It’s officially been 6 weeks that I’ve been unemployed. In that time I’ve gotten on unemployment, almost kicked off of unemployment, been reluctantly reinstated, taken up yoga, quit smoking and oh, yeah, maybe (probably?) gotten pregnant. Also watched a lot more reality television than anyone of sane mind and/or body should cop to.
So the pregnancy thing. At this point, I’m just way too nervous to even consider a pregnancy test, and am hoping that my utter exhaustion is due to weird weather patterns and my pets waking me up super early this morning, for some reason that they have declined to share. I figure I’ll know soon enough, right? These things have a way of revealing themselves and I am far too self-analytical to be like on of those women on TLC who just kept buying bigger sweatpants and figuring that they’re dying of some strange liver cancer or something until the intern in the ER pulls a baby from them. Like I said, too much reality tv.
I kind of feel that the worst part of this whole pregnancy thing, or the part that seem the hardest to me from the outset, because if I’m not pregnant now, I probably will be soon - my partner’s long-dormant biological clock has started ticking really loudly and he is going to be 38 in a month, and I think he’s counting on a baby to be on his ‘things I did that were good’ list for personal review on his 40th birthday - is the telling people about it. I’m both a hopeless sucker for positive attention and really, really shy. I have a pathological fear of asking too much from people, of being needy, of asking for help, of attracting too much attention or for the wrong things. I have a problem coming up with facebook status updates that don’t come off smug or weird or judgey or lame. I’d much prefer that people just magically sense my needs and desires and recognize those things that aren’t uncomfortable or weird or icky in a tasteful, subtle way. Because that’s healthier.
I mean, I think a good reason that my aforementioned partner and I aren’t technically legally married is that it seems to invoke a great deal of telling people something that feels like a decidedly private choice. I just finished reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s Committed and although I totally appreciate how many people felt like it was a tour through someone else’s first-world high-class neurotic crazy, it also felt a lot like a tour through my head. But for me, it’s kind of the telling people about it that makes it all icky. And the asking people to travel long distances to come and stand in a crappy Florida courtroom to witness something that feels so personal and vaguely embarassing. Kind of like asking your family to come and attend your doctor’s office for a pap smear.
Anyways, while walking the dog in the crazy windstorm today, I was busy working myself up into quite a lather at the prospect of talking to all these people about my sex and home life and the fact that yeah, we kind of chose now as a great and perfect time to have a baby despite the fact that I, as the family’s main breadwinner, am unemployed, and it kind of seems absolutely insane in this economic and political climate, and I’m sure so many, many people are just aching to hire a pregnant woman out of the many unemployed in this recession not to mention that finding a job in my field in this sleepy town may be impossible and we’ll likely have to move cross-country or to a new country for me to be able to find a suitable ‘next career step’ kind of job and oh shit, if I’m pregnant I have to tell my yoga teacher because maybe I did some weird pose that fucks up a fetus although it probably doesn’t matter because I haven’t been taking folic acid so the fetus’ neural tubes or whatever are probably already fucked. It was all I could do to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Then my neighbor, Miss Verda, a home-daycare operator and neighborhood watchdog and grandmother came out and started talking to me about various tidbits and goings-on on the street and my mind just….stopped. I think that’s what they talk about when they talk about grace. Or at least it was good enough for me today.
