sleep better, warmer, safer.

I miss being someone’s daughter. I miss being my mom and dad’s daughter especially.

What do you think she would say about the woman you have become?
I can’t handle the emotional side of this question, so I will answer it more pragmatically.

My mom was a complete free-spirit before having kids, and I never got a chance to meet that side of her (except when it leaked out). I think she’d see my life in San Francisco, and be pleased that I have found a balance between the “must-get-married-get-high-powered-job” alien version of me that I tried on when I was 20ish, and the re-interpretation I’m currently living.

She’d be happy with my being happy, of course.

She would wish that I was thinner, even if she’d never say so. She’d want my a cappella group to have a CD.

She would love my blog, she would LOVE the name of it, and she would read every day. She would write me emails telling me what I forgot and what I should write about (I would listen to her some of the time). And eventually — it would take some coaxing — she would start her own. And then she’d be obsessed with it.

She’d be thrilled about my relationship with my sisters.

She probably wouldn’t say it in so many words, but she’d love how much my sisters and I are like our father, too.

I have no doubt that she would adore my selection of Ish and his of me. (She would be perhaps a little vocal on the subject of grandchildren.)

I try every day to be the kind of person who she’d be proud of. Even when I don’t do so consciously, I make all of my decisions with my parents in mind. They wanted nothing more than for us to be loving, and loved, and happy, and to have as much fun as possible.

What more could I possibly aspire to?

OK so MB and I are stuck in a war between France Telecom (evil French internet/phone mafia) and Free (our helpless little internet provider) which means NO internets, NO phone, and NO play. Work is crazy, and piled up to my eyeballs, so I’m deeply sorry, my dearies, but posting will resume once the mafia relents connection is up and running again.

Meanwhile, to appease you, here’s some more puppy porn :

I guess carrying a little dog in a purse isn’t too bad after all.

The evening would have been perfect if I hadn’t been wearing low rise jeans, and leaning in a little to closely to make out Manboys discreetly soft conversation.  I did, however, have a coat with which I managed to cover myself before the one person who hadn’t yet seen my arse anyone else saw what I had so generously exposed to them at the place I am now ashamed to ever set foot in again my new favorite wine bar.

Something about the time changing (we do it a few weeks later than in America), or maybe it was the fact that Manboy had dismantled the bedroom shutters in order to paint them, sending morning rays of sunlight like a coaxing, teasing floor through the bedroom’s double glass doors.

I opened it to let in fresh air before collapsing anew into pillows and slumber, vaguely aware of Yuki’s soft patter as he ventured onto the open balcony and set to work chewing on the iron grate, undoing Manboy’s precedent day of work as his teeth left long slivers in the fresh paint. It will surely peel before it’s time now.

By the time we rose from our lazy morning haze the sky had already begun to turn from the peircing morning blue light to a hazy gray, which settled, and cloaked our village for the rest of the day. Manboy set to painting again, and I joined him on the downstairs terrace, suddenly inspired, and set about a series of continuous line drawings of flowers and the church across the street and Manboy and my feet and such.

Manboy looked at me quizzically, and smiled, softly inquiring as to the source of my sudden flood of creativity. I pretended not to hear, afraid that it would break the spell.

My eye traced the contours of his chin, hands, face and eyes, as my hand followed blindly on paper. One, two minutes passed. Only when finished did I glance at the paper, causing laughter to spill out of me and Manboy to look up from his semi-frozen, strained, unnatural painting position. I showed him the picture, which did not look anything like him.

He continued his painting and asked if I thought it would rain. I said yes (and was later proved to be wrong) and sketched a second portrait. And a third, and another, until a panoply of differing renditions of my Manboy lay sprawled on the cold marble table by my side. I had used a rock to hold them down, so that they would not be carried away my the wind.

None of them looked like him and I was glad.

That evening, after dinner and rum with orange juice, I asked him if we could just get naked and talk.

I was surprised, after over four years of marriage, that such a thing could make us shy. We giggled like kids. I guess that it’s natural to be naked in certain circumstances, others feel odd.

We did talk. I asked him what he wanted this year, and I told him what I thought about how unbearable it must be to spend your life with someone who doesn’t love you in return. I told him I thought that he loved me in a way that is very rare and that it has taken me a while to understand that. He said he wanted nothing. And then he corrected himself, saying that he wanted a Pentax k10, and iPhone, and for me to be happy.

I could hardly remember why I had been so angry with him, and why we had been so broken. I closed my eyes and prayed to God, anything, please, just don’t break the spell.

We recieved a letter - last week, or maybe it was the week before. It was from the Conseil Général in response to a letter that my Manboy had written to them.

I’m not big into snail mail, what with licking stamps and forgetting to mail envelopes. Sometimes they spend days weeks on the mantle of my fireplace before I actually get around to sending them. By the time I do finally get around to it, the person destined to recieve the letter inevitably senses my thoughtless procrastination as he/she opens the envelope, edges darkened by old dust, and news that is nearly obselete.

But Manboy sent this letter, and in his cartesian, timely fashion that is, well, so very French, and for my, so Manboy. He sent it the morning after the evening when he descended the stairs, rushing almost, with paper in one hand and a pen in the other. “Tu peut signer ici.”

I traced my hollow signature next to his own, before reading the words written at the top of the page. The were formal, curtly polite, and to the point.

“Tu pense quoi de ce que j’ai écrit?” His eyes lifted, hesitantly. I percieved a moment of fragility as he took the paper back from my own hands, folded it neatly, and placed it in the already prepared and stamped envelope.

I smiled tiredly, I had been waiting for such a question. “It’s nice, ” I said “really, perfect, je n’aurais pas pu faire mieux, merci.” I shut my eyes tightly and looked inside, trying to feel some hint of an emotion, anything.

All I could sense was gray and heaviness. We spent the rest of the evening in simplicity, watching Harolde and Maude and ingesting sinful quantities of green olives, flammekueche and beer. We didn’t again speak of the letter.

Our village boasts a tiny port on the banks of the Rhône. I took Yuki down there today, so that he could chase pigeons and run vicious circles around my feet. The wind was terrible.

It is one of my favorite moments, on a day off from work, when I can be alone with him. The I thought of how much he has added to our own tiny existence, how much things have changed in such a short time.

I contemplated our impending meeting with the woman who is going to begin and follow us through the adoption process. I wondered what she will be like, if her cheeks are round or if her gaze is bitter. I shivered nervously at the thought of our destiny being entrusted to someone whom we have not yet met and did not choose.

I spoke of these things to Yuki. I talked to him as if he could understand me, and I told him of the letter we had recieved in response to our own, that we had been summoned for a meeting that would surely lead to a journey. I told him that we love him and that we will be loyal to the end, and that last week, when we went to see our friends, I was so proud of him, even suprised to see the way he played with children.

I told him that maybe before too long he would play with our own.

 You had eyes as clear and cold as ice. We laid on the trunk of my car, in the humid Austin night, the open sky teasing us, coaxing us to believe that we were different. You stroked my hair, told me again that you loved me. I said I didn’t know, hadn’t planned on this, even as your warmth folded into my solitude, convincing me. I felt you as if you were me.

I didn’t plan on being betrayed. I didn’t plan on having to explain to you why I changed when I discovered that you’d been with her - when you told me. I thought you were a god, incapable of such a low, animal act. You had spoken of things high and noble, I could not fit the pieces together. I was still a kid, gangly, loyal and awkward, how could I understand self destruction or appetite?

I stayed. I shouldn’t have, but I was too weak to go.

You saved me, then you condemned me. But I was not your victim. I was a stupid girl who made a stupid choice. And then another. I let you have me, and then I stayed.

I became numb, robotic, desperate. For a long time after I was ashamed of myself, my inability to break free during those three long years. (They seem so brief now, a glimpse.) At the time they were all I knew. Alone. With you.

You began to drink. You were mean. You said that I’d changed, that you fell in love with me because I was light and free, that I had changed, that you had been mistaken. I didn’t answer and this only angered you more - hot tears rolling down my trembling cheeks as I groped to find words that would appease you. They escaped me.

Please, I said, hanging on to what I wanted so desperately to believe, that you were good, that you were ready for sacrifice. You were only infuriated by my plea, became red, shouted, ordering me to fight.

I could only sit on my hands and stare into your pain.

Yuki is out to get me. You can tell just by the look on his teeny little face.

We’re teething here at eye heart internet, and when I say that ‘we’ are teething, what I mean is that a very small dog I claim to love and carry around in a purse on weekends is teething. So each night I either step on a baby tooth, find one in beween my toes while I am sitting on the couch, or have it fall out in my hand while I’m caressing the beastly little monster.

Eew.

And for the past week, each night, after Manboy and I decide to call it a day, we are subjected to hours and hours of whiny-scratching-on-the-barking-won’t-somebody-pleasepleaseplease-play-with-me-right-now-woof-woof-door.

This goes on until one of us (admittedly, usually Manboy) crazy with howling-saturation and half-drunk from lack of sleep breaks down to see if the little guy is doing alright, at which moment he abandons himself into a limp ball of weepy, furry unconsciousness.

(enter evil dog laugh)

I’ve added two new pages up top, next to the 32 factoids & dog stuff :

The first is Schminterviewed, a reproduction of the interview I was kindly given by Arjewtino, detailing everything you might have ever really wanted to know about me but never cared enough to bother asking.

Secondly, there’s My Infertility Story, detailing, well, my infertility story, post by post, for either those who really care about this kind of stuff or those who have a lot of time on their hands.

Go crazy.

 You’ve all been quite polite and well behaved here as of late. Blogationships are wonderful, in that prying just isn’t the thing to do. But honestly, I tell you, thee internets, the juice that I can’t handle opening to the RLF’s so don’t be shy if you really want to know.

It’s been hard. I’m not taking my shots anymore, and I’m not going for another insemination for the moment. Why? I dunno, it’s complicated.

(Um, here’s the part where we get to talk about vaginas. Again.)

I’ve spread my legs for so many people in so many different situations this past year. If I’d been smart enough to charge admision I’d be a rich woman by now. But I didn’t. And they didn’t pay me. I rather have the feeling to have paid them, and paid dearly.

Remember this exam? Suffice it to say that it and things it has resurfaced is why I am seeking therapy today and why I can hardly stand to have Manboy touch me. It sucks. Sucks for me, sucks for hm. If there is one good thing that I can think of coming out of this whole infertility/speculum/cold/pinching/instrument crisis, it is maybe the therapist I’ve recently started seeing. Why?

Two reasons.

1. Hello. It has been a long time since someone told me something about my own problems that I couldn’t have figured out on my own from a bit of good, old fashioned navel-gazing.

2. She looks like a muppet, and that makes me happy when I am with her.

She listened and then said some stuff I already knew, of course, but had the decency at the same time to not insult my intelligence with cutsie illustrations and talk down to me like the headshrink I saw with Manboy a couple of months ago. She was righteously indignant with my fertility specialist in her muppet’s-hair-hanging-everywhere kind of way. She insulted my gynecologist and said he was a creepster perv, that he had treated me like a walking vagina, said that the people who were running some of these tests were ridiculous, and cruel, and that a doctor’s job is to treat a whole person, not just an ailment.

She blurted ot out, dry, flat, and straight. She said things that I hadn’t, couldn’t have allowed my self to think. But her words resounded, echoed in their painful truth as I struggled to keep tears from falling. 

I felt - strangely justified.

 I’ve basically accepted the fact that my body has betrayed me, that I waited too long, that ovaries do not always measure time in years, rather they age at their own pace, and for whatever reason mine are tired, done, and have decided to call it a day. I’d like to try again, I’d like to hope and to say that it’s going to work, and that this time I will be stronger, that this time I will not break down, that this time I won’t let it destroy me. But I’m not sure that I could maintain that promise. I’m not sure that I could do it again. Maybe if it had happened differently. Maybe if I hadn’t felt so alone, hardened, like a naked piece of meat on a cold metal table. Maybe if I had been given a thin sheet at least, to cover myself.

But I can’t do it again. Not like this, not in those conditions, not in this state. Something has to give. Until then, I’m frozen.

We’ve started the proceedings for adoption. I have always wanted to adopt, especially an older child, or two from the same family, real orphans, desolate, to give them a chance, to change their destiny. Maybe it sounds stupid, but it’s a long time dream.

I told Manboy about this dream when we were engaged. It scared him. I kept talking to him about it. He began to understand. We said we’d do it once our bio-kids were born. We said we’d do it once we’d established ourselves financially, once we’d settled down and had a nice pre-packaged  family life.

Things don’t always happen like you plan them.

I may never grow a baby in my own womb. My body may never make it’s own food. I may never know the wonder and the horror of childbirth.

I’m not okay with that. I’d like to say the contrary, but I’m exhausted, as that’s what I claim daily to those around. The truth is that I can’t feel much of anything. The truth is I think it’s fucked up. Fucked up wrong.

So we’ll adopt, and we’ll do it for them, not for us. We’ll do it because we will love them and we’ll be able to give them a life they otherwise would not have. We’ll do it because we believe in Destiny.

Today it is Manboy pushing for us to go forward, it is Manboy who is doing the calling and the writing and the asking and the paperwork. It is Manboy who is strong enough to believe, strong enough to be disappointed.

Infertility has changed us. It has brought us to a place where heaviness as a cloak becomes ordinary, and I no longer worry when I see dark circles under his hazel eyes. I hope that we will be strong when they come to see us, when they interview us to see if we are fit to be parents. I hope my house will be clean enough and I will have recently had my hair cut. I hope that the lines in my face do not give to much away. I hope we can win.

We’ve already lost so much.