motoring

Things are just trucking along in my life. We’re still assuming that the “really huge” Christmas gift is cash (although I’m hoping that I’m not going to be whoring myself out for, say, another hideous china set) and while there are things that bother me about the whole situation I’ve got the lube all ready to go. I will suck it up and deal with it, because if it is money, well I’m going to go out and buy myself a whole diaper load of happiness, conflicted ideology or no.


I feel steady, solid, like my two feet are planted firmly just where they need to be. Aunt Flow and Thanksgiving came and went, without so much as a tear from me, which felt weird and good and sort of like I was living someone else’s life. I’ve been taking my fucking pills as prescribed like a good little mental patient and (family gatherings aside) drinking less.


Sometimes it surprises me, how functional I’ve become. I’ve been paying bills. Working out. Cleaning the house. Working on crafts (don’t laugh!). Cooking. Most importantly though, I seem to have found perspective. No, I don’t want to be around creepy pregnant bellies that stare me down. They make me feel sad and less-than, and I will tell people why I don’t want to do seven Christmases even if it makes them uncomfortable to hear that I should be wrapping gifts for my own kids by now, baking cookies for Santa and playing all the crazy parental mind games that Christmas inspires. My oldest would be four. I can’t even imagine what that life would have been like, who that me would have been.


But I do know that, even if it shreds me to do it, I can survive one night pretending to be happy for the perfect little soon-to-be-added-to family. I can go home afterwards and cry my eyes out with a nice fat check to dry my tears, and even if the whole experience knocks me down, I know that I’ll catch my breath and get back up and keep living.