The Truth of It

Let's talk.

Where to begin?

I'm sitting here in the dark, barely resisting being crushed by the boulder of responsibility that toppled onto my shoulders, blocking out the sun and closing in my way out.

Real talk. I'm tired of hearing that twins are blessings. I don't feel blessed. I feel burdened and guilted by the weight of a decision gone bad. I can't walk away from this one. I've spent weeks wrestling with my choices : abortion, adoption, acceptance. But nothing feels right. However, there are no other choices. This problem can not just evanesce. Life doesn't come with do-overs. Time Turners don't really exist.

I'm stuck.

So in the wrestling with my mental, time ticked away and one choice disappeared. So I lean heavily towards adoption. And while that decision sits well with me mentally, spiritually it doesn't. At this moment, though, I really don't see another way for me to live my life, to follow my dreams. And, yet, I feel selfish for wanting my me time so badly. It's not like the last 17 years of raising my kids have been hell, just the last two have been. But I'm severely scarred from those two years. There are barriers that I can't mentally surmount, unscalable walls of fear.

What if I mess up again?

What if I can't protect them either?

What if they grow to hate me for giving them away or for having to raise them alone?

How can I make a choice?

I just want to do what's right but how do I know what that is?

I'm so, so, so scared.

There's the truth of it.

I'm scared shitless and arrested by that fear. And that cloud of fear has fogged the shit out of my brain. I can't see, can't think, and don't want to.

But I've got to.

QoMV

Gemini's Twins

 Yes, it's true. 

That word on that stick is the whole truth. Well, not the whole truth because not only am I pregnant (oh goodness!), I'm pregnant with twins (pass me the shotgun). 

I feel too old to be pregnant. Now, I know 33 is nowhere near old but you have to understand that I've been doing this mommy thing for the last 17 years; I got started about 10 years ahead of schedule. So while I am technically a 33-year-old mom; I feel more like a 43-year-old mom. I'm exhausted. And for the last four weeks I've been wrestling with what I'm going to do. 

Yes, for the last four weeks, I've considered an abortion, strongly considered an abortion. Was 98% sure that was the route I was going to take. I made that doctor's appointment with the hope that the choice would be taken out of my hands-- that there would have been a case for termination that would have sat at ease with my conscience. But, while sitting in that doctor's chair, greatly unenthused with the thought of becoming a mother the third time, I made the decision that I was going to abort no matter what was on that ultrasound monitor. 

And then I saw two bubbles. I hoped I didn't see two. The doctor moved the ultrasound wand around in grave silence and a flutter of hope entered my chest. Maybe something was wrong. I mentally prepared what I was going to say to the doctor, that this was ok, this was how it was meant to be-- a wakeup call to take better care of myself. 

Finally the doctor spoke after clearing his throat. He said the machine was too grainy for him to be clear about what's going on. I told him that I thought I might have an ectopic because I had no real pregnancy symptoms other than fatigue and a missing period. He said, no, definitely not ectopic. He said, I'm just going to go ahead and tell you what I see; I see two. I said that I saw the same thing and asked if the bubbles were empty. I mean, they looked empty, really empty. Just two bubbles. 

But he said, no there's definitely something in each. And he zoomed in to each bubble and I could see the beginnings of a baby in them both. Then he zoomed further in each one and the heartbeats patterned in peaks and plateaus across the bottom of the screen. I just stared, hope replaced by resignation. I mean, I had my mind made up to terminate the one but it just wouldn't be fair to abort two. I don't know why that changed things but it did.

And now I'm in freakout mode and it keeps hitting me that I'm starting over. I was four years away from having struggled to raise two kids to adulthood and here I am starting all the way over times two.

God help me.

QoMV

Seeing Double

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about my goddaughter finding out she was pregnant and posted a picture of the tests.

Well, today, she called me from the doctor where she got an ultrasound done. Turns out that I was right; she wasn't six weeks like her LMP suggested because her periods were abnormal-- she was 3 weeks. Aaaaaaaand, turns out I was right about something else...she's expecting TWINS. So, as of today, she's 5 weeks with 2 in the belly. :D

Her symptoms (crying for no reason, crabby/moody w/ bf, sore bbs, fatigue) came REALLY early, within days, I suppose, of getting pregnant. She didn't have implantation bleeding until three days before she took the test and she was still getting pink on the toilet paper when she wiped as of this Monday. Also, her stomach had already pudged out by the time I got to see her on the 4th of July, which would have been when she was 3 weeks.

They say that twins make you grow faster.

I'm so excited. Praying for some really sticky babies.

Getting Back on Track

Yesterday was a pretty good day.

I found out my god daughter's pregnant. Well, I didn't just find out; she did. I pretty much knew it already. I was feeling a baby around me and her face popped into my head. So I texted her out of the blue about a week to two weeks ago and asked her if she was (I did that to my brother a couple of years ago and I was right then too). This positive makes me a "grandmother"at the ripe old age of 33. Oy!

My son and I went for a bike ride. I got the really ambitious idea that we would bike from my apartment to my grandmother's house. I figured, since I used to walk four miles in an hour last year, biking three miles should be a piece of cake. Yeah, a melting-in-93-degrees-with-no-cloud-cover-biking-against-the-wind-with-my-heart-thudding-against-my-chest piece of cake.

Once I trudged up the driveway of my grandma's house, pulling in breaths of air, dragging my bike behind me, I entered the house, pointed the fan in my direction, flopped on the couch, and promptly called the aforementioned god daughter to come pick me up. There was NO way I would be able to make the return journey home on that rock-hard bike seat. How the heck did I used to do this as a kid, as a teenager, biking for hours with no indication of fatigue or a near-death experience (I swear I saw the light yesterday)?

Internet Cheapie on top; Dollar Tree on the bottom.

My god daughter and I went back to my apartment and chilled a while, talking about the baby and what needs to be done in order to make sure she's healthy and the baby's healthy. I had her take another pregnancy test because I really wanted to see it (I just so happened to have a couple of Dollar Tree tests and some internet strips (had a scare last month, don't judge me) laying around in my file cabinet). Boy did the results take a LONG time to come up (about 3-5 minutes) and, even when they did, they were extra light. She would be considered six weeks by her last period but I think she a week or two less than that, judging by my extra sensory perception. You can barely see the lines on the picture but they're there (in fact, the $Tree one didn't show up before the internet strip; I went back to look at it a little while later and saw the line. She sent me a picture of another $Tree test she did this morning, much clearer). Then we watched a bit of the BET Music Awards before going our separate ways.

Source and more pix

Chaka Khan (l) Nicki Minaj (r)

*Side note* Chaka Khan looks like an older version on Nicki Minaj. When she was performing, I was like, "OMG! Are they related?" Well, I didn't say "omg"; I just don't feel like typing the whole thing.

Then, later that evening, came the best thing of all-- yes, even bigger than finding out I'm going to be a grandma (it's a corny but funny joke to me). Last night, the Queens of the Screen got back together and had a creative meeting about our script that was put on hold for the last two years (the direct result of creative differences). It felt so good to see the project revived, to see my baby come back to life. And, last night, it was truly a collaborative effort; I no longer felt like I was carrying the brunt of the writing-- I mean, I know I'll still be doing the writing itself, but, this time, the ideas, the outline we're drafting, are not just from one or two people but all three of us. I'm even more excited about it now than I was before and I didn't think that was possible.

The two-year break served us all well. Everyone is more experienced, ready to get back into the saddle and really see this thing through. We're not out with our feelers anymore; we're really stepping into this thing with more knowledge, more wisdom than before. It's no longer naive ambition; it's driven ambition. I'm praying we can get the full first draft done before the summer ends, while I have the time to write and focus on just this because next school year promises to be hella busy. Good thing we already have half of it done.


Man, it's been so long since I've been excited, since I've had so much positivity going on in my life. It's been truly missed.