Two days ago, I was watching Oprah. And how it pains me to start a blog with that sentence. I could make the excuse that I am 7 months pregnant and my 2 and 1/2 year old child was taking a rare afternoon nap. But do those facts matter when you are lying on the couch in pajamas, watching TV and the topic of the day is “have you let yourself go: Fat housewives who lay around on the couch all day watching TV”? No. No it does not.
Faced with this unpleasant wake-up call, I realized I had two choices. I could deep-six any memory of that moment, go take a shower, and pretend everything was fine. I imagine that my inner suppressor machinery might have me back to complacency in 24 hours after doing something mildly productive like cleaning a bathroom or two. Otherwise, I could continue to watch and boldly face the fact that I was looking into a little box at the future. I’m not quite up to the Oprah standard, but let me tell you, a couple of Ben & Jerry’s benders and one or two years of disappointments, and I could be them.
Oh, and yeah, you heard me – I turned being too lazy to get off the couch into something ‘bold’.
54 minutes later, Oprah had one of those looking-directly-into-the-camera-moments and said, “ask yourself, ‘who are you?’”.
The answer for me is that for the past 2 and 1/2 years, I have become someone’s mommy.
It is with deep humility that I tell you it took television to get me to realize that. I rolled right off that couch (give me a break, I’m 7 months pregnant) and I made a vow to actually start doing something different.
I am now beginning to think that perhaps post-partum depression is not all about sleep deprivation, loss of control and hormone flux, but is also the result of taking that cool non-mom part of yourself and squelching the life from it. Or at least putting it in a box in the very attic of your mind with the hopes of getting it back later (this box probably also includes ‘pre-baby figure’, ‘sex life’, ‘curse words’ and ‘shopping for myself’).
So how exactly is keeping a blog going to stop me from being a moon-face ‘before’ picture in the Oprah show of life? I mean, isn’t a blog just a wee bit narcissistic? Sure.
And aren’t blogs usually a bloated attempt at self-discovery? You betcha.
And finally, can’t keeping an anonymous blog probably be traced back to you, exposing you to embarrassment and ending any vague chance of a political career in the far future? Absolutely.
But I’m doing it anyway. Because I’ve had 2 and 1/2 years to glimpse into my future. If we keep having kids, and I keep staying home, I’ve got a pretty good idea that the cool person I used to be is going to suffocate inside that box and when I try to revive her ten years from now, all I’ll have is a stinky corpse who wears scrunchies and still listens to Nirvana. If it takes a narcissistic, bloated attempt at self-discovery that may be traced back to me, exposing me to embarrassment and ending any vague chance of a political career in my far future, so be it. In fact, just so I don’t pussy foot around, let’s get it over with:
Fuckity-fuck-fuck-fuckit. And poop-damn-fart. There. The gentle vibration you feel in your seat is my grandfather rolling in his grave. I feel assured he will roll over every time anyone reads that since he was the sort of gentlemanly fellow who would never get the fuckity-fuck over something like that. But for me, I guess it means that if I’ve already cursed out there in cyber-space, there is no reason to hold back anything else. I mean, who would ever elect a foul-mouthed mother to any sort of political post? Ha! That was kind of fun. I may have to develop some cyber-Tourette’s just for the hell of it.
Don’t get me wrong: In the real world, I am still going to be a good mom. I will feed my family nutritious meals. I will go to the gym and I will say ‘oh goodness!’ and ”oh darn’ in front of those people who know me only as someone’s mom. But here in the voodoo lounge of this blog, I am attempting to resurrect that cool person I was before. She smoked and drank and slept late. She didn’t know who the hell Dora the Explorer was and I have this strange notion that she was kind of fun to be around.