Pregnancy blues
I was especially pained to be under the beautiful Florida weather - the cold I caught from my coworkers came during inconveniently while we had our last twosome vacation.
Still pushing myself to run, I tried to once again to discover the line between laziness and the demands of a pregnant body enhanced by the cold. For 3 miles I pounded my 108 lbs until the cushions of my running shoes felt flat and compacted. And I began to accept defeat.
The weariness of my cold finally eroded my emotional defenses and my mind collapsed. I was simply tired. Really really tired. I have been working so hard it seems through the last 6 months to be upbeat about the miseries of pregnancy. To not complain. To keep fit. To keep running. To keep lifting weights and going to the gym even I don't feel like it. "Not feeling like it" is a common woe of the lazy person, and pregnancy only serves to legitimize the lame excuse. So I've pushed on, forgiving myself the "breaks" that I have indeed given myself.
So my emotional tiredness finally came to the surface and enveloped me in a pool of self pity lasting 2 hours of the evening. I'm tired of trying to feel positive, cheerful and thankful for my blimping body. I'm tired of trying to see myself as healthy, and miraculous and fertile and fabulous when my natural instinct is to be repulsed by my expansion. This is not just an aesthetic repulsion - it is a physiological one. After all, it is perfectly normal to feel negative about one's body when one's body makes one feel uncomfortable to the point of physical sickness.
Not being able to breathe or eat or bend or be agile or sleep or lie down or shit without extreme discomfort are often waved away as insignificant rumbles on the glorious path to heaven-sent motherhood. There are some women who can wave it off because it isn't much of a discomfort. And there are others who wave it off because their focus is more firmly on their happy goal. I have been working to be like the latter type of woman, but even that work has grown wearisome. Either I've been pushing myself harder than my own capacity, or it was simply the result of the added cold. Either way, I permitted myself to simply be tired of sharing my body beyond the point of gross inconvenience and into life altering pain. For a solid hour, I allowed myself to simply feel sorry for myself, to reject my belly and hate my body and pregnancy.
And it was therapeutic. I felt better with clothes on when I could distract myself from all the unappealing aspects of my condition, and distract myself from the loss of my sexuality as I once knew it. I successfully forced myself back into an animalistic non-thought that I've gotten so comfortably good at in these few years. Before I'm done with this pregnancy, I will again return to a more noble philosophic perspective on where I am, what I am doing and the why's and higher purpose of it all.
For now, I'll just chalk this down as a barbaric and primitive process, be simplistically thankful that I can have something that other people desire, and move on by accepting this all as a happy-normal.
Still pushing myself to run, I tried to once again to discover the line between laziness and the demands of a pregnant body enhanced by the cold. For 3 miles I pounded my 108 lbs until the cushions of my running shoes felt flat and compacted. And I began to accept defeat.
The weariness of my cold finally eroded my emotional defenses and my mind collapsed. I was simply tired. Really really tired. I have been working so hard it seems through the last 6 months to be upbeat about the miseries of pregnancy. To not complain. To keep fit. To keep running. To keep lifting weights and going to the gym even I don't feel like it. "Not feeling like it" is a common woe of the lazy person, and pregnancy only serves to legitimize the lame excuse. So I've pushed on, forgiving myself the "breaks" that I have indeed given myself.
So my emotional tiredness finally came to the surface and enveloped me in a pool of self pity lasting 2 hours of the evening. I'm tired of trying to feel positive, cheerful and thankful for my blimping body. I'm tired of trying to see myself as healthy, and miraculous and fertile and fabulous when my natural instinct is to be repulsed by my expansion. This is not just an aesthetic repulsion - it is a physiological one. After all, it is perfectly normal to feel negative about one's body when one's body makes one feel uncomfortable to the point of physical sickness.
Not being able to breathe or eat or bend or be agile or sleep or lie down or shit without extreme discomfort are often waved away as insignificant rumbles on the glorious path to heaven-sent motherhood. There are some women who can wave it off because it isn't much of a discomfort. And there are others who wave it off because their focus is more firmly on their happy goal. I have been working to be like the latter type of woman, but even that work has grown wearisome. Either I've been pushing myself harder than my own capacity, or it was simply the result of the added cold. Either way, I permitted myself to simply be tired of sharing my body beyond the point of gross inconvenience and into life altering pain. For a solid hour, I allowed myself to simply feel sorry for myself, to reject my belly and hate my body and pregnancy.
And it was therapeutic. I felt better with clothes on when I could distract myself from all the unappealing aspects of my condition, and distract myself from the loss of my sexuality as I once knew it. I successfully forced myself back into an animalistic non-thought that I've gotten so comfortably good at in these few years. Before I'm done with this pregnancy, I will again return to a more noble philosophic perspective on where I am, what I am doing and the why's and higher purpose of it all.
For now, I'll just chalk this down as a barbaric and primitive process, be simplistically thankful that I can have something that other people desire, and move on by accepting this all as a happy-normal.