Time Held me Green and Dying
I'm about ready to admit that I've lost my ability to produce any creative writing whatsoever. The tiny bursts of writing, which come when available time and available brain align, have been getting smaller and farther between, and now I can hardly even muster the ability to remember my overall plans much less motivate myself to work on them.
I'm very disappointed, because this past time of writing fanfiction has meant a lot to me. I've felt parts of my brain come alive that had been laying fallow for some time, and I've so enjoyed being involved with other writers. Writing is something I've always done, though usually in the realm of business and technical writing, and usually more on the editing and teaching side than the production side. Creative writing -- I've always wanted to but never managed to, never had a project that excited me or let me just let go and play the way you need to in order to do it well. Fanfiction has given me that.
When I found out I was expecting again, I was completely freaked out. It's not like we weren't trying, but after two years of trying and no joy, even a wanted pregnancy can still be a surprise. It meant that a lot of the parts of my life that were still sort of new and still very shiny -- my work and my writing -- were going to be taken from me, at least in part, at least for awhile. I was sad, kind of angry, definitely resentful. It mostly passed (some denial helped), and it's not like I wasn't happy too, but the bad presents itself more clearly than the good sometimes, yeah?
No form of denial is holding anymore. My brain has gone spongy, and that's partly a sleepiness thing (I'm still trying to work while taking care of the preschooler and house, and also needing 9+ hours of sleep each day that I'm not really getting). It's largely a hormonal thing, though.
The birthing literature (at least, the Ina May Gaskin branch of the literature) talks about the end stages of pregnancy as a time of going inwards, of focusing on -- well focus is probably the wrong word, but concentrating on the transition that's to come. It's a time of thinking about the practical things, like stocking up the freezer with quickly prepared meals, de-cluttering the house by taking away the obsolete, the old, the unwieldy. It's a time of preparing for what's to come, assembling resources, both material and personal.
I think about the birth a lot. The birthing space is an ecstatic one, a full transportation of the self. It's an experience I may not get again, since this is likely the last baby, so I'm excited about my 'sophomore' birth. I know what I'm doing now: I know where I can get to, I know I can do it, and I know the rewards. There is a profound mystery there, and as I am not one to generally look for or welcome those, this is a rare experience in my life, one that I anticipate and will treasure.
The other way of looking at this time is that I'm being poisoned by my hormones and everything I value in myself is being stripped away from me. And that's scary as hell. I'm left as this creature who only cares about how my family is feeling, about getting meals on the table, and about keeping the house clean(ish). I'm the picture of a 50s housewife (the picture in magazines, that is). I have nightmares about being that person. That person has no personality, no spark, no ambition, will make no contribution to the world beyond her own drab walls. That person is what the assorted waves of feminism fought against (well, some would say fought for, but I'm not so sure that's accurate), and she's the person I was always supposed to not be. I don't know who told me that. Maybe I told me that.
However it happened, I'm in the position of having contempt for myself at the moment. When I can muster the energy to. That fictional woman -- I hate her. I hate a lot of fictional women.
There's a funny thing about my flist. I didn't go looking for this, I just went looking for writing I liked and people I thought were cool, but there seems to be a very large representation from the lbgt community. I joke around that my straight female self is in the minority, and of course I am, but the truth is that while I've always entirely identified as female, I've never been comfortable with it. It's more political than a gender-identification thing -- I'm not in any way genderqueer, I just have the somewhat fraught observer-position of being a bit of a misogynist. More than a bit, my husband would probably say.
The funny thing is that, in terms of my social markers, I couldn't get any more typically female. I'm a het woman with a husband I quite like and 1.9 children whom I care for with the whole attachment-parenting constellation: natural birthing, co-sleeping, extended breastfeeding, and staying at home to care for them while they're young. On my taxes, and whenever I'm called upon to state such a thing, I list my career as "Artisan," and the specific crafts that I specialize in are knitting and handspinning. (The knitting is new, culturally speaking, it dates back more or less just to the middle ages and was for a long time the purvue of all-male guilds, but the handspinning is ancient and worldwide and, in the Western European world at least, associated nearly entirely with women.)
And I'm okay with all that. Well -- okay, with a side of ironic appreciation for the quirks of being alive. I'm happy with my choices and with my life, at any rate. But right now, when I'm being transformed into something I can't like by a hormone process that's beyond my control -- well it's hard. No, it's more than hard. It feels just a little bit like dying.
I got past denial, though. There's no more of that left. And bargaining has failed. I tried to write a little bit, first thing in the mornings when my body ached so much that I couldn't stay asleep. I kept carrying my writing notebook around with me so I could scribble ideas and scenes when I had downtime. Turns out, I don't have downtime, or when I do, I don't have a brain left. I've mostly let go of the anger, and I'm here to share acceptance with you all.
I don't have any writing left in me. Not now, not fiction. I will again, in a few months maybe, and I might have blogging in me (fear my LJ, for I may not be able to resist the urge to babyblog), but for now, I think the well is dry.
I'm very disappointed, because this past time of writing fanfiction has meant a lot to me. I've felt parts of my brain come alive that had been laying fallow for some time, and I've so enjoyed being involved with other writers. Writing is something I've always done, though usually in the realm of business and technical writing, and usually more on the editing and teaching side than the production side. Creative writing -- I've always wanted to but never managed to, never had a project that excited me or let me just let go and play the way you need to in order to do it well. Fanfiction has given me that.
When I found out I was expecting again, I was completely freaked out. It's not like we weren't trying, but after two years of trying and no joy, even a wanted pregnancy can still be a surprise. It meant that a lot of the parts of my life that were still sort of new and still very shiny -- my work and my writing -- were going to be taken from me, at least in part, at least for awhile. I was sad, kind of angry, definitely resentful. It mostly passed (some denial helped), and it's not like I wasn't happy too, but the bad presents itself more clearly than the good sometimes, yeah?
No form of denial is holding anymore. My brain has gone spongy, and that's partly a sleepiness thing (I'm still trying to work while taking care of the preschooler and house, and also needing 9+ hours of sleep each day that I'm not really getting). It's largely a hormonal thing, though.
The birthing literature (at least, the Ina May Gaskin branch of the literature) talks about the end stages of pregnancy as a time of going inwards, of focusing on -- well focus is probably the wrong word, but concentrating on the transition that's to come. It's a time of thinking about the practical things, like stocking up the freezer with quickly prepared meals, de-cluttering the house by taking away the obsolete, the old, the unwieldy. It's a time of preparing for what's to come, assembling resources, both material and personal.
I think about the birth a lot. The birthing space is an ecstatic one, a full transportation of the self. It's an experience I may not get again, since this is likely the last baby, so I'm excited about my 'sophomore' birth. I know what I'm doing now: I know where I can get to, I know I can do it, and I know the rewards. There is a profound mystery there, and as I am not one to generally look for or welcome those, this is a rare experience in my life, one that I anticipate and will treasure.
The other way of looking at this time is that I'm being poisoned by my hormones and everything I value in myself is being stripped away from me. And that's scary as hell. I'm left as this creature who only cares about how my family is feeling, about getting meals on the table, and about keeping the house clean(ish). I'm the picture of a 50s housewife (the picture in magazines, that is). I have nightmares about being that person. That person has no personality, no spark, no ambition, will make no contribution to the world beyond her own drab walls. That person is what the assorted waves of feminism fought against (well, some would say fought for, but I'm not so sure that's accurate), and she's the person I was always supposed to not be. I don't know who told me that. Maybe I told me that.
However it happened, I'm in the position of having contempt for myself at the moment. When I can muster the energy to. That fictional woman -- I hate her. I hate a lot of fictional women.
There's a funny thing about my flist. I didn't go looking for this, I just went looking for writing I liked and people I thought were cool, but there seems to be a very large representation from the lbgt community. I joke around that my straight female self is in the minority, and of course I am, but the truth is that while I've always entirely identified as female, I've never been comfortable with it. It's more political than a gender-identification thing -- I'm not in any way genderqueer, I just have the somewhat fraught observer-position of being a bit of a misogynist. More than a bit, my husband would probably say.
The funny thing is that, in terms of my social markers, I couldn't get any more typically female. I'm a het woman with a husband I quite like and 1.9 children whom I care for with the whole attachment-parenting constellation: natural birthing, co-sleeping, extended breastfeeding, and staying at home to care for them while they're young. On my taxes, and whenever I'm called upon to state such a thing, I list my career as "Artisan," and the specific crafts that I specialize in are knitting and handspinning. (The knitting is new, culturally speaking, it dates back more or less just to the middle ages and was for a long time the purvue of all-male guilds, but the handspinning is ancient and worldwide and, in the Western European world at least, associated nearly entirely with women.)
And I'm okay with all that. Well -- okay, with a side of ironic appreciation for the quirks of being alive. I'm happy with my choices and with my life, at any rate. But right now, when I'm being transformed into something I can't like by a hormone process that's beyond my control -- well it's hard. No, it's more than hard. It feels just a little bit like dying.
I got past denial, though. There's no more of that left. And bargaining has failed. I tried to write a little bit, first thing in the mornings when my body ached so much that I couldn't stay asleep. I kept carrying my writing notebook around with me so I could scribble ideas and scenes when I had downtime. Turns out, I don't have downtime, or when I do, I don't have a brain left. I've mostly let go of the anger, and I'm here to share acceptance with you all.
I don't have any writing left in me. Not now, not fiction. I will again, in a few months maybe, and I might have blogging in me (fear my LJ, for I may not be able to resist the urge to babyblog), but for now, I think the well is dry.