Pregnant

I dreamed my friend E____ and I were sitting on the couch in her living room, and her landlady, who for reasons of legality I will only refer to as The Hedgehog, was sitting on a recliner. The conversation lulled, and I noticed that E____ was looking a little out of sorts. She looked like the cat that swallowed the canary, except it didn't seem that the canary was done singing just yet. I could almost picture an intact little bird inside her belly making chirping noises, and I half expected her to start burping up feathers.

I could see that something was burdening her. As she sat there, wrapped in a pink blanket, with this sort of queasy, smug look on her face that seemed to be masking an ocean of anxiety, I stared intently at her face, trying to get a read on her emotional state. The corners of her mouth couldn't seem to decide whether to make a smile or a grimace, and she was wearing some smudged black lip liner which, in addition to accentuating whatever emotions might be present, gave her the faint appearance of a mustachioed French chef.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"I'm pregnant!" she blurted out.

The Hedgehog looked up from her reading. I took a deep breath and pondered how to respond. My first thought was "how could this  have happened?" I mean, I knew how that sort of thing worked, but it seemed like one of the critical components was missing, namely, a partner. 

I was emotionally conflicted. I wanted to be there for my friend, but there was a little hurt, a little envy, a lot of shock and a fair amount of general confusion, as my mind raced with unasked questions:

Who was the guy? Was it a one time thing? Was it worth it?  Did you enjoy the experience? 

I really wanted to interrogate her, to get to the good stuff, the nitty-gritty, but this was my friend, not some serial TV drama or news story. Empathy won out, and I kept these questions to myself.

All I could think of to say was, "I didn't know you were seeing anyone?" 

"I'm not," she said. 

I didn't press her for details, though my curiosity was killing me. Again, I didn't know how to respond, so I put my hand on her shoulder and said, "Well, that's...Pregnant...Wow! This is good news!" Then I thought about it for a minute and added, "Isn't it? Are you...going to keep it?"

She looked at me with hurt in her innocent eyes, "I don't know," she said. "You know I have that painful condition that effects my cycle. I don't know if I even can."

I gave her a hug and probably said a few generic, comforting things, I don't know. I just sat there with her and told her, not so much in words but just by my presence, that I would be there for her. We'd get her through this together, and she didn't have anything to worry about. 

The Hedgehog went back to her reading, and we sat there in an awkward silence, each us wrapped up in our own thoughts. 

OK, I kinda see it

 

 

 

For those keeping track

There is a pattern to the gaps between my postings on this blog. It is probably safe to surmise that if I'm not posting, I'm either too bored and have nothing to say, or I am out having the time of my life, too busy to write about it. You can be the judge of which scenario seems more likely.

When I am dreaming regularly, I will dutifully record any dreams that I remember. I've been off my dreams for over a month, likely due to my exponential uptick in cannabis use. While infrequent, regulated cannabis use can have benefits, enhancing creativity, improving mood and facilitating relaxation, heavy, frequent use can cause lethargy, forgetfulness and loss of interest in everyday life. The quick tolerance one's body builds to the drug, not to mention the deleterious effect smoking has on one's overall health, make it a self-regulating, short-term pacifier at best. I feel like I've written enough about my off again/on again love affair with weed over the years, so I won't make this a treatise on the subject. 

In general, I tend to come here and post when I'm in an acutely depressive state. I come here to bitch, rarely to gloat. Occasionally, I will think of a subject that I deem worthy of pontification, and I will ramble and rant my way through some diatribe or manifesto, but this is less and less frequent. I seem to have run out of new things to say on the same old subjects, and I am loath to repeat myself, although, as an older, slightly amnesiac person, I am prone to do this.

I'm feeling a little a little stuck these days. OK, more than a little. Morassed, mired, bogged down and buried in mud would be a more apt description. I have been in a bad frame of mind since my October implosion. Though the damage to my friendship with E_____ has mostly been repaired, the innocence and purity of what we had seems to be irretrievably lost. I will mourn this until I die. I was lucky enough to have had these times with my friend, and I guess I should just leave it at that. I'd like to keep 99% of my memories of the things we did last summer and shitcan the ones in which I made my unfortunate missteps. 

I've been in a regressive modality lately, getting sucked back into self-destructive behaviors and patterns. I let myself get talked out of things that could help, or things that would be a more productive use of my time, and I opt for the routine, the minimum. That's another superpower of mine: I can always find the easiest path, the one requiring the least effort. It is a skillset honed by us GenXers.

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In other news, I've started using a meditation app called Balance. It is free for a year, and after that, they want to try to get $69.95 out of me. For the first week or so, all I could think about when I used the app was how I was going to forget to cancel my subscription, and they would wind up billing my credit card. Eventually, I let this drift to the back of my mind, but as you can see, it's still in there somewhere. I'm so stingy, you'd think my wallet had actual nerve endings, as sensitive as it is to money going out of it.

But over the last couple of weeks, I've kind of gotten attached to the voice of the Balance app's guide, Ofosu. He has such a nice, comforting tone. The little icon shows a smiling, bald, black man with glasses, and in his voice, you can hear just the slightest hint of ethnicity. I don't know why I feel I have to mention this, exactly, or why I feel weird about mentioning it now that I have. Race is always a touchy subject: to acknowledge or not to acknowledge? I never know.

But this guy, Ofosu, I could listen to his voice all day. I think that's the only reason I keep using this app. I'm not building my meditation skills so much as substituting his voice for my own internal monologue. I can't think as many of my own negative, self-destructive thoughts when I have an infusion of his positivity going on in my ears.

But it's more than that. I find myself thinking that this guy sounds so compassionate, so kind and tender, like he really cares about how I'm feeling. The way he says "I hope you have a great day" at the end of the meditation, such a simple and common phrase, contains such sincerity, I almost believe that he is talking to me. 

Almost. Then my mind wanders off into some weird fantasy of domesticity, with Ofosu bringing me tea and asking if I'd like my neck massaged. I can't help thinking, "I'll bet that guy is a considerate lover." You can just tell that sort of thing by the way person talks, deliberate, considerate, unhurried. I'm not imagining actual sex or anything. I'm not "going gay" for my digital meditation coach. But with the soothing and very persuasive quality of his voice, I almost think I could be talked into giving it a whirl.

I got a little emotional today as I was doing a meditation to target positivity. It started as just a simple exercise in breath awareness, and I was glad that he didn't go into a sermon or start spouting platitudes right off the bat. He eased into the idea of planting a seed of hope, of positivity, without the heavy handedness that I am used to. 

Unfortunately, this tender approach made me burst into tears. The incongruity of his soft, hopeful voice and my own feelings of loneliness, hopelessness and depression left me kind of undone, and I began leaking tears onto my stool as I sat in front of my red therapy light. The reality of it hit home: No one is really here to tell me these words of comfort or place a gentle hand on my furrowed brow to calm me. It's just me. I'm a loner, not by choice entirely, but not not  by choice. The choices I've made in life have led me to this place of loneliness, where no one seems to be coming for me.

I was left with one possibly viable seed planted in my brain, however. The idea that I could perform some kind of act, even something small like giving someone a smile or a compliment, and perhaps it might give someone else a good feeling. Whether or not this generates a sympathetic resonance in my own emotional state has yet to be determined, but it seems like good thing to do for its own sake and for the sake of the person or persons toward whom I direct these actions. I guess it will be my contribution to the net good in the universe.

I should be eating breakfast right now, but my stomach is still sour from yesterday. I don't know what was wrong, but I just couldn't eat much. Breakfast was torture, and I only managed to finish half of it. I skipped dinner entirely, as I still felt queasy from lunch, which I forced down in its entirety, despite feeling nauseous with every bite. Throughout my entire gastrointestinal journey, I've always maintained a good appetite. The times I've not finished a meal in the last 5 years, I could count on one hand, so I am a little concerned. But I'm going to try not to project catastrophe into every somatic disturbance. Maybe it's just something I ate. 

Now you're caught up, except for...

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For the person or persons who have been viewing this blog from- the far flung corners of the internet (or using a good VPN) I promise to get to all of it. After slogging through 1000+ posts, I think you deserve whatever titillation you might get from reading about my exploits. What you are looking for, I don't know, just trying to get to the good bits, I imagine. Perhaps someone could leave a suggestion in the comments, and I might be able to provide you with more tailored content.