A mini-rant and adventures in mom-identity

I was going to write an entry complaining about the peripheral men in my life, but I'm not sure it would do any good for anybody. Let it just be known that the following annoy me:

1. Men (both former love interests and not) who claimed to want to be my friends, and were in fact good friends of mine, until I got pregnant. There are so-called "friends" that I literally have not heard from since they found out I was having a baby, over a year ago. And others I hear from on occasion but who really haven't talked to me much since then.
   
2. There are a few older married men whom I idly talk to online (I frequent yahoo chat, for some stupid reason). These are men in their 40s who have become bored with their wives and think that even though they are fat and bald, young women like me are going to be inexplicably drawn to them and flirt with them. Here's a hint: No. Even before I was happily married, I was never interested in older men.
   
3. Men (again, from yahoo chat, sometimes they also fall into category 2) who try to tell me that I married/had a baby too young and my marriage is going to fail, and/or my life will no longer be fulfilling. I don't even feel the need to justify my decisions here.
   

Okay, that kind of ended up being a rant regardless, but trust me, it was only a fraction of the rant I gave Anthony the other night. I should clarify that I was ranting to him about other people; he's exempt from my "men suck" rants.

Anyway, I wanted to write about my Sunday, which was a novel experience for me. I had to go to Manhattan to take a test for the job I may-or-may-not have. The test was about 4 hours long, so I was obligated to leave the baby with Anthony for longer than I ever have before. He went to Manhattan with me to find the place, and I had time to get some last-minute coffee and feed the baby before I went to the test center. The test started around 10. At noon I had a break, called home, baby was sleeping and all was well. I left the place around quarter to 2, and purposefully did not call home before hopping on the train. If the baby was upset, I didn't want to know. I called when I got off the train, a few blocks from home, and Anthony was noticably less chipper than when I called the first time. Téa had cried herself to sleep, after eating a decent amount of cereal. Not a huge deal; she cries when I'm home as well. When I got home, she woke up, looked at me, and calmly (not ravenously, as I expected) ate when I offered her the boob. She wasn't traumatized and she didn't starve. All in all it went quite well.

What struck me most about the whole experience was how surreal it was to be out and about without the baby. While interacting with and looking at the people around me, I kept thinking: "No one here knows I'm a mom." My motherhood has become such a part of my identity, I almost didn't know what to do with myself without it. I felt vulnerable, but free at the same time. I kept being afraid that someone would hit on me. This wasn't just me being conceited; before I got pregnant (and even while I was pregnant, oddly enough), I got hit on a lot. Of course, with a squirmy baby strapped to me, men pretty much avoid me. But without her there, I felt unprotected-- to a stranger, I was just a young, single woman alone in the city. Fortunately I kept my head down enough so that no one talked to me.

The freedom felt nice. I felt so light, figuratively and literally: It's much easier to get around without 15lbs of baby and however much of her stuff I've got to carry. I kept feeling like I was leaving something behind, and looked back at my train seat as I got up at my stop: "What am I forgetting? Oh right, I don't have Téa with me. I just brought my purse."

Yesterday Anthony worked from home, and I left the baby with him while I went to do laundry. I couldn't believe how much easier that was without the baby! Just walking there and back with the bags of laundry in my cart was easier. I could freely move laundry in and out of the machines without the obstacle of the baby strapped to my chest. It went so much faster and I didn't feel like my arms were going to fall off when I got home. I think I need to do laundry sans-Téa from now on (until she can walk, I guess).

Lastly, I just got my test results back. I gotta retake part of it. Didn't do too shabbily though, for my circumstances. I couldn't study for it until it was almost too late, and got VERY little sleep the night before. Guess who's to blame for both those things? Hint: she's teething and I'm about to change her dirty little butt.

Books: My anti-drug.

I feel this blog may become more book-oriented than Lacan-oriented, because I'm a total bibliophile lately, but I think I'm okay with that.

I just finished Roots: The Saga of an American Family, which gave me more nightmares than any book I've read to date. I dreamed about being in the dark hold of the ship, scared and sick. That part of the book horrified me the most. I knew that Kunta Kinte was going to be kidnapped, but the first 150 pages detailing his life in Africa sort of lulled me into a false sense of security. Then out of nowhere he gets beaten and chained and taken to America, never to see his family again.

I'm sure anything I could say about Roots has been said before, but nevertheless, I have now read it. It didn't tell me anything I hadn't learned before in history classes, but it definitely made it more real.

I wanted to get into some Dickens, whom I've never read before, but after Roots I can't bring myself to read white literature right away. So I decided to read Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat, which is a novel written by a 16 year old Haitian girl. It caught my eye at Barnes and Noble, for two reasons. One, because it was in the Oprah's Book Club section, which I'm not ashamed to admit liking. Oprah chooses good books, damn it. I read many of them before they were picked by her (The Good Earth, East of Eden, Anna Karenina, to name a few), and consider most of her picks to be really worthwhile works of literature. I gotta respect anyone who can get Midwestern housewives to read Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Toni Morrison.

Anyway, the second reason it caught my eye was because it was about Haiti. I've been following this blog about a rescue center in Haiti, which takes in babies and children who are sick, malnourished or injured, and provides care until they are well enough to go home. The pictures of children with kwashiorkor are particularly disturbing, with their swollen faces and legs and empty eyes. It stuns me to see toddlers much older than Téa that weigh far less. If I had money to donate to the rescue center, I would.

Despite having only barely started reading the new book, I had a dream about it (sort of) last night. I dreamed I was in, not Haiti, but Jamaica, and I was being given a tour of this wealthy white person's apartment, which was on the top floor of a really rickety old building, the bottom floors of which were occupied by native Jamaicans. The wealthy apartment was really beautiful, but the building had such a bad foundation that it wasn't level; the whole building listed to one side. I was thinking that it was a great apartment, but I'd be afraid to live in it; the building seemed like it was just about to topple over.

I'm sure that means something, but I haven't felt like interpreting dreams lately.

I should really write more often. It's difficult to find that time when three things miraculously align: I feel like writing, I have something to write about, and I have time to do it. I'd blame the baby, but who am I kidding? It's always been like this! I guess I'd rather have the missing factor be "time to do it" rather than "something to write about." So often in college I'd feel like writing for myself and have all the free time in the world, but my mind was a blank.

What dreams may instill

So I guess a new post is in order, to keep people from freaking out about me. My husband and my sister made me feel a lot better about life after they read my last entry.

What also helped was a dream I had Friday night. I dreamed that I went to my interview, and it wasn't a job interview, it was a college interview, for an alternative college like Hampshire. I didn't tell the girl interviewing me that I had been to Hampshire already, cause I guess I wanted to start my BA over again. The interview was really free-form; basically she didn't ask any questions, just sat there and waited for me to talk, like a Lacanian psychoanalyst. After a long period of silence, she told me the interview was over and she'd get back to me (but I knew I'd done poorly; I was expected to just talk without being asked to). I was not discouraged; I was angry! I gave her a piece of my mind, letting her know that not only had I done interviews for an alternative school, and done them a hell of a lot better than she was doing, I had graduated from an alternative school, and did really well there. I told her that her interview style was going to filter out a lot of really good students who just weren't big talkers, and she should be more inclusive of shy people.

I woke up feeling validated and confident. The weather on Saturday helped a lot, too. It was beautiful, sunny and warm. I dressed in my new suit and a pair of heels and we set off to Astoria for my interview (Anthony and the baby came along). The feeling of confidence from my dream stayed with me. The interview went really well. The woman interviewing me was very nice, and really only asked me a couple of questions (which I answered with no hesitation, since I had practiced what I would say beforehand) before telling me about the next step in the process. I start training at the end of the month. She also said that usually she asks more questions, but I seemed so qualified that she didn't need to bother. So that was a nice little confidence boost.

We celebrated by going straight to Manhattan, to check out Barnes and Noble, walk around a bit, and eat some Indian food, which I've been craving for months. I really gotta learn how to make that stuff, cause I'm still craving it.

Thinking over my dream again, I realize that it had another meaning for me, outside of giving me some much-needed confidence. It's very telling that in the dream I was interviewing to go back to college. Lately I've been feeling very nostalgic about my college days. I know that makes it sound like college was many moons ago, and it wasn't really. A mere two years ago, I was still working on my Div III (read: thesis, for those who didn't attend Hampshire). But it certainly was in another life, or another chapter of my life. And sometimes I miss those days.

This nostalgia annoys me in some ways, because I know it wasn't as fun at the time as it seems like it was looking back on it. I had a lot of fun in college, but I spent just as much time being miserable. I feel like I started college off on the wrong foot, and did a lot of things I wish I hadn't, and didn't do a lot of things I wish I had. I wish I'd been more involved in activities and less involved in relationships. I had my heart broken my first semester, and spent the rest of my college career breaking other people's hearts. I wish I'd had the balls to take up blacksmithing or study abroad or, I don't know, a million other things.

Things I did do in college that I am proud of:

• Had really good working relationships with several different professors, and learned LOTS from them.
  
• Wrote a Div III, among other things, that I am really proud of, even to this day.
• TAed a couple of classes. I even led a class one day when the professor was gone. ME LEADING A CLASS, HOLY CRAP. I also gave a lesson on Lacan's graph of desire, and did a damn good job of it.
  
• Made attempts to explore my spirituality. I went to meditation groups a few times, studied Buddhism, and attended a Buddism convention.
  
• Got into piercing/tattoo culture. At one time I really had a lot of piercings, most of which I have since taken out. I sometimes miss all the money I spent on piercings that I later removed, and often I miss the piercings themselves. I regret nothing about getting them, though.
  
• Started working at Capacidad. At first I hated that job, and had no f-ing clue what I was doing. But it grew on me and I ended up staying there for almost three years. I worked there until the day before I went into labor. I came back to visit several times with Téa. I miss that job a lot.
  
• Worked at the Social Science office for about three years. I cannot tell you how many hours I spent at the copier, doing the bidding of the faculty. I learned a lot about the S.S. department though, and got to listen in on a lot of gossip.
  
• Kept a journal basically the whole way through college.
  
• Attended a few meetings of a feminist group of some kind, I forget the name of it. But I got to learn about cloth pads and Diva cups and all sorts of neat stuff. Nuff said on that, lest I delve into TMI.
  

There's probably more that I'm not remembering, but all in all, that's a lot to be proud of. Still though, part of me does wish I could start all over. I'm proud of the things I did academically, but not so much socially. I think I could have done a lot better if not for the asshole who broke my tender freshman heart my first semester, but that's a story I'd rather not tell.

This is not to say that I'm unhappy with my current life. I'm glad I'm married to Anthony and very glad, despite the various inconveniences, that I had my daughter. Even though she's teething right now, which I know is going to be trying.

I'll end this entry with a note about my renewed zest for reading. I finished Name All the Animals and Love in the Time of Cholera, which I absolutely hated the ending of, and Anthony laughed at my ranting about it. After that I had to read Jane Austen's Persuasion, because although good ole Jane can be dry, at least her endings are always extremely satisfying. I felt much better at the end of Persuasion when all the loose ends were tied up nicely, although slightly predictably. And then I read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which I've had hanging around since we inexplicably found it on the shelf at Capacidad. It was nice and readable and short. A good little break before the book I'm now tackling, Roots by Alex Haley, a 700-page bohemoth which has been sitting in its intimidating, dense way for months. I'm 30 pages in. So far so good. This should consume the next 2-3 weeks of my life.

So that's where I stand on my New Year's Resolution of reading. I'm keeping track of what I read on goodreads.com. One of my little reading goals is to read more of Time's 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to present. I've read 21 of them, which isn't too bad. Roots isn't on there though, so I guess that goal is on hold for the moment.

Anyway, I should sum up so I have a little time to read before the baby wakes up. I'm a little annoyed that my blog entries of late have deviated from Lacanian theory and become more tl;dr about my life, but oh well. I'm going with it.

Breaking down

I keep starting entries, then waiting so long to finish them that they become outdated.

I had a phone interview this week that went well. An in-person interview tomorrow. It seems like a nice part-time job, something I can do evenings and weekends so we don't have to put the baby in daycare. And a job that I have the right experience for, that I could probably be good at.

So why am I so down?

I've had a pit of dread in my belly all week, one that's totally out of proportion to the normal anxiety about a job interview. I haven't felt this awful since I found out I was pregnant.

Well no, that's not true. I felt this awful throughout my pregnancy. I felt awful during those sleep-deprived, lonely first 6 weeks of Téa's life. But certainly more awful now than in recent months.

Not only am I nervous about the interview itself, I have mixed feelings about actually getting a job. First of all, my social anxiety is really getting out of control. Living here has been scary for me since day one, but it seems my agoraphobia is growing by the day. I can't bear to go outside without Anthony, even to do mundane things that I've done before-- going for a walk, picking up some groceries. Even walking to the damn train station to meet him takes some summoning up of courage.

I recently realized that other people do not live like this. And that worries me. I wasn't always like this. What the hell is wrong with me? My hands are shaking as I type.

My second fear about having a job, closely tied to the first: Being away from Téa. It's not that I fear for her welfare; I'm sure Anthony can handle being alone with her. It just feels unnatural that I should be away from her. It feels unnatural to try to feed her from a bottle, as we've had to practice doing lately (she's not taking it well). And I'm still not over the disappointment of finding out my freezer supply of milk is useless, because I'm pretty sure my milk has excess lipase, which makes it curdle really fast unless I scald it, which I haven't been doing. It all just feels wrong to do, when I can just pick her up and nurse her. I don't think she eats just because she's hungry; she wants food AND comfort, which a bottle just can't provide.

I just want to stay home with the baby, although my constant dread has been affecting even that part of my life. I feel like I haven't been a good mother lately. I take care of all her needs, of course, but I feel like I don't know what I'm doing. Do I play with her enough? Do I play with her in the right ways? Do I read to her enough? Should I hold her more? Should I talk to her more? I often worry that she's going to end up autistic or poorly socialized because of me. I know she loves going outside and looking at stuff, but I can't bring myself to take her out every day.

I used to clean the house everyday, but now I don't even do that except on weekends. I force myself to make dinner, because I don't want Anthony to spend money on take-out food all the time. My energy is gone. All I ever want to do is sit and read.

What the hell is wrong with me?

I feel embarrassed about having written this all out, knowing who's going to read it and the reactions I'll probably get, but it all had to be said. Something has got to give here, because this just doesn't feel right.