This can’t be real. She has lipstick on. And mascara. I was in maternity clothes for the following 4 months after my son was born because of my poorly done C-section incision….and looked like a complete train wreck for months after that!
Sometimes I read the garbage on various newsfeeds when I’m bored. I shouldn’t do that for many reasons. Hyperlexic people like me speed read, and are compelled to read anything and everything that’s in print (even though I have become more discerning in later years) which means I still take in a lot more unsavory stuff than most people.
I’m pretty good most of the time at scrolling past fake news and garden variety bullshit that I find offensive, or assorted drivel that just pushes the wrong buttons.
Media consumption is much like food consumption. Some stuff is good for you, but difficult to wade through. Some stuff just plain tastes nasty and will make you sick. Other stuff is ok in moderation. Then there is just plain poison.
Normally I don’t read mushy tales of devoted spouses (mostly because I am pissed at myself for tolerating 20+ years of drunk-n-stupid abusive bullshit from mine) or stories involving joyful motherhood. The birth of my only child was many things, none of them pleasant, with the exception of the fact that somehow by some miracle he came out of it healthy, in one piece and blissfully unscathed. Otherwise my “birth experience” was an exemplary display of Murphy’s law in childbirth, a harrowingly narrow avoidance of maternal mortality due to medical ineptitude, and being brought to the realization that my then husband and male genetic contributor of said offspring is a worthless, contemptuous ass.
Being reminded of that experience is painful. I should have been able to enjoy my son when he was first born, but instead I was sick, browbeaten and powerless. It was a horrible feeling. Especially wondering why I survived all the medical errors when technically I should have died- and I survived for what?
For many years I wondered why I didn’t die- my parents would have gotten the son they wanted but never got. One can question God and wonder about His decisions and ponder the moral question of why expendable and broken people with deep scars and missing pieces who still linger about suffering and dying a little more every day, suffering slowly while children and young people with lives worth living just die. I’m still sucking up valuable oxygen for what it’s worth. I really wonder why.
These things disturb me.
Hindsight is 20/20, and with this in mind, I realize that after all these years it shouldn’t bother me. But it does.
I will freely admit I am jealous of women who have men who support them, men who actually love them and their children.
It pisses me off that when I had the one child I could have that his entire birth and infancy was made a nightmare first by my own health complications and the poor medical care I received, then by my worthless ex and his selfishness and hostility.
I’m sorry but I can’t forget being completely at the end of my strength, barely able to stand, being held together with way too many stitches, crying endlessly, holding my newborn while my ex rages, “How dare you bring that thing in MY house…what the hell are you going to do with it…” and so on.
All I could do was sob uncontrollably, helpless and mired in the deepest despair I’ve ever known. It’s hard to find words to describe this even now after a lifetime of space and time in between. Forgiveness, yes, but healing from such a vicious wound, probably not this side of eternity.
And it still took me two years after that to leave the son of a bitch. He would put up a good front in front of my family. He played the game when people were looking, but behind closed doors I was afraid. And he was downright hostile.
There’s something about being hit when you’re down that sticks with you. There’s also something about reading about perfect husbands who love their wives and kids and actually help with the nightmare during and after childbirth that fans the flames of that resentment, sharpens the sting of that pain, and even stirs up my jealousy toward the “perfect people,” even after almost 30 years.
I have a thick skin and am not easily rattled over most things at my age, but I still should not read those kinds of sickeningly sweet stories. Maybe there are guys like that, and more power to the women who find such gems. I just never personally experienced such bliss.
I should have held out for one of those even had that meant I would have lived alone as a “mother” of only dogs and cats. Then again, the axiom: “hindsight is 20/20” applies.
Cats don’t drink beer, smoke cigarettes, or yank me out of bed by the hair at 11PM so I can prepare food for an ungrateful sot who will pass out before he can eat it, just sayin.
I don’t regret my son’s existence or my granddaughter’s for that matter, but if I had things to do over I would have followed my gut on that hot, hot, stinkingly humid hot day in August of 1990 and said hell no, a million times NO to my ex. Something in the back of my head was telling me I was insane to marry such a self-absorbed basket case mommy’s boy, and Something was right.
Should have said the same thing to Jerry five years later too, but that is another story.
The wisdom I have to pass along on this front is that it’s probably better to hold out for the highly improbable than to settle for the unacceptable.
Some young women- me included, long ago- fall for a man just because he’s vertical and breathing. That’s not enough. It’s not worth it if he has nothing to bring to the table.
Granted, I have my sensory, emotional and relational issues, and I am not physically beautiful by any standard, but I still deserve better than moochers, drunks and narcissistic ne’er-do-wells.
And I am better off to hold my standards high, even though it’s too late for me to have a positive experience becoming a mother and raising a child. Said child is 28 years old with a child of his own.
I have no tolerance for drunk-n-stupid, or of being berated, devalued and used. It took me over 25 years to figure that out, or more accurately, to decide they were wrong and I deserved better.
If anything mine is a cautionary tale. I can’t change the past but I can move forward.
And I can stop reading cheesy clickbait pieces especially when someone is gushing about their perfect man, children, family, etc.
Humor and sarcasm are more appropriate domains for me when I have a hankering for the trite or mundane.
I should try to keep my reading confined to higher pursuits such as Scripture (always timeless,) scientific and historical non-fiction, and selected classics. I gave up the bodice rippers and various other sleazy tomes that would be porn if they were illustrated in high school.
Sadly, I had quite a collection of said bawdy literature during my freshman year of high school.
The occupational hazards of the hyperlexic…
Maybe I should go and read some Stephen King. His politics may be dreadful, but his stories are great this time of year.
The things I see while driving to work on US23…
I don’t know what is worse, fat dudes in Speedos or the Daisy Duke crowd.
What self-respecting non-terrorist dude would wear these nighties? These outfits call for an immediate forfeiture of one’s Man Card, and/or enlistment in ISIS.
I think I’d almost rather die than be corseted like this, even though it does make dresses look a hell of a lot better. My grandmother used to be a lingerie buyer for a swanky department store. She sold this stuff. Wore this stuff. Fitted people for this stuff. I have worn this stuff only on special occasions and it’s hard to ward off both hypoxia and heat stroke wearing this stuff. It’s hot and you can’t breathe worth a damn, let alone move. And the likelihood of having BATHROOM SITUATIONS is just as bad as with the lace-up pants, or with Levi’s 501s, which have button flies. Yay. Not to mention it’s hell on my nails.
I could only wish that the unfortunate 2003 Kia across the street were in this good of condition. Someone recently decided to use its roof as a trampoline, and in the process broke out the back glass – which can’t be replaced because the roof rail is bent- so the back glass consists of that plastic people use in the winter if they don’t have storm windows, and duct tape. Lots of duct tape. I feel sorry for her for having to drive it. The only cure for this thing is C4. Then again, when I see the volume of Natty cans in the yard and around their fire pit on Saturday and Sunday mornings, I understand. All. Too. Well. She’s living la vida drunksitter. Both her husband and her father-in-law make Jerry look like an amateur at drunk-n-stupid random destruction. Jerry destroyed stuff, yes, but even in his drunken stupidity, deep in that primal, reptilian part of his brain, he knew that trashing my car was a Really Bad Idea. Apparently this tipsy redneck has discovered, the hard way, that if you want to go car surfing, you need something with a sturdier roof than an aged Kia Optima. I hope she kicked his ass. She is twice his size.
This is the same guy who put up the pool on January 5. FYI: Central Ohio’s average January high temperature is 23°. Yes. Fahrenheit. Then again this is the same rocket scientist, in the same pool, who passed out on a floatie in the middle of the pool , surrounded by empty Natty cans, in the heat of the day, on a 90° (also Fahrenheit) day in the middle of July for a few hours. When all was said and done, 
She has some nice tats. I have tats too, so I shouldn’t talk. Just no names, and no poorly drawn Pitbulls…
The above pictured Corona is older than me. Not by much, because this is a 1968 Corona. Unlike me, when this car was new it had 90 BHP and would (theoretically) do 90 MPH. Maybe it would with the standard “four on the floor.” I can assure you no conventional automatic transmission paired with a 90 BHP engine will do that unless one is traveling downhill with a hefty tail wind. If only Toyota had discovered the wonderful benefits of treating their body panels with rust preventative processes before 1988, there might still be some of these around here in Ohio. The drivetrains on these old beasts would last forever. Sad thing is, today when one says “Corona,” it is usually in reference to an overrated Mexican beer. Then again, I am biased because I simply don’t care for any kind of beer. It all tastes like ear wax smells.
Yuk.
If I ever make my way to England, I will have to check out the Canterbury Cathedral.
It’s February again. That shortest month of the year, and the month in which the most people die. I think people just give up in February. Christmas is long over (not that I am a great fan of the holiday hype,) and winter seems to just keep hanging on. Most people are still paying for the crap they blithely and wantonly purchased for Christmas, that the kids have either broken or gotten bored with already. If you’re going to go, why not now? All hope abandon, ye who enter here.
