Vacation?

Tomorrow morning, I'm off for 8 days to Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, with Elliot, a friend and her newborn. Is it going to be much of a vacation? Elliot will undoubtedly be unseltted most of the time we are there, and my friend is craving a lot of help with her newborn. This vacation is gonna suck. I can feel it.

Homesick

I've been really homesick lately, and I don't know what to do about it. There's no money with which to travel, and noone in my family is going to be coming here anytime soon.

I've been trying to get in touch with my parents. I write e-mails and don't hear back for ages. When I do hear back, it's only a one- or two-sentence reply, and they haven't called since Christmas. I've been calling them over the last few days, but there's never any answer, and they don't call back. I guess I'm good and truly well an orphan now.

Readers might say that I haven't spoken very highly about my parents on this blog, so why would I be so upset at not hearing from them. Well, the answer is simple. I speak on here out of frustration, a desperate thwarted longing to have the kind of relationship with my parents that I have never - and likely will never - have. Instead, I continually feel rejected, like they don't think I'm good enough or don't want to waste their time talking to me, don't want to hear when things aren't going well, don't want to be burdened by a daughter who needs emotional support when things aren't working out as planned.

I love and need my parents just like anyone else. But what's a girl to do when her parents don't seem to love or need her in return? I don't know what else I can do. I don't know what I did in the past to cause this. I don't know who I could have been to have made things turn out any different.

Depression sucks

I probably shouldn't have stopped taking my meds months ago, because now I'm in the middle of a serious bout of depression. It was all I could do this afternoon to take Elliot to the park so she wouldn't be cooped up in the house all day. It's not helping that I seem to have some sort of illness that, combined with immense stress, has given me a perma headache and made my stomach all queasy.

My visa expires in October, and I am on the verge of applying for indefinite leave to remain, a status that would allow me to stay indefinitely whether I apply for citizenship or not. The stress of the past couple of years combined with recent depression combined with recent and not-so-recent not getting along with my husband is causing me to pause and figure out if I want to take this next step or just go back to Florida, daughter in tow.

I love my husband, but both of us can be hard to live with. I think he's harder to live with than I am, though, but perhaps that belief is what makes me hard to live with. Also, my attitude towards his son has been appalling at best. I don't know what to do to be a good stepmother. I don't know how to act. I don't know how to get closer to my husband's son while getting rid of my jealousy over always feeling like the odd man out when my husband and his son are together. I don't know how I can fit into their lives, but, more than that, how to become my husband's best friend and how to make it so that we will finally show each other the respect we each are due. I feel like my husband has built a wall around him and that I'm on a trampoline on the outside always jumping, jumping, jumping.

I hate the constant nitpicking, the constant feeling that I'm living with someone who resents me, the constant wanting of more time alone with my husband - more attention and more love. Life seems to hold little joy for us right now. It's just one day after another of going to work, taking care of baby, trying to keep the house in some semblance of order and trying to keep the bank account out of overdraft.

Don't we all want more? Is it around the corner? Do we have to live through the bad to get to the good? Or is this all there is?

Tired

So, so tired of so many things.

They never listen

May 12 was my birthday. On that day, my best friend here in Scotland, an American from Seattle, gave birth to her first child, a daughter she has given six names, the first one being Neve. Having known this woman for at least the past three months, I have coached her on what to expect during the last month or so of pregnancy, what to expect during birth and what to expect during the first six months of her daughter's babyhood. Sadly, I have expounded at length and dwelled mainly on the negative bits, partly to try and prepare her for the hell that is to be her life and party to unload my own trauma from sleepless nights past.

Three words: They never listen.

Labor was going to be breeze for her, she said. After all, she had learned some breathing techniques and was prepared to resort to meditation lest things get too painful. After heartily guffawing at her pathetic pain coping strategies, I warned her sternly that breathing would not help. Meditation would not work. I told her to prepare for hours upon hours of searing pain that would make her beg for death. I warned her.

Three words: They never listen.

So she's in the hospital on May 11 with contractions. She's had some bleeding and, later, her mucus plug let loose. Contractions, contractions, contractions. Waiting, waiting, waiting. At only one centimeter dilated, she was begging for every drug under the sun and took up the midwives on the offers of injections and pills, all to little avail. Where was her breathing? Where was the meditation? Maybe she meant "mediCation?"

One edpidural and several hours later, she was stuck at seven centimeters and had to have an emergency C-section. The two are healthy and happy now, if a bit sleep deprived. Complaining of the past couple of sleepless nights and the ensuing fatigue, I told my friend that's just a little taste of the coming attraction. Already, she doesn't believe me. I can see it in her eyes.

Three words: They never listen.

She will soon see.

April baby photo

She loves to play chase, peekaboo and throw the ball. She spends her time listening to stories and looking at the pictures, cuddling her stuffed animals and talking on any phone she can get her pudgy little hands on. And she's a sucker for running around outside and visiting with anyone and everyone in random coffee shops.

Wouldn't you visit with as many people as you could, too, if everyone simply adored you? This broad's got it all.