*insert swear word of your choice*

Sid told some people on the boat about my Epic Fail at Spawning. And somehow, in their minds, this means that I am an inconsolable mess, sobbing over my stained panties or something. Because they are sending Sid home early.

Shit, I think even Sid thinks I'm an inconsolable mess, sobbing...(and so on and so forth) by the way he's been talking. Hate to burst your bubble, silly menz, but either you don't know women, or you don't know this woman. Because it has been business as usual at Manson Homestead, thank-you-very-much.

I mentioned it to him once, one time, just a simple and matter-of-fact "hey, I thought you should know..." and every single time he's called since then, that's all he wants to talk about. Which is really starting to get to me: I want to put this shit behind me and just move on. Quit bringing it up, already! In the grand scheme of things, what happened was not a huge deal. Quit treating it as if it is.

I'm actually not really looking forward to Sid coming home, because if he's going to keep bringing it up, I don't know if I'll be able to restrain myself when the urge to hit him with my Frying Pan O' Doom strikes. Also, I'm indescribably mad that he is blabbing our personal business all over the boat, because seriously, I haven't said a word about it to anyone that I speak to face-to-face. Because telling people on the internet is not the same as telling people in real life: on the internet, it's not so personal. On the internet, you don't have to put on a brave face.

Anyway. Yeah. I'm really super pissed about all this. It was no one's business. If I'd known that he would so freely discuss my Epic Fail at Spawning with TEH MENZ, I never would have said a word to him. I wouldn't even have mentioned it here, where he could have seen it. It would have stayed private. It would have stayed personal. And it wouldn't be a huge deal.

a real fucking laff riot

This explains the positive pregnancy test, and the killer cramps. As if I needed to feel any more like shit. It is a real fucking laff riot over here, let me assure you. A veritable carnival of hilarity.

With Sid gone, there's no one to talk to. I wasn't going to tell him at all, because this is shitty news to have to hear while you're deployed, but I couldn't keep it to myself. I had to tell someone: I had to hear myself say the words out loud, just once. And goddamn, do I wish I had just kept it to myself. Having to explain it to him, having answer his questions, having to cut short the conversation... was harder than staying silent. And he just didn't seem like he really cared. I could have been telling him about the weather, and his reaction would have been exactly the same.

The thing that pisses me off the most about this entire situation is all those assclowns who want to try and tell me that everything happens for a reason, this was meant to be and all that other saccharine bullshit. Fuck you. Seriously, fuck you. How fucking dare you say that? Telling me that I am not meant to be a mother, that Sid is not meant to be a father, that I was meant to lose a pregnancy I wanted with all my heart is probably the douchebaggiest thing I have ever heard. And I've heard more than my fair share of dumbfuckery.

One of the women who has told me that shit time and again is pregnant, and is distressed about all the miscarriage stories she's heard. I want to be an asshole right back to her and tell her that "everything happens for a reason, right? If you're meant to have that baby, you will. If you're meant to miscarry, you will." But that snark will look like it's coming from nowhere, so I keep it to myself rather than start drama. But god, how I would love to shove her shit right back into her face.

giving it up: a rant

So, we're done trying to have a baby. Sid has been sent away for a little while, to do some military bullshit, and this was supposed to be our last crack at trying, and we no longer even have that. We're done.

I had hoped that this month we would get it right; I had held onto the hope that these past two months were just shitty luck, and this time, this last time, we'd finally get it. Apparently, we are not even being allowed that final bit of hope. Fate, Mother Nature, or the military has decided that the Mansons just aren't worthy.

Surprisingly, I'm not really sad...yet. Right now, I'm just really fucking pissed. There is a tension in my muscles and a heavy feeling in my chest that will have release, whether by kicking and screaming, or manic exercise. I'm thinking exercise would be the least destructive, most adult choice, but I surely do feel like choosing the first option.

I tried to explain to Sid last night that I wasn't mad at him, just myself, but I don't think he really understood. Maybe I shouldn't be so disgusted with myself, but I can't help but think I was some kind of idiot to hold onto hope. To really think, deep down, that we could have that kind of happiness. Yes, I'm angry at myself because I feel like I was stupid. Like I should have known that I wouldn't have that one thing I dreamed about for what feels like forever.

The last time this happened, I told Sid I would never get my hopes up like that again, that it hurt too much to be so disappointed. Apparently I lied, because I did let myself hope. And it fucking blows to be back in this spot again. This year, though, I will try harder to keep myself out of that holiday slump; when Thanksgiving and Christmas roll around, I can't let myself get back into that bad place, where I keep thinking that this should have been the year we celebrated new life, I should be pregnant right now, we should be so fucking happy...and we're not...I'm not.

Sid didn't seem all that fussed with our failure last year, and this year is no exception. He just seems so...unruffled. As if it doesn't really matter to him, as if it's not really something that he wants with all his heart, like I do. Not that I want to see him crushed, but I'd at least like him to express a bit of remorse over the fact that all our baby plans have once again blown up in our faces. Because it bothers me, a lot, and I don't understand how he can be so lackadaisical about it. I want him to at least acknowledge that, yes, it's fucked up that we're back here again, and I am once again hurting and bewildered, and I'm not crazy for feeling this way. Because I get damned tired of spilling my guts to him and having him just make fun of me. It's hard to remind myself that he's joking. I'm dead serious, and in a matter like this, I want a serious reply. When he's upset about something and starts berating himself for whatever, I don't echo his sentiments, I tell him what he needs to hear: that he's not crazy, it's okay to feel like shit. That he's not wrong.

I guess that's why I blog: because a fucking blog doesn't call me crazy. If I felt like I could tell Sid any of this stuff, I would. He's my husband, and I don't like keeping secrets. But in this, I just can't talk to him. I get so tired of being called crazy, or fat, or whatever the barb du jour is, when all I want is his support.

my emo is showing

Yesterday, I told Sid that I couldn't remember the last time I cried. Which was a lie: I remember quite clearly the few times in my life I have truly broken down and sobbed. Yesterday would have been one of those times, had I been alone. But I wasn't. All day I'd been fighting tears, and in the evening, after having fought it all day, after being exhausted by pain, I momentarily lost control. In front of Sid. He asked what was wrong, and I said nothing. But everything is wrong, and I don't know how to tell him.

I thought I was pregnant. I pissed on a stupid home pregnancy test and got a positive. And Miss P showed up just as prompt as you please, with cramps that are truly breathtaking. I might go so far as to say these are some of the most exquisite and body-locking cramps I have ever had. If Sid were in this kind of pain, I have no doubt he'd be writhing on the ground, screaming. Because I surely want to.

So there was that; that disappointment, that feeling of failure. But then two of the women who post on the same online community as me have just found out they are pregnant, on their first tries, no less, and it was like salt in an open wound. Here I am at home, hardly able to breathe around the pain, and these women are exulting in the very thing I thought I finally had.

Now, usually, I'm not a very jealous person. When I was little, that wasn't true. It has taken me a long time to reach this point, where I can say "I'm okay with not having that thing," and mean it. But this is not one of those times. And while I don't doubt that these women very much want to be pregnant, that they are looking to the future with hope and promise...I want it, too. It's base jealousy. I'm not proud of it. In fact, I think it's stupid and petty of me to cry over probably one of the happiest moments in the lives of these women. But this feels like one of the lowest in mine, and there's no getting around that.

I have not forgotten how bad I felt the last time we had to put off having a baby. That kind of low, you don't easily forget, okay? I was fucking devastated: I cried for weeks, and I'm not sure Sid ever really understood how badly it hurt me to have to put that dream aside. I don't know how I'll be able to do it again. And I know it's selfish of me, it's a stupid and selfish thing, and I'll admit to it. I very much want the honor, the absolute privilege, of looking into the eyes of a child and knowing that that little girl or boy is absolutely depending on me to show them right from wrong, and help them as they grow...fuck, I just want to give a child the love and acceptance I never had when I was little. I want to make a better family than the one I grew up in. I want to look into the eyes of my child and know that I have broken the cycle of violence passed to me by my mother, and wherever she got it from, all the way back through the generations. I want to look at my child and know that I have finally banished that demon. It's vain. It's unnecessary. I should just let it go. But I can't. I can't. How do you let go of a desire such as that? How do you do it?

Siddy's gold toof

Sid's got notoriously bad teeth. Like, nightmarish redneck teeth. If he didn't go to the dentist with such alarming frequency, I'm convinced he'd be sporting one fucked up grill. As it stands, he's got a cracked tooth and requires a crown. Given the choice between ceramic and gold, he chose gold. Thus Siddy the Pimp was born.

He only has a temporary crown for now, no flashy gold to speak of, and yet every time he opens his mouth to speak, I find I have to fight the urge to make a "ding" sound, just like the sparkly sound effect used in cartoons. Just the mere prospect of entertainment is enough to keep me occupied.

In other, not so entertaining news, there has been much drama over our desktop monitor. I'm seriously not going to get into the whole story right now, because even just thinking about it makes my blood pressure go up. For now, I'll just say that it has been made clear to me that in matters of Computers and Other Tech Related Shit, my plebeian opinion matters not one whit. If memory serves, Sid's exact words to me yesterday were "It's my computer, I just let you use it." Which was probably one of the greatest variations on "stfu" that I have ever heard from him. Surprisingly enough, I still get along just fine with him, but as soon as he starts talking about the computer, I find myself at the end of my patience. The other day, Cory was over when Sid started going on about it again, and I had to walk away. Literally. I went outside and wandered around in the yard until I felt like I could keep a lid on my temper.

So pretty much, things are back to normal at Manson Homestead.

an atheist through and through

When I was younger, maybe about eight or nine, my grandparents took my sister and me to visit my great-aunt. She lived in the mountains, in the middle of nowhere, and it was the first time my parents had not accompanied us. My grandmother told us to go for a walk, follow the fence up onto the mountain and back. And I didn't. I led my sister up the path onto the mountain, and forgot all about following the fence. After about half an hour of talking and playing and wandering around, I realized we were lost.

I knew that I should have been able to get a general idea of where I was by the sun, as it had been on our backs as we walked up the path. I knew that if I walked back toward the sun, I would find our way back home eventually. But there were so many trees I couldn't orient myself. We had stumbled off the path, and could not find our way back.

My sister was the first to panic. I had been holding it together for her sake, but when Jess started to freak, it was nearly impossible. I told her that we would find our way back, that all we had to do was follow the slope of the mountain and we would find a road, and from there we'd have no trouble finding our way back. When we did that, and only ended up in bushes, not a paved road, I lost it.

Like the good little Christian children we'd been raised to be, we cried and prayed for help. None came. Finally, I told Jess that we would go back the way we'd come and try to retrace our steps. By this point, the sun was beginning to set, and I knew that Jess was imagining a long and fearful night on the mountain, because she kept asking about bears. I didn't have an answer for her, and so we stopped talking, lost in our own anxieties and imaginings. In the silence, we could hear a voice shouting, so far away as to be almost inaudible.

Our grandmother. We followed the sound of her voice back over the mountain until we ended up in the road almost a mile away. I think that was the moment my faith in the Almighty began to crumble. And I realize that I must not have been very strong in my faith for it to be so irreversibly damaged by something so minor.

The killing blow to my religious leanings came when I was sixteen years old. I prayed that God would make me a better person. That God would teach me something that would change me profoundly for the better. And then my very first boyfriend raped me. On Christmas Eve, of all nights.

For a while afterward, about two years, I told myself that it had happened for a reason, that it was all part of The Plan To Make Starky A Good Person. It was my crutch, my lifeline. It was my delusion. It was the only thing that kept me sane during that dark time. And I knew that I was starting to finally heal and move on when I realized that if there really was a God, He had one hell of a funny way of answering my heartfelt prayer.

Some people will say that I turned away from God because I was angry at Him for answering my prayer in such a way, that it has made me a better person and I am blind to that fact. I will admit that at first, I was angry. I felt betrayed, by the boy who said he loved me and the God who was supposed to protect me. I won't deny it. But when the anger faded? There was indifference.

I no longer care one way or the other if there is some higher power guiding my life. It won't change the way I live, or the things I hope for, or the way I treat others. It doesn't matter what pretty words I offer up to the heavens.

a bitter pill to swallow

This article left me in tears. I don't understand how people can be so cruel to the children they are supposed to love and protect and care for. I don't want to know what kind of sick fuck you've got to be to be so cruel to a child. And it's shit like this that makes me wish I believed in hell. There is no justice in the world, none at all.

Maybe it's just because I'm crazy hormonal, and suffering a huge disappointment, but seriously. I can't take the bullshit. Miss P is officially late, and shows no sign of wanting to show up. And Sid doesn't know it, but I took a pregnancy test yesterday. It was negative.

I will say no more about it.

This means that I am probably hypo again. Which I also don't want to say anymore about, but I need to get this out. If I tell Sid what I'm feeling right now, he won't understand. And I can't handle that right now.

I hate being sick. I hate that it makes me different. I don't mind it, usually. Normally, I'm just happy to be feeling okay again, and I'm eternally grateful that I have an illness that is manageable. But I hate that every month, I have to walk to the pharmacy to pick up my levothyroxine, and that everyone can see me walking home with my pill bag. I hate that I have to plan my meals around that pill, that I can't eat when I'm hungry if I'm in that three hour window, that I can't just up and go somewhere without dragging my medicine with me in case I can't get home in time to take it. And when I think these things, I feel so ungrateful. I should be glad that I am so lucky: I have insurance that pays for my bloodwork, I live in a country where I have access to the medicine that will make me feel well again.

So right now I'm feeling a little bit a lot like shit. Compounding that, Sid doesn't know I took a pregnancy test already, and he's trying to be helpful by telling me that starky, you never know, it might not be your thyroid, maybe you're pregnant. I don't have it in me to tell him I do know, I am not pregnant, it has to be my thyroid. As much as it hurt to tell myself that, I don't have the heart to do it to him.