deep breath

so I heard through the grapevine single parenting was tough.... tough doesn't even cut it.
there are days when I literally convince myself that I am completely incapable of doing this on my own. i don't know if it is a phase or teething or the constant cold (thanks to daycare) but Tessa hasn't allowed me to leave her side. I get absolutely NOTHING done. Nothing is about me anymore. Nothing. And that is not a complaint. But it makes me feel really small, and really insecure, and weak. I feel like I am a slave to my life. There is so little pleasure right now, outside of the joy my daughter brings me. This is the hardest thing I have ever done. When I have a free moment, I am doing laundry, dishes, making bottles, preparing baby food, taking care of school stuff, running to appointments, washing diapers. I can barely fit in showering and making myself food. I don't even have time to eat. Everything I do revolves around Tessa. Don't take this as resentment- it's not. It is just the way things are. And it is fucking hard.
If I can barely make it right now, how will I ever make it when school starts and I have ten+ hour days plus homework and reading? When in my spare time, I have to study, how will I do the rest? This is where not being single would make life so much easier. Fuck, fuck, this is going to be so hard.
I chose this. This was my decision. I left, I thought I would be happier and a better mom. Instead, I feel completely incapable, selfish, and like I am abandoning my daughter by starting one of the most intense, hardest, and rigorous nursing programs in the country. How can I do this? How will I get through this? My daughter is going to forget about me and I will become so much less important to her. I won't be there to teach her, to watch her first steps, to hear her first words.
But I am doing this for her. It's all for her. Everything, every step I take, is for her. For her to have the best life, the happiest life.
I am barely going to see my daughter for the next year, and it is ripping my heart out of my chest. I feel like the worst person in the world. I feel like I don't deserve her. I feel like I make the worst choices and like I am not strong enough or tough enough to get through this year. I am a wreck already, trying to get by as a single parent who gets to stay home with her daughter. Add to that this intense program. It is fucking killing me.
Single mother. Single mother. Single mother. It still hasn't sunk in. I cringe every time I see two parents with a baby. I can barely speak to friends of mine who have happy relationships and are parents together. That should have been me.
But do you stay with someone who makes you feel so terrible all the time, someone who doesn't want the same things as you, someone who wants to be in control all the time, who cares so much about appearance but not about truth, who says black only because I say white, who can't grow up, can't settle down, blames all the problems on everyone else, never takes responsibility, is too old to just be starting out, who hasn't changed a bit since becoming a parent, who finds their baby to be a novelty and not a real and serious responsibility? I could go on.
I made the decision, I am starting school, I am not going to see Tessa, I will have no social life, I will be miserable and stressed.
God damn it, no one told me life would be this fucking hard.
But this promise to myself- after this year, when I am done with school, I will see the benefits huge and everlasting, and I will make the life I want to live. I will be the person I want to be, I will be thankful that I made it through the hardest time in my life, I will be stronger and smarter and more capable.I will have a solid career for the rest of my life. I will be able to support myself and my daughter, ON MY OWN. That is huge. I will have the hang of single parenting. I will make the best of it. I will find happiness again, and I will be the best mother in the fucking world. And maybe, just maybe, someday I will find someone worthy to share my life with. For now that doesn't matter. But maybe someday. FInd my joy in Tessa, be grateful for the gift of motherhood, be thankful I have wonderful support. I promise these things to myself.
I will be okay. One year. One year.

yoga babies

By the way, before I left, my mom and my beautiful friend Natalie threw me a going away party. It was wonderful, of course. But I think the highlight for me was this moment:


These ladies and I were in prenatal yoga together. Jen, far right, was our instructor. It was how natalie and I became close, and how I met amelia and jen, who ended up being my birth coach.
I love my friends to death, all of them, but it has been really special going through pregnancy and childbirth and early motherhood with friends who know exactly how you feel.
However, I am a really lucky gal for having such lovely, wonderful friends in general.

moving on.

Here I am back in Virginia.
I moved on Friday. And spent the weekend on the verge of a panic attack, biting back tears every second. I looked at the disaster that is the product of a move, all the boxes waiting to be unpacked, and cried. I thought of virginia and cried. my pup, my mom, my friends. my ruined relationship, broken family. i thought of tessa starting daycare and cried.
And I woke up this morning and couldn't think, couldn't put one foot in front of the other. I could barely move. I just wanted to collapse and sleep forever.
This hasn't happened to me in a long, long time. I found such happiness in my life in Charlottesville. Such joy in being a mother, in having a bright beam of light that is my baby girl.
And i moved, and I felt my strong foundation start to crumble around me. So I came back here, because I just couldn't do it. I had to be here one last time until I can visit again. Have to see the doctor and maybe go on some drugs because I don't know if I can do this on my own.
I, officially, am a single mother. I think that is the first time I've officially told myself that, admitted it to myself.
And sometimes I really don't know if I can do this. I mean, I know I can, I will, I have to, because my daughter is the most important goddamned thing in the entire world and deserves the absolute best life-- she gave me light, she gave me happiness, she made me stronger and smarter, she made me a woman. It is going to be hard. Really hard.
But damn it, my life could be so much fucking worse. I have so much to be grateful for. I will not be sorry for myself.
I know I need to stop writing about how hard, how sad, bla bla bla. I guess though this blog is really for me, so I can remember what I went through at what time, and look back and see how I've changed, and how Tessa has changed. So sorry, readers, if you are bored or fed up. But really, this is for me. I need to put this down into words so I can remember, and remind myself to hold it together. To really do the best I can.

Lock It Up

I left Tessa on the floor the other day with some toys and went into the other room to put a few items of clothes away. I was literally gone one minute. When I walked back in the living room, she was all the way across the room, pulling my phone charger out of the power strip. SCARY. Had she gotten the end of the cord in her mouth...
Needless to say, it's time to start babyproofing.
I'll have a fresh start when we move, so I plan on babyproofing from the beginning. So in looking for a baby gate on Amazon, I came across Babyproofing products.
Am I such an idiotic bad parent that I didn't realize I had to lock my TOILET?
Anything in your house you want to lock, you've got it.
Lock up your fridge. Your cabinets. Your drawers. Pad the corners of the tables, line all sharp edges with foam...
Doorknob covers (???), Hearth protectors, electric cord shorteners, outlet plugs, window guards, pole padding, flatscreen TV wall locks, stove knob covers, clear banister sheilds, stove knob covers, blind cord securing thingies, PLANT PROTECTOR NETS to keep your child from digging and eating dirt from potted plants, washer/dryer knob locks (so they don't accidentally lock themselves in the dryer and then turn it on), window lock LOCKS, mom and me safety bracelets (like handcuffs that you and your child wear so they can't wander more than 3 feet. great idea.), oh my god, the list is endless and the more i look, the more I feel like a completely incapable and careless mother.
I guess it's time to get to work.. by the time I've purchased afore-mentioned products, I'll be bankrupt.

Toot

So Natalie and I did a yoga class the other day. It was wayy too crowded, probably 50 people neck to neck, and for some reason EVERYONE was farting. I mean, it was ridiculous. Especially when the girl next to me- and by next to me I mean basically sitting on top me of- started farting. One after the other. I had such a hard time not turning to stare at her. It took all of my self control not to.
Does anyone else have imaginary dialogue with people they see or meet?

"Excuse me, you just farted."
"Why, yes, I did. I just now realize that as I bring both of my legs from out behind my head."
"Oh, well you farted again as you came out of your pose."
"You are quite right. You must be very intelligent."
"That is true. May I ask what you had for breakfast?"
"You may."
"What did you have for breakfast?"
"Dead things."
Ah, that explains it, as we come into child's pose and the room lets out a cacophony of toots.

I Wanted

To look back on my pregnancy as a joyful, happy, exciting time. And it was for me, because I was doing the most amazing thing in the world, and I loved it, I felt special and important and natural.
But I was let down. I wanted for us to look at eachother in wonder and amazement when the baby kicked, I wanted to celebrate 20 weeks and then the beginning of the third trimester. I wanted back rubs and foot rubs, I wanted to go on walks and hold hands and talk about our upcoming life with baby. I wanted us to plan the nursery together and have long talks about names and how we would raise her. I wanted us to cuddle up together in the winter and keep eachother warm, and to relax in the sun together in the summer; to picnic and laugh and be excited about life. I wanted, each week, to read together what was happing inside me, how big she was, what development was happening.
But I was alone. He shut down and wanted nothing to do with it. So I dreamt alone, I celebrated within, I lay holding my belly, feeling her kick, and smiled to myself. I fantasized about what she would look like, act like, smell like. I spent hours alone in the house washing and folding and refolding her tiny clothes, organizing her nursery, preparing for her arrival. I went to yoga each week to get away from him and be around other women who were pregnant too, and at least partially understood. Pregnancy can be isolating, and he made it so much more so.
And I had her, and we didn't look in eachother's teary eyes in amazement at what WE did. We looked at eachother, but it wasn't there. But I looked at her with joy and amazement, and she made me. She began me- who I am now, who I've always meant to be.
He went back to work, and I took care of her. I read the books, did the research, made the choices. I created her nap schedule, her feedings, took her to her doctor's appointments, watched her development. He waited to be told what was going on. He followed, or agreed from a distance.
He was never there, in body or mind. He was never a part of it all. He let it happen from a distance, and reaped the benefits.
I wanted a family who rejoiced in the tiny wonders, who grew old together, who made more children, built a house in which they would grow up, went on vacations together, marveled at their love for one another and their amazing children.
But you can't, you don't, always get what you want. You rarely have happily ever after, and you certainly can't let someone else make your happiness. But you can make it yourself, and you can find it within.

It's Satuday, I'm at my mom's, and it has been snowing for the last 31 hours, give or take. I've been here since Wednesday night, and it doesn't look like I'm leaving anytime soon.. Circumstances, ever changing, have brought me here, and here it looks like I'll stay, at least until I leave for NJ. This is okay. This is not a big surprise to me, nor is it too painful for me; it would have been both a year ago, but today, I am so different, and my life is so different, so much has changed, that now I am more excited, hopeful, anticipating, than anything else. Scared, of course. Anxious, slightly. But let me be honest with myself, for once, finally. This was bound to happen. I was bound to end up breaking up with Alessandro.
It was just never right.
We were never right. I think the beginning was fine because he liked the idea of me, and I liked the idea of him, and we thought together we were ideal, but there was no way we were going to last. And the good little liar I am, I lied, lied, lied to myself about him and who he is and how he treats me and why. And I got pregnant, and it got worse, and I almost left and didn't, it got better, then worse, and worse, and I started to see things the way they were. I started to LET myself see things, and I stopped lying to myself, and my tolerance level just fell through the floor.
I feel stupid. I really do. Why have I, for so long, been okay with everything, and made excuses, and lied to myself? Enough.
What's the point? I am not going to sit around and feel sorry for myself and wish that I had been different, because I did what I had to do, or thought I had to do, to get through things. And I'm through it now, and I'm moving on. I'm done with him. I'm done letting him trample every last bit of me to the floor, and smother me into indifference. Trying to make me into something else. Trying to shape me to his mold. Resenting every move I make, criticizing every choice, making me feel stupid, insecure, unsure, ugly. I am just done.
This is about me, and Tessa; wanting a nice life, fewer worries, being able to raise my daughter without two parents who hate eachother.
But enough about that.

It's snowing, and I have a great family and great friends, a beautiful baby and a wonderful pup.