It's hard to remember where I was last year, because this year has changed so much. We started out the year in such turmoil, I could never imagine that the year would end on such a happy note. We started out 2012 in an apartment with a roommate that was terrible, with a tenuous financial relationship. Matt was still, after six years, with the grocery store job he'd gotten in high school, barely making more than minimum wage when the store was asking more and more responsibility of him. I was watching an apartment full of children that I adored, but we were on the verge of losing two of those kids as they were moving and we had no clue how we were going to be okay in the face of that. Meanwhile, we were planning a wedding that was looking more and more like it would never be the dream wedding I wanted, and I was privately reflecting on fertility and trying to find the words to broach the question, "Can I even have children?" with Matt, figuring out how to find out the answers when we had no spare money and no medical insurance for me, and what a difficult answer might bring us.
And the year went on, and we found ourselves somehow thrown upon the waves. Sure enough, those kids did move, but at the very same time a friend mentioned his sister had two kids and desperately needed day care for them, so I was able to fill the spot and we could pay our bills. Matt went back to school, I started a business that ultimately failed but allowed me to get in touch with a woman whose husband had connections and could put Matt's name out in the medical field. Our apartment situation got even more full of drama and uncertain, but we were able to get away from that terrible apartment and the terrible roommate and move in with a really awesome couple who was renting out their room just as that connection paid off and Matt was hired to actually use the nursing license he's had for five years. As he began getting paid a living wage, I was able to stop watching children without it completely ruining our lives, he was in a position where we could get and afford health insurance.
And then I found out I was pregnant. Late July was the most intense moment of the year, for sure. Getting pregnant was the last thing I thought would happen in 2012, because let's face it. We're told our whole lives that we should be so careful with sex because pregnancy can happen so easily. It should be effortless to do it on purpose, right? Sure enough, I watched as one friend got pregnant twice while on birth control. Babies were springing up all around me, and it seemed like many of them from people who had been actively trying to prevent pregnancy. So why, after four years of irresponsible behavior and not really preventing, was I left without a child, caring for other people's children. It hurt, even though I tried my best in early 2012 to tell myself that possible infertility was likely the best thing for us because it didn't seem like we would ever be financially stable, even though I was doing well in school and Matt was starting to take the first steps to change where he was as well.
It was kind of a pathetic form of denial, really. It just felt easier to tell myself that our home was not one for children than to accept the fact that this thing I'd always wanted - motherhood - was never going to happen. But then it did, and with it came the next hurdle of making sure it didn't slip away. The stress of all of the medical facts against me, my own doubt over my body's capability to do what it should do, and the depression I've had since childhood started to build and my first trimester should have been so happy, so joyful, but it was so hard instead. We take that and we add it to the fact that I felt like a complete douchebag for being pregnant in the house of a woman who expressed to me she was having trouble conceiving and had experienced a loss, and feeling on the evil side of that unfairness.
I didn't feel the joy that I think I should have. My doctors could sense it too. "Is the pregnancy wanted?" I was asked with concern from each of the providers I saw. My dad asked me. Friends asked me. I asked me, and I felt awful for it. So I started therapy because I knew that more than anything in the world, this baby was wanted, but I didn't feel it was deserved. I still struggle with that flood of worthlessness and guilt.
Eventually, it got better, to the point where now we're at the end of 2012, and the last 11 weeks of my pregnancy. I feel joy and excitement the way I think I should be, I feel more attached to the baby within than I did a few months ago. Maybe that was just a way to protect myself, in case the doctors I saw a few years ago were right and I wasn't able to carry a baby to viability without miscarrying, in case I woke up and it was all just a dream anyway and we were still in a crappy apartment with crappy jobs and no hope in sight. We're standing at the curb to cross the street to 2013, moving into a townhouse with enough room for all three of us, the first time we'll be without roommates, financially able to provide for a child and pay the bills, the last year in my bachelor's degree to go for me, taking the steps into a life I had hoped for at the end of 2011, 2010, etc. but had never really thought it would be here so soon.
So now I guess I need to choose my resolutions, because that's what everyone does today.
First, I want to take more steps to ensure that my husband is aware of how proud of him I am. Second, I want to read more, because I feel that the quiet time I've spent with books has drastically reduced in the last few years. I spend too much time on the internet. I think I only read one new book in 2012. D: The shame! Third, I have a goal of keeping my A1C numbers under 7, taking better care of my blood sugar than I have the last few years. Finally, I want to get to the point where I can wean off my anti-depressants. I want to get to a point where I feel like I deserve to be joyful about the good things that are coming around, and shed these feelings of worthlessness that I can understand as irrational. Most of the items on this list are focused on taking care of me, and my mental health, and I think it's the best thing I can do for myself and my family in the coming year.
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