Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Lonely but never alone

Above we see the wild husband creature in his natural habitat. Having a chronic illness like diabetes and all the monitoring, medication, and frustration, as well as physical side effects (like sugar high headaches) can be lonely when the person you live with doesn't have to deal with the same problems. Sometimes it makes it worse, like when he wants to eat something like pizza, spaghetti, or stir fry that man, I really wan to eat it too, but my disease and my conscious effort to control my disease inhibits. Pregnancy makes these feelings of facing the difficulties of disease alone even more poignant because so often I feel like I'm alone in this too.

Matt doesn't talk much about the baby, or the future. While I know he's excited, he doesn't seem to focus on it the same way I do and it's probably because it's not a constant reminder to him the way it is to me. I can feel Lorelai's movements, I am reminded that she is on the way every morning when I take my prenatals. With every finger stick, I worry that a bad number is affecting her. With every meal, I remind myself that no matter how tired and frustrated I am with these restrictions, I need to stay strong and do my best for her health. My wee hitchhiker is a big responsibility, one that I often feel I carry the weight of alone.

And yet, even in the intense loneliness, I am never really alone. This morning I've been highly frustrated with Matt. He swears up and down that he plans on keeping up with laundry and trash, but the laundry goes undone until I do it or until I hound him. The trash doesn't get taken out until I tell him to do it. Meanwhile, the intense depression I've felt lately has been keeping me from feeling much like doing anything. My desire to clean and organize is being muted by the strong waves of apathy and fatigue that I'm experiencing. The house is going neglected, as well as my homework.

Today everything came to a head and I've been spending most of the morning crying. I feel neglected in the love department, attention deprived. I'm frustrated by his lack of helping with the house and the fact that he said he would spend today studying and immediately began gaming when he woke up, complaining and arguing when I kept telling him he needed to study. After breakfast my numbers were high, and I cried over it. I couldn't think of anything I could eat for lunch that wouldn't spike them again and cried over that. Now we're talking about plans for dinner because I'll be going out to babysit tonight and need to eat beforehand, and it brought more tears. He wants pizza, I just wish that any option I had for low-carb stuff didn't taste like garbage, and I want pizza too but the most I can have is a single slice and I'm hungry, dammit. I'm pregnant for chrissake.

Cue more crying and another anxiety attack.

And then Matt patted my back and pet my hair and helped me look up nutrition information on wings from Pizza Hut so that I can have that single slice of pizza but also chicken and end up with an actual adult amount of food that won't kill me on carbs. He let me cry on the couch and gave me a box of tissues so that I could blow my snotty nose and then gently pat my head again before he went out to grab dinner.

And suddenly I feel a lot better and less lonely. In many ways, I'm still on my own in this. Matt will eat half the pizza or more, and probably have a bowl of ramen while I'm gone today. He won't do laundry, or take out the trash, and as soon as I'm out the door he'll probably stop studying and go back to gaming. Just being gentle and kind while I mope isn't going to suddenly make it to where I'm not the only one who is responsible and tidy. But somehow, it helps, and it reminds me that I do feel lonely in this but even though he doesn't really get it he's still there.

If that makes any sense.


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